Mozilla Firefox

Market adoption

Usage share

:Statistics reference: Usage share of web browsers

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Web-surfers have adopted Firefox rapidly, despite the dominance of Internet Explorer in the browser market. Mozilla officials hope that 10% of browser users will use Firefox by the end of 2005, a goal that analysts at WebSideStory and elsewhere believed Mozilla could attain. By April 2005, Firefox had around 8%–10% of the usage share, (10% for North America). Europe, according to a study released by the firm XiTi on September 25, 2005, generally had higher percentages of Firefox use, with an average of 15.15%. Australia has a similarly high usage, while Asia, Africa, and Latin America trail behind with around 5%. Firefox has reached a market share of 1/3 in Finland and 1/4 in Germany.

Related Topics:
WebSideStory - North America - Europe - September 25 - 2005 - Australia - Asia - Africa - Latin America - Finland - Germany

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Download count

According to Mozilla's server log, over a million downloads of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 occurred within 24 hours of its launch on November 9, 2004. Within 99 days, the download count reached 25 million {{ref|FirefoxOne25Million}}. By April 29, 2005 50 million downloads of version 1.0.x had taken place {{ref|FirefoxOne50Million}}, by August 14, 2005, the mark reached 80 million {{ref|FirefoxOne80Million}} and by September 20, 2005, it turned to 90 million {{ref|FirefoxOne90Million}}.

Related Topics:
Server log - Hour - November 9 - 2004 - April 29 - 2005 - August 14 - September 20

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Cumulative downloads increased in a near-linear fashion during the first quarter of 2005. In other words, the download rate remained fairly stable. None of the Mozilla Foundation's previous product releases experienced that kind of growth.

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It should be noted that a download count is not a user count: one download can be installed over many machines; while one person can download the software multiple times.

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Spread Firefox campaigns

The rapid adoption of Firefox apparently accelerated in part due to a series of aggressive community-marketing campaigns since 2004. For example, Blake Ross and Asa Dotzler organized a series of events dubbed "marketing week".

Related Topics:
Blake Ross - Asa Dotzler

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On September 14, 2004, a community-marketing portal dubbed "Spread Firefox" (SFX) debuted along with the Firefox Preview Release, creating a centralized space for the discussion of various marketing techniques. The portal enhanced the "Get Firefox" button program, giving users "referrer points" as an incentive. The site lists the top 250 referrers. From time to time, the SFX team or SFX members launch marketing events organized at the Spread Firefox website.

Related Topics:
September 14 - 2004

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Organization adoption

During the FOSDEM 2005 conference, Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe, said that he knew "a few companies" that had deployed the Firefox browser or the Thunderbird mail client across a million seats. Those companies remained reluctant to publicize the migration, due to in-house concerns that this might damage their relationship with Microsoft {{ref|FirefoxSneaksIntoTheEnterprise}}.

Related Topics:
FOSDEM - Tristan Nitot - Relationship

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According to a CNET article published on May 12, 2005, about 30,000 of IBM's staff (about 10% of the total) already use Firefox. IBM encourages its employees to use Firefox as the company's standard web browser, with support from the company's help desk staff.

Related Topics:
May 12 - 2005 - IBM - Help desk

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Starting in quarter 3 of 2005, the Networking Services and Information Technology department of the University of Chicago will include both Firefox and Thunderbird in its connectivity package for all incoming students.

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Industry adoption

Since the pre-1.0 stages, a number of well-known websites and web applications—including Gmail—have supported (and in some cases, required) the use of Firefox. Since March 30, 2005, the Google search engine has utilized the link prefetching feature of Firefox for faster searching. (Link prefetching involves a standards-compliant optimization technique that utilizes the browser's idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future.) Google, Inc. also recommends Firefox as the browser for its Blogger weblog service. On May 18, 2005, eBay announced support for Firefox for its eBay Picture Manager.

Related Topics:
Web application - Gmail - March 30 - 2005 - Google search engine - Link prefetching - Google, Inc. - Blogger - Weblog - May 18 - EBay

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Search engine companies including Google, Yahoo! and A9.com now also offer Firefox extensions for accessing their services, in addition to their original Internet-Explorer add-ons.

Related Topics:
Search engine - Yahoo! - A9.com

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A number of commercialized versions of the Firefox browser have developed outside the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation. The current version of Netscape, known as Netscape Browser or Netscape 8, combines the functionalities of Firefox and Internet Explorer. And a start-up, Round Two (formerly Mozsource and more formerly E-Flo), plans to build enhancements for Firefox {{ref|RoundTwoLaunch}}.

Related Topics:
Netscape Browser - Start-up

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Portable Firefox

John Haller has developed Portable Firefox as a major offspring of the Firefox project. He designed it to run on USB flash drives, CD-RW drives (in packet mode), Zip drives, external hard drives or some digital audio players. It retains nearly all of Firefox's features. Extensions that work in Firefox also work with Portable Firefox. It uses compression to reduce overall footprint. As a result of this compression, Portable Firefox loads quickly from a USB device.

Related Topics:
USB flash drive - CD-RW - Zip drive - Digital audio player

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John Haller has started development work on Portable Firefox Live, which aims to run on CD-R or other read-only media.

Related Topics:
CD-R - Read-only

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Opinions and responses

Despite Firefox's apparent gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft head of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, stated that he did not see Firefox as a threat and that there was not significant demand for the featureset of Firefox amongst Microsoft's users. Vamos stated that he himself never used it personally {{ref|FirefoxDoesNotThreatenIE}}. Even Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but he has commented that "so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" (Weber, BBC News).

Related Topics:
Australia - Steve Vamos - Bill Gates

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Ironically, according to a Microsoft SEC Filing on June 30, 2005, it acknowledged that browsers such as Mozilla are competitive threats to Internet Explorer: "Competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products." (MozillaZine)

Related Topics:
June 30 - 2005

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