Over the last year we have been bombarded with all sorts of overhyped figures of browser market share. With the latest release of Firefox 2.0 they are now claiming 2 million downloads in 24 hours. Wow that sounds great until you do the math and realize that is only 0.18% of worldwide Internet users:
World Internet Usage: 1,086,250,903
Firefox 2 Downloads: 2,000,000
Worldwide Percentage Using Firefox 2.0 = 0.18%
9 comments:
Wow! The 0.18% sounds sooo low, until you realize that it represents only 1 days worth of download.
Then you do a little further math and realize that if this rate continues, Firefox 2.0 will be the predominant browser in only (51%/0.18%) = 283.3333 days.
Like the man said: "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". The parent post is of the latter type.
Too bad the downloads severly drop off after the first 24 hours. It looks like Firefox 2.0 is a total failure.
Too bad Mark Twain was a writter and not a statistician.
Hardly failure. I was using Ff2.0beta for quite a time - and simply got release with auto-update.
My company of course downloaded Firefox only once - for all 200 desktops within.
The numbers are not indicative. Mozilla was in trouble in 1.5 release time and I expect many people download from other locations.
Also not to forget that the 2mln - are only US-English version downloads. International versions I believe are not counted.
In the end, the benchmark is good as any other benchmark ;-)
There are just as many people who download it multiple times. Without any accurate way to track the uniqueness of the downloads it simply goes back to the Firefox Update Conspiracy theory:
http://poptech.blogspot.com/2005/04/firefox-update-conspiracy.html
Either way the numbers don't lie and even doubling these are still pathetic.
I find that even more disturbing.
What does it matter? Opera, Safari, Firefox, MSIE, Lynx? Use what's convenient for you.
And do you think that every MSIE user upgraded to MSIE 7 within the first 24 hours? Really? I still haven't.
If they have not upgraded they should. IE7 is everything IE6 is lacking.
I like to repeat again. I have used nLite successfully and extensively for slipstreaming, service pack, hotfix and driver integration. I have no problems with the functionality of the program, it works fine. My problems are with the fact that it allows unknowledgeable users (many think they know) who are actually encouraged by hacks and useless "guides" to irresponsibly rip out core components of Windows.
They should not be fooled by the "success" of Joe Somebody on some forum who's qualifications amount to some unrelated non-computer job and screwing up the 1 or 2 computers they own, then bragging about it on some forum.
"If Firefox is used by a tiny fraction of the population, but it causes Microsoft to improve IE, then it has done it's job. I see free software as a social movement, not a product."
I'd like to say: IE didn't change because of Firefox.
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