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Firefox Breaks 50,000,000 Barrier

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the get-up-get-on-up dept.

MrDrBob writes "Today at 16:59 GMT (8:58 AM PST) Mozilla Firefox received its 50,000,000th download. To celebrate, SpreadFirefox.com has created a special page, where you can watch the downloads continue to climb in real time. Three cheers for Firefox! May it go on swiftly to 100,000,000!"

10 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Downloads per user by r_glen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So how many unique users does that translate to? Anyone with a reasonable estimate?

    1. Re:Downloads per user by Finsterwald+P+Ogleth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think Asa had a blog entry on this...

      The download counter only counts "foreign" browsers (like IE, or Opera), or Versions before 1.0.

      If you download a new installer with a current (1.0 or >) version, it won't count.

      There goes most of the theories about counts surmised above...

      We're probably seeing a realistic download count for unique users for non-current versions...

      FPO

  2. Small nit to pick... by pegr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On four different machines sitting in front of me, the counter is off by about 500 between the lowest and the highest. \

    While the counter is cute, I'd call it a bogometer. :)

  3. Slightly Inflated? by PocketPick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The large amount of downloads are great, but how many of those downloads simply were the same users downloading updates: v1.0, v1.0.1, v1.0.2 and v1.0.3? I'd be interested in knowing how many of those downloads correspond to unique users. After all, that's really what is most important.

  4. Re:It's Good to be the King by ksaville00 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anyone actually know how many visits slashdot gives a site that is on posted on the front page? any guesses?

  5. AMAZING by dingDaShan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was wondering what the market share is compared to IE? I am finding that IE is used so much because it is convenient and not because people haven't heard of Firefox. Once I show somebody firefox and what it can do, they realize the error of their ways.

  6. In Internet Explorer by bobbis.u · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And it can't be a coincidence that the page doesn't display properly in Internet Explorer!!

  7. Re:Hey, it says "actual number"--so it has to be! by Iamthefallen · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Yep, The JavaScript grabs the numbers from a XML file and does an estimate on the rate of downloads per minute. The XML file in turn is updated once a minute or so.

    Not quite real time.

    --
    Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
  8. Re:Good and bad. by k0de · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are other considerations. What will the turnaround be on creating and approving spyware fixes? Even once they are available will ff be able to complete with ie/windows update for pushing fixes? Or worse again will there be a dependence on users to install updates? Don't expect such diligence on the part of My Parents(tm). And how much damage will be done in the meantime?

    There's the argument that ff hasn't seen the spyware pain that ie has, and may not be equipped to deal with the issues. M$ has the experience, and subsequent versions of ie are getting smarter at dealing with these problems, not to mention their new anti-spyware tool.

    Don't expect the 'open source' tag to make everything happy day. FF's popularity will bring it a nice slice of problems, and I fully expect to see the ff community following ie's lead on solving those problems.

    --
    I'm wrong and so are you.
  9. Wonder what other gecko browsers would bring it to by Sark666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since going to Gnome, I've ended up using galeon.
    It has proper session support, it has proper theme support, and it solved my flash slowdown issues with certain sites that I've always had in FF.
    I initially read that that was a gtk2 bug, but later read it was due to an XUL overhead issue.

    The other gnome browser, epiphany, is also an option and the default gnome, I just found galeon more feature complete instead of the minimalist approach of epiphany.

    Anyway, it's all gecko with just different packaging. And there's also that Kmelon one on the windows side. So I wonder what that would bring the downloads with considering all gecko browsers. Obviously pretty hard to keep track of in linux when one rarely downloads from the actual site.