

Microsoft: Firefox's billion claim is 'interesting math' - davecardwell
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/13/microsoft-internet

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jacquesm
A billion downloads, not a billion users. If there are only 200 million users
and they kept up with 1 point release in 5 then you'd already have a billion
downloads.

~~~
rottencupcakes
I download the latest trunk on all computers I use and all OSs on those
computers.

The latest trunk build automatically downloads and installs the newest nightly
build every day.

I've been using firefox since version 0.5 (2002) and I've probably been
running the latest-trunk for half of that time.

Conservatively, I've downloaded firefox > 1000 times. Just sayin'.

~~~
andreyf
Yeah, every time I see that stat, it just sounds like a great argument for
diff-updates:

[http://blog.chromium.org/2009/07/smaller-is-faster-and-
safer...](http://blog.chromium.org/2009/07/smaller-is-faster-and-safer-
too.html)

~~~
kinetik
Firefox already uses bsdiff to generate binary diffs for update distribution.
Courgette looks like a promising way to shrink those updates even further.
(Details in the discussion linked from:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504624>)

I can't find a reference, but I think the "one billion" count only counts full
downloads; updates installed via "Check for updates" aren't included in the
count.

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steiger
I went to Mozilla presentations at the last FISL (Forum Internacional de
Software Livre / Free Software International Forum) here in Brazil. They
explained clearly that one billion downloads don't mean one billion users.
And, honestly, I don't see nothing wrong in this kind of marketing.

Even though the download counter isn't a reliable source for the exact number
of users, it's still reasonable to estimate a software's growth based on the
growth in number of downloads between versions. I can't think of a better,
marketable way to promote Firefox based on it's growth.

~~~
mike_organon
But saying a billion isn't the same as giving an estimation of growth. It just
seems like a misleading (even if true) statistic.

~~~
steiger
If a billion downloads today is much larger than what it used to be, then yes,
I would see it as an estimation of growth.

I see easily how can it mislead people, but, really, I don't see it as enough
reason to not promote the software that way. 1 billion downloads is really
something to celebrate, and I would celebrate it even if it has a potential to
mislead some people.

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Niten
In other news, Microsoft considers addition 'interesting'.

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thwarted
Classic issue of "how do you measure the penetration of open source". I've
been installing Firefox as part of my distribution's packaging system for the
last few releases. Since this is a download from a distro mirror, Firefox
can't really include these statistics, but merely estimate. I'm not sure this
qualifies as "interesting math".

On the other hand, the only place to legitimately get Internet Explorer is
from Microsoft, so it's easy for Microsoft to count.

------
chrischen
"If you're satisfied with what you're doing and you're not particularly
curious about new technology and don't really care, upgrading sounds like a
hassle..."

That's why developers should make it worth the hassle by simply not supporting
them. Twitter is a good example of a way to do it. At least with the old
design their rounded corners didn't show up in IE and only showed in firefox,
safari, and maybe Chrome.

