Firefox nears billion milestone

[brotherhood of LAN]

The open-source browser Firefox passed its billionth download on Friday, ahead of the release of its fourth iteration.

The milestone includes downloads of all versions of the web software since its first release in 2004.

Figures suggest that Firefox now has nearly one third of the browser market worldwide, at 31%.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer still dominates the field with around 60%, whilst Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari and Opera are all less than 5%.

[news.bbc.co.uk...]

[edited by: engine at 6:00 pm (utc) on July 31, 2009]

[MatthewHSE]

I got on board with Firefox at version 0.6.?. While it's certainly matured a lot as a browser, sometimes I miss the rugged minimalistic aspects of those early versions. If I can get some spare time in the next few days, I just might go download and install a really old copy just to celebrate one billion downloads! :)

[micklearn]

"Figures suggest..."

I guess I'm thinking that figures can suggest anything. Figures of the latest release/downloads of Firefox could offer more helpful insight for all of us.

[JS_Harris]

I held off on Firefox forever, I was quite pleased with IE (I like the look of pages in IE better even now).

That ended when my IE was infected by an ad replacing virus and I could not remove the problem. all ads, in both firefox and IE, were being replaced by other ads. It was so well done that it took me seeing these ads on my own sites to spot them. The virus would re-install itself and launch itself and change settings to ensure it could keep doing it. Worse, if I was running firefox and I loaded up IE to grab a bookmark it would infect firefox ads too.

I finally found a solution, a combination of settings and a temporary disabling of scheduled tasks while running virus removal tools, but by then I'd had it with IE and constant downtime.

Even as I write this IE has known security issues microsoft admits they can't fix yet. Go firefox. I doubt there would have been this many downloads by now if IE security was up to par.

[motorhaven]

Opera all the way! Firefox has been great over the years.....

.... at copying Opera.

[graeme_p]

Opera all the way! Firefox has been great over the years.....

.... at copying Opera.

I think Opera is a good browser, and they were first with a lot of important features such as tabs, but Firefox has been innovative too. Who had a decent extension framework first (some that still eludes IE)?

[bouncybunny]

31%? If they say so.

I have one site that attracts more technical users where the Firefox usership is about 30%. But then, the Mac users are around that mark also for that site,

But my more 'general' sites still put it at about 10-15%.

[Seb7]

For the very first time Firefox is now ahead on one of my sites. Figures for last month:
1. Firefox 56,968 44.74%
2. Internet Explorer 56,425 44.32%
3. Chrome 6,898 5.42%
4. Safari 4,836 3.80%
5. Opera 1,642 1.29%

[bouncybunny]

Is that a tech related site by any chance?