Firefox usage statistics – number of people employing the web browser

This page looks at the usage of Firefox based on visitors to WebDevelopersNotes.com. Though we all know that Firefox is steadily gaining ground and catching up with Internet Explorer - the numbers do paint a rosy picture for the browser –how has it been fairing after the release of Google Chrome? Will Chrome affect the market share of Firefox? Has Firefox for Macintosh won over Apple Safari? How can Google promote two browsers at the same time?
These are just some of the questions we will try to answer on this page. But before you jump to the graphs and charts, please bear in mind that these numbers are from this web site. The Firefox usage would probably be different for your site. This is because WebDevelopersNotes.com is a site that caters primarily to the web development community and they are the ones who have a proclivity towards the open source browser. So it’s only logical that the numbers for Firefox would be higher than the worldwide average.

Internet Explorer vs. Firefox usage statistics

Though Internet Explorer banished Netscape Communicator to oblivion in the browser war of the 90s, it has found a much tougher foe in Firefox. In fact, over the years, Firefox has steadily been eating into the share of the world’s most popular browser. When we compare the numbers for these two browsers (across different operating systems), we see that Firefox is only a couple of percentage points behind I.E.

If the comparison is made only for the Windows operating system, the difference between the two browsers is larger though we still see a decrease in Internet Explorer usage and a steady increase for Firefox.

Firefox on the Macintosh system

Just as it is for the Windows operating system, the usage statistics of Firefox show the numbers increasing for the web browser on the Macintosh operating system. This stable rise has helped the browser overtake Safari, the default browser on Mac, sometime around the first quarter of 2007. What does this mean? Do Mac users prefer Firefox over Safari? Not necessarily. This simply shows that a lot of web developers (experienced or wannabes) working from the Macintosh, tend to have Firefox installed on their systems and use it more often. The key pharse was the one I have put in italics – web developers!

Firefox and Google Chrome

The Chrome free web browser from Google was released on the 2nd of September 2008. In the very first month of launching Chrome, the number of visitors using this web browser was more than those employing Opera (another browser, if you didn’t know). This is not surprising because any product from Google will definitely be met with a good response, especially from the web development community (the target audience of this web site). At the time of writing, Chrome is available only for the Windows operating system, so we must compare the statistics of this web browser with Windows based Firefox.

Google now has two browsers in its kitty – Firefox and Chrome. It’s endorsed and promoted the former in the free Google software pack and via the Adsense program as a referral product. I believe, the major thrust in Google’s marketing of Firefox came when they added the browser as an Adsense referral product that publishers could promote and earn revenue from.

Though it’s too early to say and I have only a few of months of data, the main users of Chrome are the ones who have shifted from Firefox. Thus, by bringing out Chrome is Google in the danger of self-cannibalization? Holds true only if Google considers Firefox as its own product – but then, it has promoted it like its own baby... so...?

For those of you who want to delve a little deeper, in the same time frame of the last few months, Internet Explorer had a less than normal decline while Firefox usage, which was on the rise continually, showed a decrease.

The numbers for Firefox show a clear dip in the September and October.

The coming few months will give a clearer picture as to how the two – Firefox and Chrome – are going to exist together. Will Google’s clout help push its browsers into Internet Explorer’s territory or will they eat into each other's share? A new kind of browser war is on the horizon, my friends... let us wait and watch.

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Updates

June 8, 2009

For almost an year now, ever since it hit its peak in July of 2008, Firefox usage has steadily been coming down. And this month the sharp decrease as shown by the graph line is indeed a thing to worry about for people at Mozilla Corporation. The biggest gainer has been Internet Explorer which shows more than a 2% increase in usage. In fact, if we add up the numbers of Firefox and Chrome and pit them against those for Internet Explorer, the latter still wins... and handsomely. Which means Chrome sharp rising line doesn't help because its numbers are still very small. However, all this tells us that a trend is gradually emerging - unless something untoward happens, the top browser in the future will be Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. Safari would soon be left behind just like Opera or would be restricted to Macs - my opinion.

April 2, 2009

Definitely not a good month for Firefox. Its usage decreased on both Macintosh and Windows systems. Who benefits? Probably Internet Explorer whose numbers had shown the biggest jump in recent times. Google Chrome too had more followers - look, I'll always attribute Firefox's for Windows decrease in share (or at least some part of it) to Google Chrome unless someone points me in a different direction. If the Chrome versions for Linux and Macs, which Google is apparently working on, dent Firefox's share on these operating systems then I would have proved my point, right? I’ll be anxiously waiting for the future.
Now when I look at usage statistics for the past 13 months, Firefox's share has declined! In fact the same is true for Internet Explorer. The two browsers who seem to have gotten more users in the same time period are Safari and the newly launched Google Chrome.

March 2, 2009

I suppose my guess has been correct. The majority of Google Chrome users are ones who've shifted from Firefox (that includes me). Firefox still seems to be under pressure showing a gradual decrease in usage (on Windows) past 4 months. However, overall, Firefox line is steady and horizontal and the gap between this browser and Internet Explorer is the same.
In the last few months, Safari and Firefox seem to showing the same trend on Mac systems... this looks kind of uncanny. Note: the release of Safari version 4 (beta) did push up the line a little and Firefox seems to copy that.