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Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the look-out-mcdonalds dept.

WindozeSux writes "Today Mozilla Firefox has reached its 75 millionth download. The Mozilla staff find this a morale booster since recent security vulnerabilities have slightly lowered the browser's growth rate. 'We're beefing up the management on the project. The project is still very healthy. We're seeing continued corporate interest and have a lot of large organizations that want to do deployments,' said Chris Hoffman."

6 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. Diversity and competition is the Important Thing by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a Good Thing. Not because everyone has to use Firefox instead of IE/Opera/Safari/whatever, but because this forces authors to create more standard compliant sites which work on multiple platforms.

    Good stuff.

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  2. relevance by R.D.Olivaw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is the relevance of the number of downloads? Someone might download it 4 times to install it at his 4 PC an another might download it once and install it on his company's 200 stations.

    1. Re:relevance by Glenn+R-P · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In the previous months, I've downloaded FireFox 1.01, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.06! As FireFox does not download a patch for a security update and one has to download the whole thing again (quite silly in my opinion), does these 6 downloads count as 1 or as 6 in Mozilla's book?
      It would be interesting to see a graph of downloads versus date. If you count as six downloads, then the graph would likely show bumps for a few days following each release. If you count as only one, then the graph would be smoother. In fact I count as zero, because I use third-party (amano) downloads that support MNG.

  3. It's a big number. by MarkByers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And when I install I from portage it is also not counted. In fact most Linux users are probably not counted, since most use things like apt-get, emerge, or whatever.

    What is the relevance? It gives an idea of the popularity of the product. The number is big, and still increasing. That is all that matters.

    --
    I'll probably be modded down for this...
  4. Some advice to the Firefox team by pieterh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Keep it simple.

    The biggest danger to Firefox is that you forget the key reasons people like this browser... compact, fast, and secure.

    It's the "winamp" lesson.

    --
    My blog
  5. Re:The competition isn't coming. by Ckwop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So your saying that IE7 is rubbish because it doesn't look nice? It's still in beta FFS! I know a lot of people on Slashdot hate Microsoft but this is getting ridiculous.

    Anybody can write a program, writing a program that is easy for a non-literate person to use is a real challenge.

    We live in a world where people judge everything by the way it looks. People buy Ipods because they look and feel better than the competition even though there are high capacity, longer battery life alternatives.

    Even if we discount the visual side of IE, it's still rubish. It's so far away from standard compliance that it might aswell be considered it's own platform. It delivered full PNG support half a decade too late. ActiveX needs no introduction. It's crap, and this version is no better.

    Simon.