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Firefox Momentum Slows
linumax wrote to mention an Information Week story about an apparent slowing of Firefox's usage growth. From the article: "San Diego-based WebSideStory released market share numbers for Firefox, IE, and other browsers that noted Firefox has crept up from April's 6.75 percent to September's 7.86 percent, a single percentage point gain in five months. During the first few months after its November, 2004, release, Firefox was adding another point each month. 'It looks like Firefox has hit the push-back point,' said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"
So what if it slows. It still eats away at Micro$oft's market share. One thing going for Firefox at least they fix it's flaws quickly.
Did they really need to say that there was "a finite number of early adopters ... and a finite number of Microsoft haters"? Did anyone really think there were an infinite number of either?
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
But Firefox will find it difficult to move into the double digits of market share, and retain those numbers. "It's hard to get there," said Johnston. "To do it, Firefox has to go mainstream." It's time firefox is also bundled in the new PC's /laptops which are sold out there into the market.
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
The only possible reasons why someone would use firefox are:
1. they are one of those annoying people who think they're cool when they have "the latest thing"
2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.
There's no other reason. No sir. Nobody in the entire world looked at each browser and made a sound, logical choice to use the one that best met thier needs. No, that would never happen.
There are only so many individuals you can convince that you are more likely to have a better and safer web experience with Firefox than IE. Not guaranteed, but more likely. What should now be a focus for people concerned about this is convincing large businesses and universities to consider it. Any large switch is painful and expensive, but the reduced support costs down the road should be considered.
Its not about being a Microsoft hater.
:)
Most people I know who use firefox still use and prefer MS Windows to the alternatives.
Software compatibility is important and being able to go into a shop and buy any software for Windows means Windows will remain for a while.
When the tiny Apple or Linux section in computer shops grows and software is generically released for more platforms things will change.
My local PC world (in England) is already being taken over by Apple Macs so its only a matter of time now
liqbase
IE 7 finally has tabbed browsing, no doubt to try and win back users who have dumped IE for Firefox and the other feature-superior browsers. I'm a big fan of Firefox, I love the small footprint and the fact that the menus etc take up very little screen space so I can see much more of a webpage than with IE. However, I'll be checking out IE 7 and if I like it more I'll switch to it. As an aside, it's hard to recommend Firefox to some friends/family when they can't comprehend how useful tabbed browsing it. I've successfully converted a few people though and they all comment that they'd hate to surf the web without tabs now. Maybe they should rename them iTabs or something to make them trendy.
They started seeing a slow down cause of all the other options that are cropping up; Opera(free) being one of them. Just a thought...
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
I am not surprised, most users think "internet" Explorer" is the internet, so the fact that a "normal" user
does not go out and download / install firefox. does not surprise me.
on the otherhand, 7% + market share in such a short time is pretty good. and has firefox improves, (use less memmory) you will see improvments in the marget share. firefox has to be much better then "IE"
for a normal user to switch to it, so the rapid marget will slow down and will creep up slowly...
-Nex6
-nex6.blogspot.com
'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'
So you have to be a "MS hater" to see the disadvantages with IE now?
Anyway, yes, it is expected something like this will happen, but I think not for that reason, but rather because there's a finite number of people willing to change browsers when there's already one part of the OS. Firefox being more secure? Sorry, they don't even read computer news sites.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Close in numbers, but not close in the severity, or the number of unpatched exploits.
If MSIE had approximately 97% usage at it's peak, and FireFox is now close to 8%, how could most of FireFox's market share come from Mozilla browsers and Opera? 97% + 8% != 100%
So...whats the next step?
Obviously the current marketing effort led by the Firefox team has reached, or is soon to reach, the most people it can. There now needs to be a second push to help promote this browser up past 10% market share. Once one in every ten users is using Firefox, then maybe the 'word of mouth' changes will begin to increase more-so.
Personally, I have installed it on my parents' machine, all my tech-saavy coworkers, and I promote it every chance I get. Once we hit the 10% mark, all the people that were too lazy to do it might just say, hey, well, everyone else is doing it, why not me?.
No, even if you accept the numbers, it means the pool of IE users willing to change to Firefox has dried up. It's pretty damn arrogant to assume that if Firefox isn't acceptable to somebody, nothing is. I use Firefox myself for the time being (roll on Konqueror 3.5 with Adblocking built in), but I'm not going to claim that it's perfect.
One thing I can never find with these stories is how they come up with the figures. Examining httpd logs and using Javascript tricks is about as accurate as guessing. Do they conduct proper surveys or are they just another snake oil vendor? The fact that their website is broken in Firefox isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
In my experience it is the Mozilla innovations which encourage people to switch... the better the features the more compelling the motivation to switch.
Recently the released improvements to the Mozilla suite in the release products have slowed. I strongly suspect that version 1.5 will bring yet more people on-board. I'm using the Thunderbird 1.5 beta for my email right now and it is a fantastic improvement over the current release version.
[Minor whinge] I wish I could print an email without all the irrelevant headers... preview what will be printed and (optionally) change the format.
http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement7.asp
I'm just wondering why the market share in Europe is so much higher? I mean, I doubt that there is such a different user basis?! (The linked article talks about 20% market-share in Germany and Poland...)
As such, just because downloads are flagging doesn't mean interest is.
This sig no verb.
"For many, IE is just not broken," said Johnston in explaining the small dip in Internet Explorer.
Yes, but for many web developers IE is broken. It's annoying having to write one set of code to run in the non-standard IE environment and then another set of code to work in the standards-based browsers. Take for example Alpha Transparency for PNG images. You can get it to work in IE by using Microsoft's method but you can't just slap a PNG in with alpha transparency and expect it to work in IE.
Bradley Holt
I have recommended Firefox to all of my coworkers, friends, and family over the past year. So far I have not personally heard of anyone who has fully switched to Firefox ever switch back to MSIE.
That said, I do know of MANY people who have zero interest in even trying Firefox. They don't care about tabbed browsing, they already know the ins and outs of MSIE. Generally these aren't the people who actually have to remove their spyware and virii, so they don't fully understand security issues and associated pains.
I think it boils down to this: Most geeks like Firefox and have already switched. Joe Sixpack and Ted the PHB have in interest in learning how to use a new browser, or even learn how to click on a different icon.
(And then there's the camp of newbies that think "the internet" is built into their "computer" and is only accessed by clicking on the magical blue e)
I mean...
the number of web users is still growing rather rapidly. Even if their marketshare stays steady for many months, especially this time of year (I'll get to that in a sec), it still means that their userbase is growing.
This time of year, school is starting. people are getting new computers or their first computers for themselves (finally, a computer that's not shared by the family!). There's a distinct spike in computer purchases around now. Firefox's 1% gain this month is a very good thing. it means that even though their marketshare growth is remaining constant, they're making up for it in volume.
also, does their marketshare count only for windows installations? or does it count for all platforms? I mean, I know a bunch of mac users who , for some reason (usually because they're coming from windows), prefer firefox over safari.
personally, I use firefox for testing on the mac. but that's about it. I still think safari is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of just the usability factor. firefox just feels like a windows app. Camino's ok, but feels a bit strange sometimes.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Firefox is the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. I hope all users of it die !
That's quite probable; Firefox is a nice browser, but I don't recall seeing "confers immortality on all who use it" as a listed feature (unlike Internet Explorer, obviously).
Perhaps they'll add that in the next release. Then we'll see who's laughing.... forever!!! Muwahahahahahah!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
As a sysadmin I switched the computers i am in charge of to firefox. I've been to labs where others clearly did the same. This is room for growth.
Also many webapps are bothering to support firefox. If that trend continues and firefox improves itself a bit to offer more features, then I think the growth trend will continue, albeit at a non-insane pace.
I doubt these numbers. The Jem Report gets about 3k visitors per day, and no more than 25% of them are using a version of IE. Mozilla-based browsers are almost twice that number.
Looking at two other sites I have that have much less traffic, IE's numbers are around 20% or less. Two months ago it was the opposite -- IE was around 50% of TJR's traffic, and certainly more than 20% on the other sites. Something big happened in the past two or three months that drastically changed browser numbers. I think WebSideStory's data is old or just plain inaccurate.
Finding 1,000 different "vulnerabilities" that cause the app to crash does not equal 1 vulnerability that gives remote admin access to the machine.
And that story only shows FireFox's adoption rate to be slowing. You can interpret that any way you want to. But if your interpretation is correct, then why is Microsoft introducing FireFox-like features in the next release of IE?
Have you been watching IE numbers, for the first time in last 4-5 years, they dropped below 90%, what did those 7-8% percent users switched to, lynx ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I switched to opera simply because firefox is a damn memory hog and is clearly not optimized. I believe the same is true for thunderbird. Take alook at dillo (granted it adheres to a very strict html standard). The source for dillo is around 500kb and is the fastest webrowswer that I have compiled. I am sure that it is possible to make firefox much leaner than what it is now. Thunderbird vs sylpheed is similar (only comparing bloat vs basic functionality). The source code size for thunderbird is about 30mb while sylpheed is significantly less. Why are these programs so big? I might be wrong but it seems to me that there is alot of unecessary code in either mozilla products. Opera on the other hand starts in about half the time firefox does and feels much leaner. The mail client really stinks though, hence sylpheed.
I am shocked (shocked) that people don't get sarcasm.
I too am shocked. Subtle sarcastic humor always goes over so well on Slashdot.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers
l
If you compare numbers, please compare them correctly. According to Secunia, IE has much more OPEN security holes than Firefox has.
http://secunia.com/product/4227/
http://secunia.com/product/11/
I also suggest you to read this article about the "Fun with statistics", which is about the security holes in Firefox and IE:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-6333507-1.htm
Apparently taking yet another percentage point of market share from the strongest monopoly in the desktop space is a sign of failure. OK. Whatever.
- A
I am going to lose my mind. My goose and my moose have both gotten loose.
Finding other idiots on
Looking at the numbers like that is a bit misleading. Going from 6.75% to 7.86% of total marketshare may be one thing, but it's a 16% increase in users.
What about having a prepackaged version that has maybe a dozen themes and 15 or 20 of the most popular extensions? Maybe even have something that comes up when you run it for the first time that walks you through enabling some extensions that are preinstalled. That would make it much easier for a new person to become familiar with the true power of Firefox.
A lot of people don't know what Adblock is. They've never heard of WeatherFox, or FoxyTunes, or CuteMenus, or Linkification, or DownloadStatusbar or any of the other really cool extensions. Some of these are extensions that most users would probably use if they new about them. You and I have no problem because we are geeks... but what about the Average Joes out there that don't know the first thing about installing extensions or changing themes? Lets walk them through it visually and give them some choices right up front.
I think this would go a long way to ensuring that the people who do give Firefox a try, never look back.
On a similar note, is there way I can package my installation for friends? I'd like to be able to make a copy that I can email to a few people so they can have the exact same setup I have... and I'd also like to be able to set it up on one machine and copy it to my other machines without having to manually install each extension on each machine. Anyone have a link that details how to do this or some directions/tips/whatever? Thanks!
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
And of course they're going to say they're not worried. PR guys would only say they're worried if it's raining frogs and the sky is falling. Maybe not even then.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.
Firefox has achieved many of its goals regardless, with 10% of the web not using Internet Explorer (Firefox + Opera + Safari + Konq) websites are no longer able to simply plug Microsoft technology into their websites and run with it. I can't remember the last website that I visited that didn't function properly in Firefox -- which was a very common problem in the bad-old-days of IE5/ActiveX (again, through no supposed hatred on my part). Microsoft is a better netizen today than they were five years ago. Their development is more open, and their technologies are more cooperative. There is much more of a free market in webspace now, which is a good thing.The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
It beats me why people still think that counting the vulnerabilities is of any value in determining the security of different browsers.
because management tends to make decesions they should leave to people who know what they are doing, and management likes numbers.
"Don't bother with the facts! Just give me details!"
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I agree with the articles premise that most of the early adopters have been converted. The rest will be slow going but I believe Firefox can still achieve at least 25% of the browser market.
At UNT College of Business, my school job, the lab group is just now rolling out firefox to all the lab computers. This represents a sizeable exposure for Firefox in a demographic that may soon make personal or corporate decisions about open source and browsers. I think it could be a good idea if the Mozilla foundation worked to get Universities offering Firefox as an alternative on every lab or kiosk machine on campus.
I would also venture to believe lots of large corporate IT departments are just as slow to adopt new software, even when it works. I have also wondered how thorough the enterprise deployment software is for Firefox. Does firefox have adequate support for corporate or large scale installations?
While I'm a happy Firefox user, I tend to think it was a naive presumption that Firefox would ever directly battle IE for market-share dominance. People who thought it was a serious contender in this regard fail to understand the nature of the average internet user.
I believe firmly in the technical superiority of Firefox. The developers have shown they take security seriously and the open-source model is continually proving itself with this application, not to mention the lack of integration into the OS which solves a number of IE woes. The extensibility of Firefox is another strength, allowing an element of customization to the non-technical user.
Where I disagree with many, is claiming that Firefox will become dominant. Gone are the days when the internet was primarily composed of scientific/technical people. We're now a continually shrinking percentage of the population, which, as much as I decry certain aspects of the 'dumbing down', is as it should be. Mass adoption has brought down connection prices, broadened the services offered to us and released a flood of new information and technology.
Firefox will continue to go from strength to strength, however the majority of new users and non-technical existing users will follow the Microsoft bandwagon. While the choice of a competing and IMHO superior browser is important to many of us, to the vast majority it's completely irrelevant. They have web access implemented in their operating system hence they see no need to even research browser alternatives.
The real benefit of Firefox for the masses, is the adoption of it's strengths (tabbed browsing, etc.) into IE. For the rest of us, we can sit comfortably and support our own preferred browser.
I know a lot of Windows users (and even me as a Mac OS X user) are annoyed by the fact that Firefox cannot auto-update itself, in place. If we assume that the mozilla.org servers are pretty secure, there is NO reason why Firefox can't download the necessary updates to patch this week's security vulnerability, install them in place while the browser is running, then pipe up when finished and ask the user to restart the browser. Hell, when it restarts, it could come back up to the same page the user was browsing when he/she quit a few seconds ago. This is a major flaw in Firefox and one that will invariably lead to people still surfing with Firefox 1.01 in 2007. It also just looks stupid, in contrast the the slickness of Apple's Software Update or even (gak) Microsoft's Windows Update.
Firefox devs... any comments?
I didn't switch because I hate Microsoft, I switched because FireFox is modular and it's convenient for what I need to do. I think it's silly to paint people who want more functionality and only want to see what they need in their software interface as Microsoft haters. I would call us power users. I've tried to show my friends and family what's out there. Half of the people I show it to (somewhat un-savvy internet users) adopt it after seeing the tabbed browsing and installing a few extensions here and there. I think one way to market it to less tech-savvy people would be to create packages with some of the most popular extensions already installed.
As the article suggests, all the early adopters are already running Firefox. Now it is up to these folks to spread our little fox, because it does not have the advantage of coming preinstalled and tied into the OS, and besides, who's to say these numbers are accurate. Who is this WebSurf whatever...what is their motive, how much analysis have they done, and why. So, many questions.
The Johnson Space Center IT department has installed Firefox this week. They will also be regularly patching it as required. Some odd 15000 people work at JSC.
Doesn't MSN require the use of IE to log into the netowrk?
I just used my hotmail user/pass to sign in to My MSN on the MSN.com web site using Mozilla Firefox 1.5b1, and nothing ill happened. My aunt's ex-boyfriend has Verizon Online DSL "with MSN" and he can still get a routable IP address through DHCP without running any more of IE than what Windows Explorer uses. Which MSN did you mean?
Both from September:
From Xiti, a French Web monitoring company.
From NetApplications, a US Web monitoring company. Both say that while FF is growing, it's not growing as fast as some of the other alternative browsers. Of particular interest is that both say IE is still slowly losing ground.
IE6 has also been around much longer (since Feb 2003) than Firefox (Nov 2004). You'd kinda expect the IE vulnerabilities to level off at some point. This guy picked one year to date, 2005. Come back when Firefox has the same maturity as IE, then we'll talk.
Oh, and 3 out of 24 unpatched holes is way less than 20 out of 86, especially when some of the holes are rated "Less Critical" as opposed "Highly Critical." I think I'll stick with Firefox, thanks.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
can browse the web from explorer.exe just as well as iexplore....or even control panel
Exactly. 90%+ of IE's functionality is integrated into the OS. You can't reasonably uninstall it without breaking tons of crap (like the html help viewer). When we say IE, we don't mean iexplore.exe. We mean the entire web browser.
Of course Konqueror is integrated into KDE in the same way.....
This being said, I take issue with the fact that "Microsoft Haters" are switching to Firefox. Most real Microsoft Haters are already using alternative operating systems and IE isn't available to them anyway. Anyway, real Microsoft haters would probably have switched to Linux or OS X by now....
Early adopters OTOH, is a different matter.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The best, easiest and cheapest way for Firefox to boost its popularity into the stratosphere is to bundle free access to porn.
To avoid being labelled as smut vendors, an "independent" developer can come up with a plug-in to do this.
Firefox is not slowing. It's users are getting better as manipulating the browser. One of the first Firefox extensions many of us add is User String Agent, so we can get into "IE only" websites. Many of us use Webwasher or anon-surfing products, many of which also change the user string. To a webstat gathering firm, I'm an IE user whether I'm using Firefox or Opera, and I don't want to be counted as using IE for anything except Windows Update or badly written websites.
I didn't give up on Firefox, it's my primary browser. But I'm not counted by the web statistic collection firms, so their data is a fraud. These firms must develop better data-collection methodologies or be exposed as frauds and face legal sanction.
_____ Computers are so complicated... I thought I never learn how. Then I found out there was Free Pornography on them.
I was reviewing usage stats yesterday and I noticed the same 'leveling off', but with W3schools it's 18%, not 7%.
a sp
Firefox exploded from 5% in January 04 to 21% in May 05. Now it's crept back down a bit off that high.
Don't really have a reason to offer, but here's the stats:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
Minor correction, IE 7 isn't being released onto Windows 2000.
Microsoft want to force people onto XP and Vista.
It's a bit of a mistake if you think about it, all those companies and people who'll soon start needing a new browser as more fancy html, css demands it and they're on Windows 2000. They can either worry about installing a new operating system and paying n amount of cash for it or they can simply download Firefox or Opera for free.
Which would you do?
Firefox has always had the following noticible benefits:
1. better security
2. tabbed browsing
3. pop-up blocking
4. more polished UI for certain things (like the options dialog)
#2 and #3 are in IE. #1 is a big deal, but you've always been able to get the same effect by changing security settings in IE. With Microsoft switching to those settings, the difference is negligible. #4 I like, but it's just a tweak; it's not like MS couldn't do this.
So, in all honesty, Firefox has always been, more or less, IE+. The key point is that open source developers managed to get something that worked as well as IE, then add some nice bonus features. In regard to the bonus features, it's not like Microsoft (a) wouldn't borrow good ideas from Firefox, and (b) would have a tremendous amount of trouble adding some additional features to an existing application. From that perspective, anyone who expect Firefox to blow IE out of the water was fooling themselves. There was a nice lull in IE development which allowed some catch-up time, and it's good that the Firefox team could take advantage of it.
But now we're at the stage where FF and IE are essentially equals. Microsoft engineers could very easily have significant improvements to IE in the works; something that could become the standard for web browsing. If that happens, it's going to make the FF team look out of touch, spending all that time just to clone a previous generation product and make some improvements to it. True vision is something that FF development is lacking.
If a web page can't be displayed by 10% of the people, its no biggie.
The fact that they are 'artsy' types (OS X users) or 'propeller heads' (Linux users) just makes the decision that much easier if you'd selling socks or food or something.
Never underestimate the power of 'saving a buck by screwing somebody' (somebody using the other browsers) when it doesn't really cost them anything.
The sales figures are going up anyway. Or the site is just advertising and that's an expense regardless, and nobody ever got fired for saving a buck.
I've got FireFox installed on all my boxes (1 AMD64 running Linux, 2 Macs running OS X and 1 old Win2k box crawling along,) but that's because I am paranoid and I really don't like IEs pop-ups.
But that's just me.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I'm not a Firefox dev, but I can tell you that the upcoming 1.5 version has incremental update support.
I keep hearing about these "IE Only" sites for a long time already. However, I yet have to find one.
How about the FEMA site section for online claims requests, which explicitly requred IE 6.x. Slashdot article here.
This was particularly a problem since the volunteer-provided internet access tended to be donated older computers running free software, often from a "live CD". But not being able to use it to fill out the aid forms massively reduced its usefulness.
The telephone alternative to online signup was even worse: It didn't let you sign up, only triggered the mailing of the form - to your address in the flood zone.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Firefox 1.5 (now in beta) will have auto-update.
f ox-auto-update/
Reference: http://www.techspot.com/staff/38/thoughts-on-fire
I design user interfaces for a free network management application,