Firefox Community, Sickly Out of Control

darlingbuddy writes "After users started reporting Firefox's 150 million+ downloads, this article mentions why it's a bad move on the community's part. The author writes, "I'm proud of the community that pitched in enough donations for Firefox to get a full-page advertisement in The New York Times print edition, and I'm delighted to see them think of creative ideas for promotion, but reporting total downloads every so often and immaturely degrading Internet Explorer is ridiculous. The thing with these numbers is that they are misleading at best, and the only thing they accomplish is immature fanboyism. It's a fact that Internet Explorer is inferior to Firefox with its extensive collection of extensions and ability to support qualified web standards, but does the community need to resort to using third-class promotional tactics with total downloads number?"

Comments

Numbers probably are skewed

[Colourspace]

Since 'discovering' (read - informed by the froth-mouthed slashdot hordes) FF myself only 18 months or so ago I have downloaded it around 8-10 times for my own personal use, rebuilds etc. So as far as unique users go I would expect the number to be at least half of this, if not less. Shame though because it is a nice browser.

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[Vinnie_333]

Total downloads is a totally honest way of reporting success. It's not a count of users or a measurement of their satisfaction, but it is a pretty good yard stick of success in the market place. Only a complete moron would think that 15 million downloads = 15 million satisfied unique users. Just like McDonald's "X Billion (products) served" does not equal X billion satisfied unique customers. Some are repeat customers, some were one time users, many weren't satisfied. But, unless the product was desireable for whatever reason, the number of products sold never would have gotten so high.