Firefox Hits 80,000,000 Downloads

asa writes "It's been nine months since the release of Firefox 1.0 and with tens of millions of users we most certainly are taking back the web. Today our Firefox web browser hit the 80,000,000 downloads mark. You can see the live counter over at SpreadFirefox.com."

Comments

Re:Obvious question

[ozamosi]

According to past Slashdot comments (to which I can't give you a link), the spreadfirefox.com figure does it's best not to count any single user twice. For instance, not counting any firefox-user.

Re: Patch System

[Tiberius_Fel]

This is partly due to the assinine update mechanism. They really need a better way to deliver patches.

If I recall correctly, they're working on a patch system that only alters the changed parts of the file (i.e. does not require full re-download and re-install). I think it's set for version 1.5 or similar.

Re:Obvious question

[Eric Coleman]

If you download firefox with the firefox browser you are NOT counted. Same goes for the update mechanism in the browser, you're not counted with that.
This number is simply a metric which happens to be number of downloads. This is not the number of users. No one ever says that, although people seem to misinterpret the download count to mean active users.
The download number is simply a way to guage the software's popularity. And if I may say so, 80000000 downloads is a good start!

no download link

[kayen_telva]

am I blind or is there no download link on spread firefox ? kinda silly aint it ?

Subtract 1

[ChicagoDave]

I downloaded it, installed it...didn't really care for it...uninstalled it...now am testing IE7. Jury is out.

Extensions Management

[alucinor]

I hear so many talk about tabbed browsing, popup-blocking, security, etc., but to me, the best feature of Firefox are the XUL extensions.

Mozilla should really start pushing XUL as an application platform more. Also, it'd be great to see a bit more standardization in how the extensions integrate into the browser and with each other, so you don't end up permanently mangaling your browser with a bad combination of extensions.

And I doubt IE will ever have AdBlock or StumbleUpon! Great stuff!

Re:News speak

[WilliamSChips]

1: Taking back the web from whom? I wasn't aware the web ever belonged to anyone.

From IE. Technically the web doesn't belong to IE, but prior to Firefox, much of the web was IE-centric, and non-standards-compliant.

2: 80,000,000 downloads...and how many people downloading new versions?

Those aren't counted.

3: ASA eh? Sounds like someone didn't want to come up with an actual name and wanted to be anonymous....yea

Asa is the first name of Asa Dotzler, Firefox developer.

Re:IE is still quite dominant

[the_womble]

It seems to vary from site to site:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25161

The Inquirer is a fairly busy site and widely enough read to be a reasonable sampling of tech-savvy readers.

Few visitors to my main sites (UK oriented, investment related, mostly read during working hours) using Firefox. I think it is fairly obvious why.

On the other hand only 14 of the last 70 visitors to my blog used IE: about equal to Safari + Konqueror! Most of them are looking for my Wordpress plugins, both of which are of niche interest.

Re:In other news....

[fireman sam]

"because some 10 year old script kiddie was allowed to donate code to it, without some oversight committee."

Have you ever tried to get code submitted into the Mozilla CVS? Way back when I was working on it (0.8) each piece of code was reviewed by one of the main members, then super reviewed by another. "Super reviews" could not be done by any main developer, there were only a few that could do it.