In under 6 months, the “Spread Firefox” message has amassed a total of 50 million downloads since version 1.0’s release back on the 1st of November, 2004. On this very site, it now accounts for 31% of the traffic with Internet Explorer just holding out with 56%. Mozilla Suite makes up 3%, Opera 2% and Safari 2% with the remaining 6% miscellaneous things such as new aggregators or download managers. Though such stats are probably of no surprise given it’s demographics, as geeks tend to be the ones whom champion alternate browsers. ;)
Though having a chat with some friends whom run a popular UK nightclubbing and dance music related site, the demographic is less technical though still avid computer users. If one charts how Firefox rose there, it’s nothing short of astounding. To give you some idea; 2 years ago, Gurn’s April 2003 stats had Internet Explorer with an absolute 98% share with two-thirds being IE6. Mozilla Suite and Opera shared 1% with 0.5% each and Firefox, then still known as Firebird basically didn’t even register.
Gurn’s April 2004 stats was much the same, Internet Explorer was still in the 90’s though chipped down to 95%. Mozilla Suite hits in at 1.8% and Opera at 1.5%. Firefox (then Firebird) again barely registered. However, since November 2004 the story has been very different for that site. Early Firefox adopters already made up 7% of traffic with Internet Explorer loosing 10% and dropping down to 85%. Opera in it’s various versions made up 4% and some Mozilla Suite users seemed to have migrated to Firefox too as it was a lighter weight browser taking it’s share to 1%.
Roll on to today’s Gurn, just one more day till the 1st of May, Internet Explorer has lost even more ground and is at 73%, Firefox makes up 17% with Opera at 5% and Mozilla Suite still steady at 1%. Even the non-Windows crowd show up in this months’ stats with Safari with 0.6%!
Viva la Alternative Browser Revolution! ;)
I guess Netscape is rising from the dead in a peculiar way.
Comment by Justin — 16:44:20 UTC on the 29th of April, 2005
Some would say Netscape died when it was sold to AOL… though what I would say to developers if that sitting on your laurels will be the death of you.
My reaction on this whole Internet Explorer 7 announcement from Microsoft and that it’ll fix some CSS1 and CSS2 things was “So what? Welcome to 2000!”. :D
Conversely, now that Firefox has made such huge gains is for it to push the envelope even further… them outstanding bugs in it’s Buzilla would be a good start though I’m sure (hope) there are other secret weapons, or at least cunning plans too!
Comment by Jonathan Stanley — 16:56:48 UTC on the 29th of April, 2005
Jon, you are going to like this.
Comment by Dominik — 10:03:04 UTC on the 30th of April, 2005
Maybe this might force Microsoft to make Internet Explorer 7 (or maybe 8 if time is a problem for them) a super-duper awesome browser, essentially ramming FireFox head-on (and possibly make them choke to death like old Netscape in the late 90s).
Comment by JustinSL — 20:43:00 UTC on the 30th of April, 2005
Actually, my own hunch with what Microsoft will do with IE7 is they’ll probably try and push XAML and “replace” HTML as far as web authoring goes. It’s not all bad considering it is XML, admittedly very verbose XML that looks like HTML4 era tag-soup.
Opensource isn’t doomed if that is the case as Mozilla’s XUL plus a scripting language that’s appropiate could work just as well. I think in theory anyway some people have talked of a pure XML web application and client-side XSL transform as required.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what IE7 beta actually does do when oit’s released this summer… though as far as it’s HTML and CSS handling improvements are concerned, short of them fixing it to pass the Acid2 test and probably at least get parity with whatever browser Apple/Mozilla/Opera/KDE ship by then, I think MS’s new browser is irrelevant.
Comment by Jonathan Stanley — 20:52:25 UTC on the 30th of April, 2005
/me forgets he has to moderate comments when there are links…
Anyway, Domink… I know, I said so a week earlier already. ;)
Comment by Jonathan Stanley — 19:01:23 UTC on the 5th of May, 2005