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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."
It seemed like the publication of those security flaws came from Mozilla itself... and a fix was out in about a week.
Who tells us about IE flaws and how long does it take for them to get fixed?
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
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.
Um... I don't think that's it. While the security flaws might be causing some to think twice, the real issue is market saturation. There does not exist a desktop computer sold in the last 10 years that didn't come with a web browser. They are essentially entering a 100% saturated market. Nonetheless, I think their accomplishments are stunning.
Could it be that Firefox users are blocking marketing firm WebSideStory's tracking images? These guys are just as evil as DoubleClick in assembling a massive database of information on web users' browsing history. Wouldn't ignorant IE users be more likely to allow WebSideStory to track them?
meh, this comes up in every firefox discussion. Yes, no doubt many people download firefox more than once. But there are also those of use who carry it on a usb key\cd\share\whatever and install it multiple times from a single download (I do so myself.) So what's your point? The fact is number of downloads, while no doubt not accurate, are still a good indication of the popularity of it.
Also, for anyone who thinks updates of firefox count as another download (as someone always seems to bring up in these discussions as well), they don't.
Personally I install it on any friends or familys computers that require my support. Its part of the price for free tech support.
If I find they have been using IE they get a 1 strike & they're out. If I find they have been using it a second time.
"Sorry, my time is more important to me & I prefer not to keep fixing the same ol' same ol'"
Go Away! Not for Sale
and disingenuous posters
I'm pretty sure all those downloads(+20 of them) count in on that 80 million.
And so what? A download total number (used for marketing) is essentially used as a "vote of confidence". If you liked the browser enough to not only install each version as it came out, but install each of those on multiple machines, then Hell Yes it's a "vote of confidence" and should count towards the Total Number.
I use Safari, and could really give shit about how many downloads Firefox, Mozilla or frickin' IE get. What I do know is that you're trying to somehow dilute the legitimacy of the number of downloads when your very multi-downloads were an endorsement of the quality of this product.
You know what?
For once, I'd like to actually see some empirical evidence.
Every mega-corporation hires it's own sub/pseudo company to do an "audit" of the market saturation/absorbtion rate.
Much like politics, it's not newsworthy to report that candidate X has lost +/-4 points. Let's see what browser the people choose.
Unlike the US election, I'm sure that the people will make the right decision (when it affects them directly - [ex. No Popups, No Spyware, No viruses, etc.]).
People may be stupid and they should be guided, but they should never be abused or manipulated.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
People that say the "taskbar is my tabs" make me laugh.
Seriously... try some tabbed browsing... even if you just buy an addon for IE... you should really try it.
Using the taskbar makes a mess when you are doing more than just browsing the web. All of your websites get mixed in with your regular programs. Tabbed browsing keeps everything nice a neat. You can also browse a lot faster (Run down slashdot middle clicking on the interesting links then just close off tabs as you read them... much better than click a link... read.... click back... click a link... read).
Just try it already.
Friedmud
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
When people advertise that their application has had so many downloads, many people assume that that number equals the number of users. Never have I ever heard of that number being directly correlated to "user confidence" (if at all, only indirectly but the number of users). In the case of Firefox, the number has the potential of being a multiple of the actual number of users. Not only do people download it multiple times for different computers, each computer downloads it multiple times for every patch. It is easy to see how people could misinterpret these numbers to mean something that they don't. Anyway, not calling anyone a liar or a bad person, so don't get your panties in a bunch. :)
Firefox is just coming off of a growth spurt.
Most things do not grow evenly through their whole life. Firefox grew explosivly in part due to the Wall Street Journal ad and a lot analysts pushing the security benefits. Now that there's been an equal amount of noise about the near-trivial exploit, people are getting cold feet.
I mean, some of the people who were considering switching are now asking about the exploit. One that did switch is asking how hard it is to switch back.
I say that it's a theoritical exploit that nobody has actually used to compromise a computer. If they're still listening, I add a joke contrasting IE's real world exploits. The news has hurt adoption rates of Firefox, but that's just because it's bad news, not because it's real.
People want to hear "Firefox is a pancea for all your ills", not "Every piece of software can have problems". Expect Firefox growth to pick up again after people don't remember this recent bug, and expect a few people to remember this bug years from today.
----
Evil will always win because good is dumb. -- Spaceballs.
Guess what. There's no real way to tell, because your multiple downloads show up but my running around installing it off a USB drive or a local mirror (that doesn't report stats back to Moz.org) doesn't. I happen to use the products based on their merits and don't worry about how many other people are using it. It's vaguely interesting to see how many people might be doing so and so people try to make a guess based on what information they have, which in the case of open source software doesn't necessarily reflect the numbers accurately.
I pushed out Firefox at work (university). It on all the machines. I didn't make it manditory, though it did cross my mind.
Well lately, I am reconsidering. At this point I've deicded Firefox stays on all images, and I'll recommend people use it, but I'm not going to push it any harder.
Why?
Well the honeymoon is now over in regards to security. I know as well as anyone that OSS doesn't magically mean secure. Many programmers have an arrogance about them that they think all security bugs are perfectly obvious and if only THEY looked at the code they could get rid of them. No, if they were obvious, probably wouldn't be there in the first place. So you can have a ton of eyes, doesn't mean you are bug free.
Initally the low usage was enough to make it worth while. No one was tarrgeting it so who cares? Well now it's getting popular, and the bugs are rolling in. It's not a bad record at this point, but it's enough I want to see how it develops. It's also an increased concern since Firefox won't patch itself. Unfortunately we have no central patch system and it doesn't look like we'll be given money to get one any time soon. The only way things get patched is if they do it themselves, if we do it manually, or if we reghost the system.
So since Windows knows how to update itself, and thus IE gets updated as well, the only concern is that the bugs are patched before they can be exploited. With Firefox we need to worry that they are patched with enough time for us to get the patch out before there's exploits going around.
This is a real concern, and probably much larger than IE only sites. I haven't encountered one of those in ages, and I use Firefox as my exclusive browser at home and work. As of now the only pages it seems to have problems on are ones with embedded video and that's a FF problem, not a design one.
The security issue though, that's a concern. If FF doesn't learn to autopatch and if we start seeing exploits in the wild beofre or a short time after a patch, I'll probably have to pull it and go with Opera instead (our instution just secured a site license for Opera) or perhaps back to IE.
The security isn't much worry to geeks for personal systems, that can patch their own shit with minimal fuss, but it's worrysome to instutions where having to manual deal with a patch to 3rd party software can be a pain.
With Firefox, updates are full downloads. While it may be a vote of confidence to you, to most people it's just another way to lie with statistics.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but for it to be lying, wouldn't they have to say something like x million unique *users* rather than downloads? They call it a download because there's no easy way to differentiate unique users without forcing people to register or something... even then the statistics wouldn't be perfect.
When people advertise that their application has had so many downloads, many people assume that that number equals the number of users
If people assume, that is their own fault. The number that Firefox gives is number of downloads, nothing more, nothing less. Downloads is the only number they should give to the public. They don't know how many unique users are downloading the program. They don't take personal information (and if they did, people would question why they need that info for a free, open source browser. Especially us tin foilers here at slashdot), therefore, they can't give out exact user numbers, they best they could do is estimate. Downloads is the perfect statistic for them; It's honest, a great representation of how well their program has caught on, it's an impressive number, and it does show a good deal of "user confidence". Even if every person downloaded 10 copies of it, that's still 8 million people who trust it, enjoy it, use it frequently enough that they stay updated with every upgrade, put it on every computer they use regularly, and probably tell their friends/family/colleagues about, which is a grand vote of confidence in my book. Misinterpretation of the number is the fault of the (potential) user, all Mozilla/Firefox is doing is giving out the facts.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)