Firefox hits 20 percent market share for browsers

According to a new report published by Net Applications, Mozilla's Firefox web browser can now boast 20 percent of the global market share for browsers, slowly chipping away at Internet Explorer's once-thought of insurmountable lead.

The report says the browser has seen a huge surge in popularity thanks to the recent release of Firefox 3 as well as from converts fearing the infamously insecure Internet Explorer.

The milestone is even more impressive considering the growing popularity of Apple's Safari browser and the introduction of Google's Chrome browser.

Mozilla also added that they plan to replace their current JavaScript engine with TraceMonkey which will "improve operations within the application by 20 to 40 percent."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 5 Nov 2008 20:56

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8 comments

SProdigy

Go! Go! Go! Firefox is the little engine that could!

Honestly, has anyone seen the IE8 beta? Some websites will not load unless you use "classic mode". Wow, that will wear thin real fast. I can see Firefox growing even more.

6.11.2008 09:41 #1

techoter

Cool -- this will only increase. I just wonder what's going to happen with Google's Chrome. Google and Firefox are partners, right?

6.11.2008 13:21 #2

Leningrad

Yeah IE is gonna die if these trends continue.

6.11.2008 15:03 #3

varnull

Now then.. stats from my site show a different ratio..

Firefox/gecko (mozilla and others) 86%
xhtml (konqueror/safari etc) 8%
IE 4%
Others (dillo/kazehakase/aol etc) 2%

Most open source content sites I visit which have browser counters show a similar story.. FF around 80%.

w3schools.com reports differently again..

Browser Statistics Month by Month
2008 IE7 IE6 Chrome Fx Moz S O
October 26.9% 20.2% 3.0% 44.0% 0.4% 2.8% 2.2%

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

44% for firefox.. remembering that probably about 5% are reporting being some IE variant..

Remember that you can change the identifier string in FF so it reports to the site that it is IE to get around the M$ only site restrictions...

the surprise to me is the low numbers for safari and opera.. I thought there were more Mac users out there, or maybe they are the ones using opera too?

Every single repair machine that comes through my door runs Firefox.. with maybe opera or safari as the second browser. I haven't seen IE used for so long I have forgotten what it looks like. That's what you get M$ if you decide open agreed standards aren't important.. people will use something that is standards compliant.

6.11.2008 15:35 #4

Rikoshay

Firefox does seems to have the edge right now with cloud computing on the rise. Chrome might be the next big thing, but then again, it looks fugly, and it's more of a desktop based search engine than a true browser.

Firefox looks good, plays well, updates on a regular bases, and is a lot easier to expand if needed. I'm hoping that TraceMonkey does improve performance, and I've noticed that Firefox 3 seems a lot lighter resource-wise in comparison to Firefox 2.

Keep up the good work Mozilla, and all the great programmers out there with their great add-ons.

8.11.2008 07:17 #5

Jemborg

I personally haven't moved to FF3 yet- a friend has and is keen. It's working with my two most important addons ABP and FlashBlock too. I had trouble transferring my bookmarks from FF2 into it. I've figured out a way for the I think, but am too goddamm lazy to bother atm.

9.11.2008 09:03 #6

pmshah

The initial version 3.0 gave me a lot of problems so reverted back to 2.0.17.

In my experience the difference was made by the curent version - 3.0.3 I believe. It works just fine for me including the IDM plugin.

11.11.2008 18:17 #7

Jemborg

Has anyone tried the FF3.1 alpha2 (codenamed Shiretoko alpha 2) ??

Any good?

Is this the monkeywhatsits version?

Oh does anybody miss the old bookmarks manager in FF3 ??

Its a lot easier being righteous than right.

12.11.2008 15:18 #8

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