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92 Comments
- naich, on 10/12/2007, -8/+29"Doesn't anybody else find these gets stories annoying and largely uninteresting?"
I think the 5e7 milestones are reasonable ones to celebrate - there have only been 3 of them so far - but the "Firefox has reached 146,000,000 downloads!!111!" ones are pretty pointless, - Smiegel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15When they said Firefox keeps growing and growing, I thought they were talking about it's memory usage.. =
- kevinski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12But the number of downloads is pretty irrelevant. I reformat my computer and reinstall Windows (and, naturally, all of my other applications) from scratch at least once every two months. Sometimes more. Who's to say that others here don't do the same? And then take into consideration the fact that some people have *gasp* more than one computer. This number doesn't reflect how many unique users have downloaded Firefox.
- Sawyer, on 10/12/2007, -15/+24Better than Microsoft reaches 150 million different versions of Vista(not including the version that imulates windows 95).
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I myself already downloaded the same thing like 20 times from their page, so how the hell is this number important?
- natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Hey guys, I like celebrating 50 million download milestones. This is an adoption milestone, so IE really has nothing interesting with that regard (it already has dominant share). Technology milestones are another issue, and I'm sure many people celebrate when IE7 betas are released, or new versions of firefox. I really think they do.
On another note: I think what makes people so excited about firefox is the fact that it can be the browser for anyone. If the user doesn't like tweaking, it has good defaults out of the box and it's simple to use. On the other end, if they want to go crazy customizing, they have even more control than simply options (they can download one of the thousands of extensions, or even write their own... or if they're intense enough - mess with the source itself). And of course, anyone in between is satisfied too. Any ideas with regard to that? - EricTheGrey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Now, can someone please tell me how many of those downloads are from people upgrading from one version to another?
The numbers are skewed, plain and simple.
EtG - sniper668, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10It's not like the number of Firefox downloads is going to decrease...
- Reliant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6How many times are we going to see this dupe message on Digg? I'm happy and all for FF, but we've got other news stories out there I think.
http://digg.com/links/Firefox_reaches_150_millions_downloads
http://digg.com/software/Firefox_Reaches_75_Million_Downloads
http://digg.com/technology/Firefox_Reaches_19,000,000_Downloads - rileyjt, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8In other news, IE switched their billboards to just say Billions and Billions of downloads.
Just kidding, I love firefox, but download stats are one of those things that very little meaning. - EricTheGrey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5What is this "life" thing people keep talking about? Sounds interesting, but I'm afraid it'll take up too much time.
EtG - flickerbrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The X million downloads of Firefox posts are really pointless. The firefox community was all gung ho when FF first hit the market at 1.0 . Now, it's established itself as a fairly viable alternative to IE. We can stop counting the downloads now.
- gamekid, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Sites that say "Alert! IE considered broken! Please view with a standards-compliant browser, such as Mozilla Firefox." ( http://planetmath.org/ et al. ) help.
Any group using FUD and gloating about its results = LAME. - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5so it ACTUALLY happened this time? last time it was just a mistake.. :)
- kohan69, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4EXACTLY, Most people who use firefox downloaded it over 5 times due to version updates, so it's more like 40million in reality
- akinder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Unfortunately 90% of internet users still remember it
- kcmcgruff, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Does this number truly signify anything? Nope. Is it fun to keep score? Come on, our species is competitive by nature, so hell yes it's fun. Dugg for the hell of it.
- krum0786, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm kinda getting sick of these stories now. Tell me when computer-illiterate people know what Firefox is.
- eglobe1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3yup. firefox is better than IE.
- pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I was just about to post a comment about that ... I've downloaded it at *least* 20 times, if not more. The 150 million number really isnt' a realistic number of end users, in fact it's probably quite less than that. Sure it can be distributed via CD and other removable media, but I'm sure that counts for a very small percentage of users.
- AngryPenguin47, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1good job firefox, but show me some market share numbers. more accurate.
- Jaymoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've probably downloaded "Firefox" about 50 times since Firebird... But then again, I guess that balances out how many times I've installed Windows, and used IE to get to Firefox's website...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"In other news, IE switched their billboards to just say Billions and Billions of downloads."?
I doubt it, who really downloads IE? It is part of the operating system since windows95 OSR1! I think IE's voluntary download count maybe significantly lower than firefox, despite the higher market share. - Tycho7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Good for Firefox! I made the switch about 3 months ago, and I've never been happier with web browsing. I especially love the extensions. They make things so much easier than IE.
- Kiba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nice milestone to reach :)
Let root for the posterboy of open source! - maht, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Windows Update downloads a new version of IE.
I presume downloads of Firefox are from version 0.1 upwards. So that's something like 30 downloads just from me across a few PCs - segosa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Hmm, I'm glad. The more people who use Firefox, the more pressure on Microsoft.
- Ace2005, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well i guess the most important thing would be the rate of increase in downloads then since the download counter includes people who have downloaded more than once, so if the rate is increasing then more people are downloading it
Maybe they should zero the counter at every release then they'll get a better idea of whats going on - Aamir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I hope this one's real
- jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Or if you consider the 1 time I've downloaded Firefox and have installed it on over 100 computers in my division.
Sure the stats counter isn't completely accurate, noone denies this but it's probably as accurate as you can possibly make it in that it only counts the full installer downloads from official mirrors. It doesn't count the patches that were pushed out through the incrimental patcher or the previous patcher in 1.0.x nor does it count downloads from 3rd party sites, people that download the source or nightly builds. - camtech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you REALLY want to keep track of the downlaod conut, get greasemonkey and add this script:
http://ed.agadak.net/greasemonkey/ffCounter/ffCounter.user.js - MStiles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Well, about 20 of those downloads are from me, what with all the various security and feature updates they've done, and between my work PC, home PC, and laptop.
I wish they'd give some idea of how many people use Firefox, not how many times the bits have been downloaded. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I use Links2. Reguardless, why is this on the front page?
Another fine example of Digg's skewed results.
F.O.K. - Koskun, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Not unique downloads.
Does not take into account the amount of times it had to be downloaded each time an update was issued (This has been fixed finally).
If it was 150,000,000 unique users I would be impressed, but ICQ pro has over 230,000,000 downloads on download.com.
This is not news, this is rather pointless. Reported as lame. - janssens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The firefox download counter counts unique IP address downloads only. If someone downloads again/upgrades the download is not counted. The end
- FearTec, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Evrytime I reinstall Firefox I go back to getfirefox.com to get the latest (not so buggy) version so they will need to remove 200+ downloads from my rebuilt systems.
- jk_baller23, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I've downloaded it more than once, so maybe it isn't 150 million unique downloads?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2NATMASTER YOUR WRONG
http://digg.com/software/Firefox_gets_150.1million_downloads_ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Next digg story ---------> Mozilla retracts 150 million download claim due to the download counter INCLUDING every automatic update Firefox does in the background.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4And IE continues its lead with billions and billions.
Firefox sucks.
Even the beta of IE7 is better.
Number of times IE7 has crashed on me: 0
Number of times firefox crashes on me PER DAY: 5 - natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1No, they don't count updates. This is obviously true, because they accidently did a while back and we got to '150million' then. They quickly realized the bug and fixed it.
Market share is a much harder thing to analyze, there are many firms on the net that say different things, even though they analyze a LARGE number of sites. The general consensus though, is worldwide it's usage is anywhere from 9-15%. Some individual sites post their own results - like divx labs having about 26%. Personally, my sites get anywhere from 28%-60%, depending on how niche their purpose is.
All in all though, it is easy to see that the market share IS growing, even though determining the exact number is not really possible to a great accuracy. Even the sites that report low end percentages show growth throughout the months. - vagabondgr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4And I downloaded it once, put it in my usb key and installed it in 20 machines. And thousands of linux users got it through their distro, without EVER downloading it.
These numbers give only an indication of the browser's growth, not the exact number of users using it. But it's good to see it climbing. - Spuby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2This is lame. I mean these kind of stories get to the first page because there are groups of firefox users that digg any news that contain the word FireFox. Grow up people, I agree that FireFox is a good alternative browser but I don't need to know everytime a police station decides to install it or whenever a flier with it is printed. There, I said it. Now all the fans will start burring this comment just because truth hurts :).
- Ace2005, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Well i guess the most important thing would be the rate of increase in downliads then since the download counter includes people who have downloaded more than once, so if the rate is increasing then more people are using it
- Ace2005, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Crap!
well i was using Opera before and i posted it and nothing showed up so i edited it and clicked submit again and still nothing, so i refreshed it and there were two, so i tried to edit it, changed it, and when i clicked submit again it didn't change and now i can't edit it or anything
-- Bug -- I Think - Emperial, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I don't care I use Opera. It's faster, nicer and has way more functionalities.
- OperatorNo9, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3The same debate rages every time Firefox reaches (or mistakenly reaches, http://digg.com/software/Firefox_NOT_150_Million_Downloads_(Wrong_News) ) some downloads milestone.
Yes. People download it multiple times for the same computer. And some people download it again for each computer. But isn't this balanced by the people who download it once to install it on many machines?
I think it's best not to over analyze the situation too much and just appreciate the fact that Firefox is seeing downloads total increase significantly well beyond major updates. - WDot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Two questions:
1. Now that Firefox has auto-updates, will those be included in the final number?
2. By how much has Firefox's market share increased? - natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm seeing a common misconception in many people's posts... Many people seem to think that the firefox counter is inherently skewed. What evidence do you have to support this? Have you seen the counter code? If you pay attention to the technical reports, you would know that they have a fairly sophisticated system of determining new downloads from users upgrading. I never went into the details on how they worked, so I can't attest to perfect accuracy, however just think about possible ways they can prevent download detection.
For upgrades: If the upgrade comes from the auto-update channel - don't count.
For users downloading again even though they could auto-update: If they are using firefox, don't count.
As you can see, there are simple ways of determining these things, and even though they can't get perfect 'usage' numbers right, take into mind the people who download one copy, and distribute across their network. (Stories of this show up all the time, on very large corporate networks.)
Finally, keep in mind this is a DOWNLOADS report. Noone ever claimed this was an accurate representation of users, this is just an easy way to see general progress. - mingyeow, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3tt's right. Although firefox is much superior than IE, it DOES crash a lot more often, and it does tend to slow down like crazy.
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