Firefox, the open-source challenger to market heavyweight Internet Explorer, has surpassed 10 million downloads in a little more than a month since the browser was released in November.
The free Web browser from the Mozilla Foundation notched up 10 million downloads on Saturday as Web surfers continue to move away from Microsoft's market-dominating IE. The milestone highlights growing frustration with the security vulnerabilities that have dogged IE during the past few months. Nearly two dozen holes in the Web browser have been discovered during the autumn, ranging in degrees of seriousness.
Niels Brinkman, co-founder of research firm OneStat.com, said in a statement in November: "It seems that people are switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's new Firefox browser."
Firefox has surpassed the 10 million download mark while gaining five percentage points in May to 7.4 percent in November, according to OneStat.com.
Firefox's percentage gain helped cut into Microsoft's dominance of the Web browser market, cutting its market share to less than 90 percent. OneStat reported in November that IE's market share had slipped to 88.9 percent in the third week of November, down five percentage points from its share in May. Mozilla-based browsers, including Firefox, rose to 7.4 percent, up five percentage points from May.
Microsoft has disputed these numbers, claiming that they do not represent corporate users.
Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, said of OneStat's statistics: "It doesn't jibe with what WebSideStory shows, and what neither of these count is corporate intranets where users aren't actually hitting the Web."
On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania State University's Information Technology Services department recommended that students drop IE in favour of Firefox and Apple's Safari to reduce attacks through vulnerabilities in the Microsoft software. The university said "media reports" and a string of warnings by Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency and Response Team led to its recommendation.
Talkback
I have been using Firefox since the spring of 2004 and have no complaints. It is a pleasure to use, with tabbed browsing and the many extensions, such as adblock. Plus the effeciency and small size of the program make it the best out there. I only wish that companies and ogranizations that customize the web pages to work with IE would come on board and make their sites more universal. In time this will happen.
How many downloads do we need before MS get worried? The fastest growing browser in history and they deny it's existence (nearly). Wake up guys, Firefox is the future of the net.
This corporate user binned IE a while back. Good riddance.
I've been using Firefox (Firebird/Phoenix) since the "early" days. I believe it to be a much cleaner, more efficient browser. Functionally, I can't live without it's tabbed browing and the find-as-you-type feature for finding text in a web page.
I've converted all our Windows machines to Firefox as the default browser.
One of the advantages of using IE is you have time to make a cup of tea while it loads a web page, you also get to play 'bat the popup' where you try and hit close before the malicious code has change to execute.
If you get bored with that (or if you're rich and have SP2), just surf around with IE for a while and before you know it you'll have loads of IE windows running - the fun then is to try and find the window with the correct history (you know, the one you were 'in') before the system crashes.
10 million downloads in a little over a month thats (..thinks..) ... a lot per hour.
Microsoft have been so lazy in adding features and improvements to the (once promising) IE that it has become an absolute dog of a browser.
Firefox has gained so much popularity so quickly - I think the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
I use mozilla. One downside of the expanded use is that it will provide a larger target for intruders. i.e more worthwhile.
Microsoft have publicly acknowledged Firefox now, but they can't embrace, extend and extinguish it. Isn't it great to "cut off their air-supply" back?
I think that this is a wonderful opportunity for an "under-dog" such as Firefox to get some exploitation in the Internet world. As with any new competitor that comes along, people are giving it a shot just for curiousity's sake. I believe that Mozilla Firefox willk indeed put a dent into IE, but it's too early to tell at the moment.. While Firefox has less security vulnerabilities, the browser still needs some revamping. (it could be a little bit more appealing with some extra gadgets). Because Microsoft has monopolized the software industry, people want to try something new. It's like your classic switch from cable to the dish network. For those who haven't yet mad the switch to Firefox, they probably never will because they like to keep what they are accustomed to using. Overall, I think Firefox will grab it's fair share of the market because people want variety.