Firefox Growth Slowing?

ninja_assault_kitten writes "Silicon.com has an interesting article on the apparently slowing growth of Firefox. To quote the article, 'The slackening of Firefox's growth could mean that the browser has converted a substantial proportion of its natural constituency, thought to be early adopters and the technically savvy. It could also show that the browser's widely publicised security flaws have begun to undermine the foundation's argument that people should switch from IE to be safer.' One thing's for sure, with the release of 1.0.3 and now 1.0.4 we can probably expect to breach the 80 million download mark shortly."

Comments

Translation to layman's term-

[guardiangod]

All the geeks on planet earth are now using Firefox.

Re:Translation to layman's term-

[pebs]

transalation:

All the geeks on planet Earth are not using IE.

(If you're using IE as your main browser, you're obviously not a geek.)

Re:Translation to layman's term-

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't know the difference between a backslash and a slash then no, you are not a geek.

Go back to your crappy DOS command line.

Re:Translation to layman's term-

[ignorant_coward]

Real geeks stick their tounge on a frayed Ethernet cable.

Re:Translation to layman's term-

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know I misspelled tounge.

Twice.

Re:Translation to layman's term-

[NotoriousQ]

Remind me to stop doing that once power over ethernet becomes commonplace.

Nah

[suso]

That was just warmer days coming and more people going outside.

Re:Nah

[dtfinch]

Outside? What's that? Oh, yes, the unhappy place where I can't program. Why would anyone want to go there?

And shortly after the 80 million mark...

[grommit]

...Firefox will reach the 80.592 million mark. Then we have a long wait until the 94.68715 million mark.

What's with the arbitrary "marks"? 80 million? What about 75 million? That's 3/4 of 100 million which is much nicer than saying 4/5 of 100 million. Better yet, what about 100 million being the next "mark"? That's 7/7 of 100 million.

Re:And shortly after the 80 million mark...

[Henry V .009]

Arbitrary? The number of mammal digits gets decided only after millions of years of evolution. The decimal notation of counting is developed independently all over the world to mesh with finger number. People finding mystical significance in number spurs Greek mathematics and philosophy and eventually Western Civilization.

And a punk like you comes around and finds round numbers arbitrary. Just where do you get off, huh?

Re:And shortly after the 80 million mark...

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

I like it both ways!

Yes, sqrt(-pi). What were you thinking?

...and in other news...

[distantbody]

Slashdot Reports Non-Events as News?

Re:80 Million Downloads...who cares!

[ColMustard]

That's funny. The first thing I install is Linux.

Oh I'll burn for that.

Growth rate slowing?

[Jonboy X]

So, the rate of growth of the number of Firefox users is slowing, or for you calculus geeks out there, the second time derivative of the number of Firefox users is presently negative.

The good news is, the *third* derivative is positive, which means that the change rate of the growth rate is increasing. Soon enough, the growth rate will even out and eventually start increasing again!

Oh, and don't even get me started about the 5th derivative...

Re:Forcing the count up

[TimeForGuinness]

that and I download it about 1000 times a day for no good reason except to fudge with the numbers.

Hey here's a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to look at the second derivative before you start finding bad news, maybe the news isn't really all that bad

Re:Firefox users blocking WebSideStory?

[plaxion]

I wasn't but thanks for the tip ;)

Just say no to IE.

[ignorant_coward]

Using IE instead of Firefox over security concerns is like keeping your eyes closed when hooking up with a drugged up bag of herpes prostitute.

Just stick with Firefox. It's like using a rubber, which at least is 90+% effective at keeping out the herpes.

Mozilla...

[Daedalus-Ubergeek]

Let's see YOUR top executive swim across the Atlantic! Oh, wait...

Re:Firefox users blocking WebSideStory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Website measurement and marketing firm WebSideStory said I feel pretty, oh so pretty...

Re:Forcing the count up

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, well I upload it 2000 times a day, so the jokes on you, buddy...

Re:How many unique downloads?

[kfg]

A download total number (used for marketing) is essentially used as a "vote of confidence".

Damn straight! I have so much confidence in it I downloaded it 79 million times just to let them know how much I appreciate it.

KFG

Re:How many unique downloads?

[xtracto]

Yes, if, you actually make the calculations and substract the average number of people downloading once and spreading offline minus the number of people downloading a lot of times to install, reinstall, rereinstall, rerereinstall... well, you get the idea. Then, the exactly number of downloads count as:...
42.

Note... I was going to write 1 but... u know... no?

Re:Whoo, great news folks!

[VanillaCoke420]

"Uh yeah, nice article. Glass half empty..."

Perhaps we didn't bring out enough champagne?

Vocabulary impairment strike slashdot crowd

[jhoger]

Use of the word 'meh' instantly identifies you as annoying, and to be ignored.

It is on the level of "talk to the hand" or "what-ev-er."

Please, in the interest of not annoying me, stop.