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Opera: Firefox User Figures 'Inflated'
Anonymous Coward writes "ZDNet
notes, 'The chief executive of Opera Software claimed on Monday that the market share figures for Mozilla Firefox are inflated, due to its support for link prefetching" In addition, "Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn't access Web sites as often as other browsers" and "Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer' "
If Opera is identifying itself as IE, isn't IE getting overcounted and Opera undercounted?
And whose fault is that? Maybe if you would default your browser to itself rather than trying to pass itself off as someone else the statistics would show an even deeper drop in IEs marketshare and an increase in your share.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Buggy whip manufacturer calls automobiles a "passing fad".
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
No one really uses it.
Well yea there are some die hards and I am sure it is a great Browser and all. But with firefox as a viable free alternitive without the adds why bother.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What the heck is this guy von Tetzchner smoking? Doesn't he realize yet that nobody cares about the technical details? People (web developers, plugin writers, users) only care about the big numbers. They don't want to think about the results, they only want to know: who is first, and by how much? Is the second place browser big enough to notice?
Opera is nice, but the Opera execs should realize already that they can't sell their browser when their customers can download a perfectly good one for free.
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
I think that's irrelevant (I'm not trolling, it's just my opinion). Having the option to send a different user agent string is very handy, but it should definitely _not_ be the default action out of the box.
That would mean that IE's market share figures are inflated too (mod me insightful)!
Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn't access Web sites as often as other browsers
Wouldn't it still have to access the sites to figure out that the content it has cached is still valid (otherwise I don't know that I would call it a "better" caching mechanism).
Aren't all market share numbers hyped?
I bet I have reinstalled Windows 10 times in the past few years, and each time I update IE and download several other software packages over and over again.
And as far as actual web usage, those stats must be all over the place because some sites do a better job of cross browser compatibility than others and other sites, like Slashdot, appeal to a non-IE crowd while still others, like MSN, do not.
So this whole article should really just be a reminder to not believe everything someone else wants you to.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I think the "who actually uses it" argument is a good one. As a web developer I have installed IE6, Fx1.1 and O8 and I test on all. I think Opera 8 is a great browser, especially since it's the first to support native SVG rendering, but my regular browser is still Firefox, as I find the ads in O8 at the top distracting.
Of course, this little snippet from Opera isn't a response to the enormous success of Firefox at all, is it? Opera is envious of how Firefox became the darling of the internet community and threads like this prove that they still don't understand why (hint: clean, crisp interface and a lot of word of mouth)
It's odd that the CEO of a for-profit company whines that they don't have a not-for-profit "sugar-daddy" like MoFo. Who funds MoFo? Isn't it a not-for-profit company (I'm not sure if AOL still does any funding there)?
It's also odd that they are whining about setting the user string agent to IE's when they are doing it to themselves.
Something Witty Goes Here
Firefox Advocates are not exactly known for sparing other "small" Browsers critizism either...
Linux is not Windows
A ZDNet article indicates the prefetching is for Google searches only. I am not sure this would account for a 9 point spread between browsers.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Mozilla on the other hand fires off two requests. Thus doubling its market
You've got to be joking? Yes, sure it is wasteful to send another request when there could be the option to catch and ignore double clicks... but doubling market share? Nobody in their right mind decides marketshare by counting GET requests - even the simplest stats package will count the number of visits rather than number of hits ('visits' is a very vague term, but generally it groups all the hits from the same IP/browser/hour as a single visit)
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
The whole reason that Opera is identifying itself as IE is because many pages send different html based upon what browser is requesting it. If Opera identified itself as anything besides IE, Opera users would get alot of degradaded pages, even though it can render the page just fine.
Yup.
And Google only supports Mozilla's prefetching for a couple of weeks. Before that, Firefox's market share wasn't significantly lower, was it? Besides, only the raw source code gets prefetched as far as I know. Scripts, images and the like are only executed/loaded when a user actually visits the page. So, when Firefox prefetches a site, it should be visible in the site's logs, but I don't think it could trigger a third-party counter/tracker. Also, Google only prefetches certain sites, not any site.
And that Opera identifies itself as IE is a valid concern, but that's Opera's fault, and nothing that would inflate Firefox's version numbers, just IE's.
If I ran around telling everyone my name is Frank, would it be a suprise to find out that nobody knows my name?/p>
If many major department stores and government buildings had someone at the door asking, "is your name Frank," and then refusing entry to anyone who said "no" and then most newspapers reported that Frank is the most popular name in the country after asking department stores and government agencies who would be at fault?
It's perfectly valid to question the accuracy of browser market share statistics given the fact that it is often technologically advantageous or even necessary to misidentify.
Bets on the most common slashbot response, anyone?
1) Nobody is so stupid as to double-click all the time!
2) It's open source, so why don't you fix it yourself?
I'd have picked #2 myself, but I see by the past replies I'm wrong...
Opera can render IE pages just fine
:-)
Oh no it can't.
If you do almost anything of significance with DHTML and event handling, you quickly run into major differences.
Opera, due to its closer adherence to W3C standards, is much closer to mozilla/firefox than IE.
Because of Opera trying to force its way in to IE only sites, advanced DHTML authors have been forced to use client side browser detection for years now. Browser detection is crucial for advanced sites, and not being able to detect them on the server side is a needless burden. This _is_ Opera's fault. Server side browser detection has become essentially useless because of Opera.
Actually, I'm a bit appalled that the hit counting sites don't also do their detection exclusively on the client side to avoid this issue.
In any case, because the Opera market penetration number is a little vague (around 1~2% with some loss due to miscounting) They get the benefit of the vagueness, and generally I have advocated for supporting them and not NN4, even though NN4 probably has a higher market penetration (NN4 is harder to support than Opera).
As for Opera downloads, I have several. As a web developer, I have to test against Opera (and IE 5.x and 6.x) but, my primary browser is Firefox.
So don't count my Opera downloads in the total
Unfortunately, everyone just misinforms you about everything unless you say your name is either Frank or Steven. So either you are gonna end up believing a bunch of lies...or you just lie to everyone.
Actually, I'm being serious. It's not quite everyone, but there a good portion of websites will give non-working output or refuse to give full functionality if you give them the opera user agent string. If you give them IE or even usually Mozilla, they give complete working output.
Off the top of my head, I know msdn (thinks opera is a bot that wants feeds or something) and gmail (just reverts to basic non-js functionality) do this. Personally, when I use opera, I always just leave it identifying itself as IE or moz since I forget to change it back.
I think a point to Opera is that they aren't so small as everyone thinks, but they ended up in a corner. They can't tell the truth or certain sites won't work (oh noes, opera sucks) or they lie (oh noes, noone uses it!) so they work, which is where they are now.
Spot on.
As a matter of fact, by incorrectly identifying itself as IE, Opera is telling lazy webmasters that IE is even more dominant than it really is, which gives them an excuse to rely on IE-only code. This, in turn, makes people use IE, "because alternative browsers render many sites wrong".
If Opera, like Firefox, Safari and Konqueror, would stand up for itself, and send out correct UA identifiation headers, it would help raise awareness among webmasters, thus helping to open up the market for alternatives.
Nobodys... Opera can render IE pages just fine, but when configured to send an Opera user agent, some sites send malformed pages.
.NET CLR 1.1.4322) .NET CLR 1.1.4322; MSN 6.1; MSNbMSFT; MSNmen-us; MSNc00; v5m)
MSIE UserAgent strings are already full of extra garbage.
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98) via Avirt Gateway Server v4.2
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; FunWebProducts; SV1)
You tag the useragent as "Opera" without ruining the MSIE spoofing by simply adding "Opera; " or "OWB; " after the OS string.
It's a stupid issue anyway. Opera Software knows exactly how many users have current licenses and how many users are downloading banners for the adware version. Opera's userbase is simple to track without making any estimations.
Actually Webmasters thinking like you lead to the problem in the first place. Neither webmasters nor the browsers should work around and tweak for specific instances of the other, they should just both use the standard.
Linux is not Windows
"The standard" as you call it is IE right now. If you're talking about the W3C's standards, that's totally unrealistic because IE and Firefox are simply not W3C compatible.
I don't respond to AC's.
"If you give them IE or even usually Mozilla, they give complete working output."
That's true, but it has not been TESTED with Opera. The thinking by the suits is that they don't want to pay people to test every part of a big web site with every browser in the world. If they can test two browsers and cover a huge percentage of all users, it becomes cost effective. Since the suits don't want customer complains from untested browsers and then have to pay people to do support, they completely block some browsers. You would think that the smaller browsers like Opera would always work and not need to be tested, but that assumes that developers follow published standards and don't use crazy IE only features.
If Opera really had so many users, wouldn't the big sites that block Opera be flooded with complaints? A few hundred complaints and I would bet some sites would make a little effort.
-B
Well, perhaps you are only interested in a "browser that doesn't suck", but other people (i.e. me) may be interested in how well a browser supports web standards, whether it is open source, and how many platforms it runs on. This is on top of "does it suck?" features like security and plug-in support. Mozilla will only scare MS into being "good enough" to take back market share. And it isn't "good enough" that I (or many people, for that matter) are interested in. For example, "good enough" doesn't buy you web standards. Many small browsers allying themselves to pressure the big guys does. And standards are a good thing.
Finally, there is nothing remotely "silly" about a web browser. You may only use it to make snide comments on Slashdot, but web browsers support hundreds of billions of dollars in business, which, I would argue, is far from silly. The security and availability of such a program is quite important, really.
You'll find that reverse psychology works best, but I'll probably get modded down for saying that.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Well, perhaps you are only interested in a "browser that doesn't suck", but other people (i.e. me) may be interested in how well a browser supports web standards, whether it is open source, and how many platforms it runs on. This is on top of "does it suck?
No, this is about not sucking. The standards are out there, and do not require comparisons to other browsers. I know browsers are important software, but they still don't justify continuing this idiotic "browser war" nonsense. I'm sick of war, I'm sick of war metaphors, and "silly" was the kindest euphimism I could use to describe the negative reaction I'm having to all the god damned posturing.
I use a web browser that doesn't suck, and it happens to be Firefox, but I will not join your damn crusades.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I'll take a +1 insightful please. Thank you.
Additionally, each prefetch would have come from the same IP as the actual hit, so they would not be counted separately.
Your other point is valid, but this one is not. The problem isn't that the prefetch and the hit are counter seperately as 2 hits, but that the prefetch without a hit is counter as a hit.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
$2.3 million is nothing when your thinking in terms of large companies or foundations. Heck Opera claims to have had > 4 million downloads (from a quick google search). What do they charge $30 for their browser? If only 10% of those people paid for it that's $12 million right there.
AOL gave them that money 2 years ago. With just salaries alone its likely all gone.
The Anti-Blog
I agree, that's true and fine. I'm not going to use your site. But, why would you block me? So what if it doesn't work right - that's my fault apparently. Maybe in the next version, it would work right, but now you've blocked all users of browser X.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
First of all, the development that people have contributed to Firefox, developing Firefox and also developing the free plugins, are worth millions of dollars in man-hours, much more than what AOL gave them.
Second of all, tt doesn't matter who funds the Foundation... if people don't like something about a product, people won't use it. People hate the advertising bar in Opera, and won't use it. People don't find the features in Opera valueable enough to pay for it.
I am not going to choose what product I use based on sympathy and excuses. If a for-profit company wants me to give them my money, they are going to have to give something of equal value to me in return.
Preach on!
I conform to standards as best I can when building web pages, surf with Safari on my Mac and Firefox on my work PC... but I would gladly switch to IE without hesitation if Microsoft were to make a browser that does the job better, just as I once dropped Netscape Navigator for IE 5.
I love western civilization in general, but this is the one part of our culture which drives me nuts lately: the completely vicarious "us"-versus-them cheerleading... what I like to call the "sports fan" mentality.
"I usually vote Democrat, so everytime a car-bomb goes off in Iraq, I'm happy because it makes Bush's decision to go to war look worse."
"I'm a protestant, so every time another story about a cover-up of pedophile priests comes out, I'm giddy with laughter over the human tragedy, because it's a huge embarrassment to Catholics."
"I'm a Linux user, so every time Microsoft users are hit with a virus which shuts down entire companies for the day and costs the US economy millions of dollars, I can barely contain my joy."
Fuck all of you! Groups you are "rooting against" doing poorly, or even groups you are "rooting for" doing well, does nothing to make you a better person, nor does it actually make the world a better place. Get some goddamn perspective and stop being so myopic about your little meaningless dogma! You sound just like a little kid arguing with the neighbor kid over who's faster, Superman or The Flash.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The thought just occurred to me that we could use one problem to fix another here. We want to get webmasters coding for standards-compliant web browsers, right? Problem Number 1 is that they generally don't. Problem Number 2 is that Windows is highly susceptible to malware and viruses. So how about someone just write a virus that changes IE's user agent string to a random pick from Firefox, Opera, Safari, Mozilla or any other browser out there? Webmasters would no longer be able to trust the user agent strings they receive, so they'll have to just code to standards instead.
Then we'll see just how fast Microsoft can get a security update out when their web monopoly is being threatened.
I haven't yet met a site that convinced me to download whatever the webmaster thought was appropriate (often IE). It didn't work in '96 (NS) and it doesn't work now. Especially since IE is a horribly crippled browser unless you add at least a couple of plugins - and even then I'd rather use a browser that can actually render CSS correctly.
I suppose it's about time to have a quick detection on one's site: "Oops. It appears you're using an outdated browser. Please consider upgrading to Firefox, Opera or one of the other, safer alternatives. It's really for your own sake you know. It hurts me even more than it hurts you."
That said, who cares if someone wants to play around with the latest technology. As long as the information on the site isn't important and something everyone should be allowed access to, who really cares? And who would want to see the site anyway - except for the sake of geeky curiousity that is.
Against the grain
Why does the browser call itself "IE"?
Le français vous intéresse?
Your examples are retarded and overblown. You know who thinks like that? .01% of the world. 99% of the rest of us don't think like that.
btw
"I love western civilization in general,"
WTF is this supposed to mean?
"you know I love black people in general..."
see how stupid that sounds?
That may be, but I still don't know anyone personally who uses Opera, and maybe only a handful who've even heard of it. IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, sure. But not Safari (unless they're Mac people), Konqueror, Opera. I bet more people use Lynx than Opera. It might be a really nice browser, but it's irrelevant since there are presently many great FREE browsers.
Sorry Opera, you lose.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I would gladly switch to IE without hesitation if Microsoft were to make a browser that does the job better, just as I once dropped Netscape Navigator for IE 5.
Virtually *everyone* would switch to Windows+IE if it was truly better (in the ways important to them) than the alternatives. But almost *no* MS offering is actually the best available.
Fuck all of you! Groups you are "rooting against" doing poorly, or even groups you are "rooting for" doing well, does nothing to make you a better person, nor does it actually make the world a better place.
Are you sure? For every time MS loses an IE customer to Firefox, just that many fewer people will get hit with malware, that many fewer shady organizations will make money on spyware, and MS might, just maybe, be forced into making IE better.
So yes, it most certainly *can* and *does* make the world a better place, and *can* and *does* make you a better person.
Get some goddamn perspective and stop being so myopic about your little meaningless dogma!
Yeah, most people are dogmatic and stupid, so you're right there. But rooting for a rationally chosen side not "myopic".
You sound just like a little kid arguing with the neighbor kid over who's faster, Superman or The Flash.
And then you post that neither is faster, but you use Superman to deliver your mail since he's faster right now, yet would gladly call on the Flash if he could speed up a bit.
I'll take that over paying for Opera or using the free version that is stuffed with adware.
I'd hardly say stuffed. I have an ad-bar of google text ads in neutral colours just below my menu bar.
Opera is free too, free with ads. I don't mind. It does tabbed browsing 'better' than Firefox, it is more stable than Firefox, it has a smaller footprint than Firefox (on WinXP SP2), it has many UI features 'better' than Firefox.
By 'better' I mean:
Enhanced text searching
Voice
Scaling options
Tabs (options in right click like open in new page/window, open in foreground/background)
Better text highlighting options (dictionary, thesaurus, etc)
Ability to right click and search for a phrase
Notes (EXTREMELY USEFUL, would not be surprised if they showed up in the next MS Office colaboration software)
Javascript and Java console
Firefox could most of these with the right extensions. But I am not happy to search high and low for an extension to do this, let alone finding a stable one. Opera offers some fantasic innovation which I don't want to do without. Why not pay someone for their hard work, be that through purchasing their software or implicity through Google text ads?
No, I just wouldn't shop there anymore.
I don't think that's true at all. While there do seem to be a few hardcore Firefox zealots, the singular most vocal group browserwise is definitely the Opera crowd. (Who've been using this particular "we're underrepresented" argument for ages)
This doesn't seem too unusual (You tend to see the BSD crowd being even more vocal than the Linux crowd, though that may not be the best comparison, as I've seen a lot more linux zealots than firefox ones.)
And why the hell would anyone go to the trouble of using someone else's registration key to avoid the ads in Opera, which are not exactly obtrusive?
You've missed the point: if Firefox can operate successfully without misidentifying itself why does Opera need to do so?
"A lot of people don't like our ads, which is sad as we don't have a rich sugar daddy like the Mozilla Foundation. They [the Mozilla Firefox team] don't have to think about money as they're being funded. We're not being funded," said von Tetzchner.
Hate to be a capitalist, but that's a great revenue stream that allows you to increase your userbase with ease ("what, it's free?!"). Seriously mate, if you're jealous, and think mozilla's model allows them to have it better, then move open source and get some funding. It's competition, that's how it works.
As for public browser stats: If you're faking IE then you're really pushing it. Even IE fake Mozilla. It's meanlingless, seeing as you have sales figures (those ads served, licenses, downloads). The reason why standards are not well enforced on the web is because - shock horror - browser makers and web designers keep breaking them.
This is not good marketing. Maybe spending more on that would help your market share.
31 Replies.
20 of which argue who is faster.
You can see where our priorities are.
---
Flash is faster.
Don't put advice in your sig.