Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads

Owen Dansley writes "Firefox hit another milestone this past Friday, when it passed the 400 million download mark. From its launch in 2004 it took one year to reach 100 million downloads, hitting 200 million downloads just one year later. According to figures released by US consultancy firm Janco and the IT Productivity Center, Firefox currently has 17.4 percent of the browser market — up 5.6 percentage points in the last year. Also within the last year, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser dropped 9.6 percentage points to a market share of 63.9 percent."

Comments

These numbers are WORTHLESS!

[sootman]

I had the same though last week when Steve Jobs was talking about how many people have downloaded iTunes. WHO GIVES A FUCK? These numbers are completely without meaning for many reasons. I'm one person and I've downloaded 1.0, 1.5, and/or 2.0 (plus several other minor versions) for my two main computers at home, my two laptops, and my three work machines. Sometimes (especially at work) I've got to get the newest point release (or point-point, or point-point-point--I'm at 1.5.0.2 on one machine.)

Back in the days of dialup--and less-frequent releases--I used to keep installers but I don't anymore. Anywhere that I'll need one, I just download it, a) because I don't have to look for it and b) that ensures that I'll get the newest version. I've probably downloaded Firefox 50 times for machines that I personally use. And the funniest part is, I don't even use Firefox that much--I literally use it maybe 5% of the time. On OS X I prefer Safari, and I use OS X for everything but testing and a couple odd tasks. Mostly, Firefox+UnPlug is my "get video from youtube" appliance. Other than that, I barely touch it.

Same thing with iTunes--who cares? The numbers are ESPECIALLY meaningless when you consider that iTunes has gone from 1.0 to 7.4 in 6 years, and besides all the major revs--1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.--there have been many other "must-have" minor versions, either to keep compatibility with the music store, or to gain things like video playback (4.8) or podcast support (4.9). "Number of downloads" has got to be one of the most useless statistics ever, and it gets less and less meaningful with every new version of a program that comes out.