TechWeb | Microsoft vs. Mozilla browser usage | Firefox Nips IE Ankles Again — Over 50-percent of the readers of Dvorak Uncensored use Firefox.
Mozilla’s Firefox keeps chipping away at Microsoft’s massive lead in browser usage, two Web metrics firms reported Monday.
San Diego, Calif.-based WebSideStory, which last released usage numbers in January, said that in the last five weeks, Firefox has gained an additional 0.74 percent to account for 5.7 percent of all browsers used in the U.S. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, meanwhile, now stands at 89.9 percent, a drop from January’s 90.3 percent, and the first time WebSideStory pegged IE as falling under the 90-percent mark.
“That 7/10s of a point compares well with previous increases,” said Geoff Johnston, an analyst for WebSideStory. “From June to November [2004], Firefox saw a pretty steady half-a-percent-point increase each month.”
While there are indications that Firefox’s growth rate is slowing — the latest numbers show a growth of about 15 percent over the previous period, while that period had grown by 22 percent over the one before that — Johnston saw it differently. “I don’t see [the growth] stopping or flattening,” he said.
“The buzz around Firefox keeps growing, and it’s buzz that drives people to change,” Johnston added. “Mozilla’s marketing has been very guerrilla. You’re not seeing it spend millions of dollars on TV. Instead, it’s a powerful ground swell.”
M$ has had it too easy for so long. There was no reason to improve when they were just about the only game in town.
One of the happiest parts of switching to a Mac [Mini] was acquiring Firefox and Thunderbird for OS X. Work like a charm. Moved my Bookmarks and Addresses over in no time at all.
Dvorak Uncensored is actually WHY I am using Firefox. So maybe your survey is skewed.
I tried a couple of the beta version of Firefox and had gone back to IE.
But after reading about it here, I tried 1.0 and am VERY satisfied. It’s better than IE, for sure.
Just the other day, I was doing some financial encrypted business on the Web and IE was giving me problems and the site work with Firefox!
That was a first. With the beta versions of Firefox, it was always the other way around.
Hank
Part of the growth is mandated change to Firefox
in corporations where they are tired of fixing
the problems of IExplorer users.
We had Firefox installed on several hundred
machines two weeks ago, but left Explorer on
with the admonition, Don’t use Explorer anymore.
But I had been using Lynx (and Opera when pictures
are needed), for years
What I like the most about FireFox is that the font magnification actually works, unlike IE. IE is full of “features” that don’t work properly and people are getting tired of it.
Have you tried Portable Firefox? It lets you runs Firefox off of a USB drive, keeps all of your preferences/settings/bookmarks. It’s great for surfing on the go, far better than trying to sync bookmark files. Plus it still works with all of your extensions.
I use firefox and like it, and thunderbird. I still need to use ie at times for some audio streams and such. I suppose I could make fox work with time but why.
I really like tbird. Actually eprompter is my main man for screening, then tbird if I need to actually open something.
I was cleaning literally a hundred spyware objects off of my parents computer a week, until I installed Firefox and deleted all of the IE shortcuts that my parents used. Now AdAware regularly finds nothing, or maybe a cookie or two. I’ve already reclaimed 24 hours of my life since Thanksgiving from not cleaning up spyware.