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September 7, 2007

400 Million Downloads For Firefox In Less Than Three Years

Michael Arrington

79 comments »

Firefox has been downloaded 400 million times in the three years since v 1.0 launched. It’s been roughly doubling every year. After six months they had 50 million downloads. 100 million after a year, and 200 million after two years.

There are 120 million or so regular Firefox users.

About 50% of TechCrunch readers use Firefox, according to our Google Analytics account, and it is the most popular browser. Internet Explorer is second with 40% and Safari with 6.6%. I didn’t expect to see Playstation Portable on the list, at no. 10.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. John

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    Funny, that number seems small in comparison to my favorite technology, good o’l Flash Player 9. See below:

    http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007.....to-low.php

  2. bob cobb

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    Not very surprising. Opera is a browser that deserves more users than it has though.

  3. Textbook Case

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    That’s roughly the rate of growth of memory it seems to use for me as well. Oh well, still like it.

  4. Sean

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

    Firefox FTW!

  5. Alex Iskold

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

    Go, Firefox, go……!!!!!

  6. Rob La Gesse

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    I’ve downloaded Firefox at least 100 times myself though :) due to testing requirements.

    So deduct 99 from that total.

    I still like Flock best.

    Rob

  7. lawrence

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    good for firefox and their awesome growth - i like firefox, much more so than ie

  8. Andrew

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    The only thing IE is good for is downloading Firefox.

  9. RBA

    September 7th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

    Does that include downloads of the Mozilla suite? There are far less people using Mozilla than Firefox but I think they should be included as well.

  10. Azrafael

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:13 pm

    “Funny, that number seems small in comparison to my favorite technology, good o’l Flash Player 9. See below:

    http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007…..to-low.php”

    You’re comparing a plugin/app to a browser.
    Might as well compare to the mp3 based files being downloaded since the 90s. What’s your point?

  11. Robert Seidman

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:20 pm

    Michael: will you disclose the % of TC visits that are via Firefox? I expect it’s pretty high.

    I wish more people used it because it happens to format my site perfectly which is more than I can say for IE6 & IE7. While my dumb blogging experimenting of the summer produced a high % of Firefox (often over 60%), my “real” site aimed at a slightly different crowd is ~75% IE based on early data.

  12. Fabian Schonholz

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    Firefox rocks!! I have tried other browsers and the only one that comes close is Safari. Yes, I am a mac winnie.

  13. Patrick

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

    Congrats Firefox!

  14. Aditya

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:45 pm

    I love firefox :D

  15. nitsuj

    September 7th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

    How many more than Opera is that?

  16. Michael Vu

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    Firefox is it!!! Long live Mozilla.

  17. Avatar

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:20 pm

    120 million regular users?,actual users?. not a chance.. the last estimate i s saw some months ago was of 46-56 millions.. there can´t be 120 million actual users for 400 million downloads.. since i have also downloaded firefox like 100 times, and the average person has actually downloaded Firefox around 10 times.

    I saw a estimate i think is closer to the figure they must have, and that was 46-56 million users.

  18. Blake Brannon

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

    I’m looking at 62% Firefox users. 21% IE and 13% Safari.

  19. Jay

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:30 pm

    Keep in mind that not everyone that somes up as “internet explorer” is an idiot.

    I use maxthon, and having extensively used firefox as well, maxthon is the greatest browser on earth.

  20. Hornswaggled

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:48 pm

    I would think this would be somewhat expected considering its a tech related blog. FF is one of the apps I cant live without and I despise using IE. For a lot of the sites I look at it seems like FF is growing but is still far behind IE.

    I tried Opera on my phone and on the Wii but it didn’t really grab my attention.

  21. www.bankblast.com

    September 7th, 2007 at 7:50 pm

    The Peer Me sponsor ad is not clickable !!

  22. Dan

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

    Way To Go! I love Firefox. Although I think Opera is a much superior browser then Firefox, I still can’t get used to it and only use it a couple times a month.

  23. Jeremy Moy

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

    Eh, whatever. YouTube gets hundreds of milions of video views PER DAY.

  24. Kelli

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    I find it surprising that Playstation 3 is the 8th most popular browser for my site.

  25. cl8ton

    September 7th, 2007 at 8:54 pm

    The first 5 are the ones our QA verify against…

    IMHO Opera kicks ass on all the rest, it just makes websites (even TC) look nice after rendering!!!

  26. Johnson

    September 7th, 2007 at 9:35 pm

    I’ve used FF at home for at least 2 years. At work, I’m required to use IE because the techs are too stupid and don’t want to support FF. And whomever designed IE7 & their new tab interface should be fired. Awful implementation compared to tabmix plus in FF.

  27. Justin

    September 7th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    when will the firefox foundation publish last YEARs accounts? Latest published figures are for 2005 where they totally coined it from adsense. Donations no longer required, these guys have a margin that makes the microsoft office group green with envy!

  28. Rachel

    September 7th, 2007 at 9:49 pm

    IE 7 just tries so hard i can’t help but laugh at it. firefox is still the most usable, easy-on-the-eye browser. safari is good too, but a little slow. Flash doesn’t work well on IE as well. And ActiveX Control gives a lot of problems on IE.

  29. BoltClock

    September 7th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

    For fast browsing I’d definitely go for Opera. Firefox for virtually everything else.

    Congrats Mozilla :)

  30. B.Ackles

    September 7th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

    Why do so many people still use IE? I understand developers using the browser based on the share volume of users. But for all others it is certainly obsolete…

    Could TC devise a graph showing the % of browser market share over the last few years?

  31. Word Hugger

    September 7th, 2007 at 10:10 pm

    Firefox FTW

  32. Steve

    September 7th, 2007 at 10:47 pm

    Seidman: Did the post change or you just didn’t read it? FF user numbers for TC are exactly what are shown. Way to go.

    Dan (#22): Not sure why anyone would use a browser, ” a couple times a month”. What’s the point? Then again, you link to something related to american idol; you are a worthy reference for sure.

    The commentary here has taken the plunge as the popularity has grown. frigggin’ sheep.

  33. Chris Jacobson

    September 7th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    I’m still a loyal IE 7 user, but I find myself using Firefox for a few projects… usually to see how a site is viewed differently.

  34. White Eagle

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    Comparing it with comscore, it shows firefox is still mostly used in techie crowd. Personally I believe Opera is best browser and if they solve compatibility issues in 9.5 it will be THE best browser.

    Check out 9.5 alpha, its Fast.

    http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/

  35. Aditya

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:21 pm

    Yeah, iam the biggest fan of Firefox…using it since 5 years, and i really hate IE because it loads the pages very slow and have few defects too….

  36. kalay

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

    why so many are using IE . In Eastern Europe i am sure IE is far from popular .. opera & firefox i am using both . Opera is fast and light but firefox have cool extensions so .. f*** ie

  37. imdebiaoxi

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:44 pm

    maxthon forever!!

  38. aMmadz

    September 7th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    Why am I not surprised? Well, Firefox have some bugs to fix which have been fixed in different versions that came out. I use Firefox, Safari, Opera and for some pages IE since some of the web pages doesn’t work well but Firefox is always the default and doing pretty well. Btw IE sucks so as Windows.

  39. Dot Net Guru

    September 8th, 2007 at 12:18 am

    It is true but 79% of Microsoft developer community use IE. 19% FireFox.

  40. Tan The Man

    September 8th, 2007 at 12:27 am

    Dan’s right. Opera is superior, but I’ve been using Safari for so long that I can’t see myself not using it.

  41. erez

    September 8th, 2007 at 12:45 am

    just to be clear, the global numbers are much different : MSIE 70%, FF 13%…

    http://www.thecounter.com/stat.....rowser.php

    Browser Stats
    Fri Jun 1 00:01:02 2007 - Sat Jun 30 23:58:00 2007 30.0 Days

    1. MSIE 6.x 35663913 (54%)
    2. MSIE 7.x 10910239 (16%)
    3. FireFox 8315270 (12%)
    4. Netscape comp. 7648347 (11%)
    5. Safari 1849634 (3%)
    6. Unknown 727338 (1%)
    7. MSIE 5.x 539674 (1%)
    8. Opera x.x 477264 (1%)
    9. Netscape 7.x 173934 (0%)
    10. Netscape 5.x 120671 (0%)
    11. MSIE 4.x 70495 (0%)
    12. Netscape 4.x 42956 (0%)
    13. Konqueror 14841 (0%)
    14. Netscape 6.x 1880 (0%)
    15. MSIE 3.x 453 (0%)
    16. Netscape 3.x 210 (0%)
    17. Netscape 2.x 58 (0%)
    18. Netscape 1.x 4 (0%)

  42. Nik Bonaddio

    September 8th, 2007 at 1:08 am

    If you guys think that TC is anywhere close to indicative of the global Internet population, you are dreaming. I don’t think anyone can really defend IE’s bugs and various issues, but it’s a necessary evil. On the global scene, Firefox will never topple it.

  43. Tom

    September 8th, 2007 at 1:15 am

    You know what annoys me, why they all cant work together to create the best browser, we always fighting an in compatition grr

  44. Fredrik C

    September 8th, 2007 at 2:01 am

    bob cobb: Opera deserves much more users, in my opinion more users than IE and FF together… FF is great for those customizing and downloading themes and plugins. Opera is great for everyone else!

    nitsuj: Opera9 has reached 10M downloads, there is atleast 40M phones with opera-browser and I have no idea how many Wii’s and other machines that runs Opera.
    http://operawatch.com/news/200.....ics-2.html

  45. Ed

    September 8th, 2007 at 2:28 am

    I think what killed market penetration for Opera was when they charged for their browser while the others were free. It would have had a lot more traction if it were free back then.

    @41, I think it’s interesting to note the analysis of Techcrunch readers, who are a bit more tech savvy then the general population.

  46. Avinash

    September 8th, 2007 at 3:33 am

    Yeh. Firefox rocks. However, I have to agree with @43. Why not create just one rocking browser instead of umpteen number of browsers. It would make life so easy…

  47. rc

    September 8th, 2007 at 3:48 am

    it’s a very good browser thats why
    and it is less exposed ro risks
    and in general i don’t think microsoft
    did a real good job with ie 7

    rc

    trading tennis (my blog) search in google

  48. Dan

    September 8th, 2007 at 3:48 am

    Yeah the PSP is a totally cool browser–unless you want Ajax or anything.
    But seriously, it does work well for the mobile facebook and twitter and jaiku sites, and for a lot of the text-based white-background type of pages.

  49. Sprague Dawley

    September 8th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    I can’t believe people still pay attention to these BS download stats — especially after the Mozilla Foundation ‘fessed up about the actual adoption rates:

    http://www.ratdiary.com/2007/0.....relations/

  50. Richard Cai

    September 8th, 2007 at 7:42 am

    IE sucks. I use firefox 99% of my time

  51. Generic Guy

    September 8th, 2007 at 8:06 am

    Have they fixed that memory leak in Firefox yet? If so, I’ll consider switching from Maxthon although it’s so terrific that I probably won’t.

  52. bill t

    September 8th, 2007 at 8:49 am

    IE 7.0 is a fine browser. Just another example of the extent of Microsoft haters than seem to dominate this site.

    I use both browsers and find each to have strengths and weaknesses. How about folks providing specific rationale for why they like one browser over the other rather than these juvenile rants like “IE sucks and FF rocks.”

  53. Tyler Wright

    September 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    Firefox turns certain sites’ font into times new roman, which sucks. I remain an IE loyalist.

  54. Prescott Shibles

    September 8th, 2007 at 10:00 am

    Across a large B2B network (approx. 3.5 million uniques), we see 75% using IE 6.0 or 7.0. Firefox clocks in at 15% and Safari at 5%. A year ago, Firefox was around 12.5% of our visitors.

  55. Paul Lopez

    September 8th, 2007 at 10:58 am

    The only way for Firefox to really grow on a global basis is to be bundled with every new PC sale, like MS IE is. Some people use both. I use FF for personal and IE for corporate since I have a corporate PC. Some sites on our intranet do not work with FF unfortunately. I’ve also seen some HTTPS problems (timeouts) recently with FF.

  56. PcH

    September 8th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    Firefox FTW!

  57. Steve Ballmer

    September 8th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    Your analytics are wrong! Foxsparkler accounts for not more than 10%!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  58. Valid Developer

    September 8th, 2007 at 10:15 pm

    firefox is a hackable browser, most of it users are programmer. it have large supporter from people who loves custom things and make it personal browser, like flock or lolifox

  59. aniMOte.wordpress.com

    September 8th, 2007 at 11:59 pm

    I have noticed the PSP in other site stats too - perhaps it’s widerspread than we thought.

  60. ImageBlox : Free Image Hosting

    September 9th, 2007 at 12:07 am

    Firefox is cool.

    Very shortly, we are going to launch a fireflox plugin for ImageBlox.

    http://www.imageblox.com

  61. Dan MacDonald

    September 9th, 2007 at 2:05 am

    @43 + 46

    Oh yeah! And why don’t MS start helping develop the Linux and *BSD kernels, KDE and GNOME too? This has always been the way MS work- they take an existing idea or product, change it so that it is incompatible with the existing standards and then make all Windows users adopt it.

    People can’t help improve IE because it not open source, but even if it was I don’t think there’d be much interest as FF has always been open source as is better in many respects. If Opera was open sourced that’d be a different matter. Besides, if MS dropped IE to help with FF they’d be admitting defeat and losing another way of locking people into using MS operating systems and apps.

  62. Talk Technology

    September 9th, 2007 at 3:30 am

    FireFox is the best. :)
    This big leap is also helped by Google Adsense networking…. Infact, my blog servers Adsense and i get 1-3 downloads per week of firefox..

  63. Drew

    September 9th, 2007 at 4:12 am

    FireFox is a great stable and flexible application, I’m glad to see it. I’m sure as the growing number of Linux users increases that helps as well as Firefox is default with many distributions.

    For a great interview of Mitchell Baker (Mozilla Foundation CEO) check out APC Mag: http://apcmag.com/6054/firefox_ceo_speaks_out

  64. homer

    September 10th, 2007 at 8:11 am

    I thought the browser wars were over. I totally agree, the infantile comments about this sucks or that blows just goes to show the intellect of the poster.
    Use what suits you, personally I use FF 99.9% of the time. The only reason I use the others is to check my websites for compatibility issues.
    Each browser has it’s own flaws especially dealing with CSS. I can’t really blame any one browser for having the most flaws. I build sites to be 100% WC3 valid xhtml strict, but end up having to use loose standards because pages display different in every browser.
    I am a big Firefox fan, but it is not perfect. It take incredibly long to load compared to everything else. I am using minimal plugins and the default theme. There is a memory issue, I use a memory recovery application and solved that problem.
    I would have to say the least inspiring of the bunch is Opera(the free version), and Safari. Not that they are bad, but if I had a choice I would use IE7 as opposed to them.
    Tabbed browsing? I think the Maxthon extension for IE was the first or at least the first I ever was aware of.

  65. Neale Clifton

    September 10th, 2007 at 8:26 am

    For many years I was a Netscape user. Now it is Firefox. I think it is a superior product.

  66. Mike

    September 10th, 2007 at 9:48 am

    this is because you can’t get internet explorer on a mac :)

    would be curious as to what the mac vs. pc ratio of techcrunch is??

  67. Matthew Dickens

    September 10th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    I still feel that Safari is the best. But I’m a Mac user…

  68. aleksei

    September 12th, 2007 at 3:24 am

    Why do so many people still use IE?
    BECAUSE YOU CAN’T INSTALL ANYTHING ELSE IF YOU WORK FOR A CORPORATION.
    That is the only reason why IE is still on the top.

  69. dennis teel

    September 18th, 2007 at 7:43 pm

    opera is a ie wrapper..the only difference is that opera has a better looking interface.
    but comparing it to ie is useless..same candy bar(ie) just in a different wrapper(opera).

    firefox rocks however

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