Amy Barzdukas, a general manager of Internet Explorer at Microsoft claims that Firefox’s one billion downloads claim is unlikely true.
“As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat skeptical about large number claims. It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.”
However Mozilla did not claim that one billion people in the world are using Firefox, they are counting downloads based on repeated downloads, updates, and people with multiple computers. This why the number does not seem too far-fetched to me.
Big news for Firefox fans! The open source browser that started in 2004 has hit one billion downloads. This includes downloading multiple copies for different computers and additional downloads for upgrading purposes. Automatic updates were not counted.
This many users on Firefox gives the browser a 31% marketshare. Internet Explorer has 60%. And Opera, Chrome, and Safari have less than a 5% market share.
Mozilla even started a website to track downloads on their website called OneBillionPlusYou.com. Mozilla developers are currently working on Firefox 4.0 which will be much faster than 3.0. Image screenshots of 4.0 indicate that the new Firefox browser will look similar to Google Chrome.
A few days ago, Apple announced that they had hit 11 million downloads of Safari 4 in less than 3 days. That’s not a bad number, but Mozilla came up with a figure of their own that blew Apple out of the water. Mozilla said that Firefox 3.0.11 was downloaded over 150 million times within 24 hours.
“I just read that Apple is reporting 11 million Safari 4 downloads in just three days. That’s pretty amazing. I’d like to follow up that report with one of my own,” wrote Mozilla Director of Community Development Asa Dotzler. Both companies had probably included an automatic update that is made when opening their browsers. The update is pushed on to users.
Firefox 3.0.11 was launched on June 11 and had mainly just a security and stability update. On June 17 of last year, Mozilla had set a new Guinness World Record for the most downloaded browser in one day.
I love to use many tabs at once when surfing the Internet. Its purely a habit. But for some reason Firefox tends to freeze up on me when I open up many windows at once. Sometimes Firefox would take up about 800,000 K of memory on Windows for me. This would cause all of my other applications to slow down until I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and killed the process for Firefox.
Finally I just became frustrated by it and searched for a fix on Google. Here is a solution I found that seems to be working pretty good for me.
1. Open Firefox and type in about:config into address bar and then press Enter.
2. Right Click anyway of the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up, we create name as changemode:on_minimize and press Enter.
4. Lastly select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.
I opened up about 16-20 tabs at once after applying this method and now it seems to be taking up less memory than Tweetdeck. I don’t know exactly what it is doing to keep the memory down on Firefox now, but as long as its functional, I’m not going to question it.
The European Union and Microsoft don’t have the best relationship. I believe part of the reason why Microsoft made the .docx file format is because of pressure from the EU. But the EU doesn’t want to stop there either. They gave Mozilla a seat at the table for the antitrust case against Microsoft for packaging Internet Explorer exclusively with the Windows operating system line.
Mozilla was granted “third-party status” last week. This gives them the option to voice objections and view confidential documentation regarding the case. The European Commission is the executive arm of the EU and are the ones pushing for the case. The case was initiated by Opera, who gave two months for Microsoft to respond to the allegations. Opera is another browser company.
Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of Mozilla wrote that she agreed with the EC’s allegation that packaging IE with Windows harms competition and consumer choice. Here is a portion of Mitchell’s statements from her blog:
The extent of the damage is so great that it makes it difficult to figure out an effective and timely remedy. I believe it’s worth some effort to try. It’s easy to look at Firefox market share and assume the problem is gone or the damage is undone. But that’s not the case. The drag on innovation and choice caused by Microsoft’s actions remains. At Mozilla we work to reduce this drag through direct action, and the results are gratifying. If the EC can identify an effective remedy that also serves to improve competition, innovation and choice, I would find it most welcome.
