Firefox maybe losing marketshare

All mentioned reasons from 1 to 4 can only affect absolute level, not relative, so they can't explain anything (to be more precize, that can mean that MS may have consistently higher precentage of market share than in reality, but that can't have anything with market share growth/drop). Reason 5 could be valid, but it is not true, in the text on Information week I've read they take around 40.000 sites.

IE7 beta mentioned here as a reason is also highly unlikely, as it is used by less than 1.000.000 people.

But school year is really possible (and likely) reason!

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Microsoft has never won a war in development against anyone. But it proved to be master of marketing. Don't repeat the history. Don't downplay the marketing.

at least accurately. It's easy to rule out 1-5 with the above, rather good, and valid points, but the fact is they are factors which are, to whatever extent, not considered so much in such stats, thus aren't that accurate.

The person who wrote that I think was referring to the stat releaser as one, who took those results, from a certain chunk/client list of sites or whatever, and obviously that's not the whole web, thus not accurate.

Noway has usage shrunk imo, it's just too far fetched, and a wild claim without much substance or merit.

First of all, those 40,000 websites, well thats not all of the web, second of all, those 40,000 may well have trends in browser usage, that doesn't mean the whole market is exactly the same, or that they're figures before, or now are accurate.

The point about holidays, schoolers and more is another factor for sure, it's just a question of to what extent.

This has to be about the first stat out of many since Firefox was born even pre-v1 a year ago, that claims Firefox is losing share.

Let's consider all of the above points made by all, take things and claims with a large pinch of salt, and rememeber like Ian says, it's bound to happen. Articles are going to pop up, people do and will continue to claim such things, often even worse and seriously in-accurate, or even just plain wrong. Thats why we have teams and normal users correcting press and such. The fact this is the first direct claim that Firefox's growth is shrinking, in that climate described, is pretty telling, and good going.

margin of error and stats for one site say nothing. Not to mention that Opera defaults to IE6 as the user agent!!

Even Netscape 8 will identify itself as IE6 if it is using the IE engine to render pages.

For many practical purposes, (like people like me developing standards-based websites) people viewing pages with Netscape using the IE engine is not much different than people using IE. I guess it comes down to each of our individual motivation or reasons for spreading FF.

We are going to see more stories like this as time goes on so be prepared and get used to it ;)

The more of a threat FF becomes to MS the more the "PR machine" will engage in attempting to discredit FF with small seemingly minor digs like this in the press.

The figures themselves are interesting is it a blip, maybe / maybe not.

My guess is that the same source of this story will not be reporting in 2 months time on the "trend" because I predict a rise of 2% to an official 10% by the end of Autumn this year. The download counter shows a slight increase in the number of downloads per day right now this is a good indication for the trend to move in a positive direction.

The big worry for the IE team must be what happens when Vista ships and all the Windows 2000 and 98 customers are left unsupported. Not that I think MS cares that much about these customers anymore as late adopters are hardly likely to be installing Linux.

I understand your concerns Robert but you already know something is cooking in the SFx kitchen, things are going to get exciting around here again soon……

Ian Hayward

Yes, sorry if I sound like a pessimist, I'm again just trying to make people realise that the rise of Firefox is not inevitable and we can't be complacent.

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robertwiblin AT gmail DOT com skype:robertwiblin
Get Firemonger at www.firemonger.org!

I agree Robert, good things are coming...

I sense a new dawn is approaching, 1.5 on the horizon, IE users faced for the first time with a decision to pay to upgrade to IE via a new OS.

Yes, now is the time my friends, soon websites will be free again to author in web language instead of Microsoft browser language.

- Ian Hayward

Your very right. Reading recent articles showing IE7 won't really be deployed too much for a couple of years at least, and 99/100 stuck with IE6 for quite awhile, clearly the next 6 months really is the window of oppotunity, to get not only a foot, but at least a leg in the door.

This is in line with Asa's recent comments on Linux. If Linux doesnt seriously grow in usage in the next year or 2, factors like most of the main manufacturers controlling hardware and software on machines (forget the name of the technology, but it's already present) are going to mean Linux is going to find it increasingly difficult.

A huge surge of development, promotion, and all other aspects in the next 6 months is our opportunity to shine and get seriously talked about, change the net and companies perceptions of Mozilla and the internet, and really penetrate.