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Mozilla-based browser Firefox off to strong start

Information Week has a decent round up of the recent browser stats wars. We’ve got a couple different reports with slightly different takes on the numbers, but it’s clear where the momentum is: Firefox is definitely taking market share from Internet Explorer and is surprising in its swiftness.

In a summary of the stats, OneStat.com, an Amsterdam-based Web metrics firm, has Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with a 88.9% usage share (down 5 points since May) to Firefox’s 4.6% and sister-suite Mozilla at 2.8%. That puts Mozilla-based browser share at 7.4% (up from 2.1% in May).

US-based competitor WebSideStory has IE at a 92.9%, and Firefox at a much smaller 3%. Under their model, IE is only down 3% since May. Not a huge difference, but IE share falling below 90% represents a pyschological threshold. So it’s worth quibbling just a little:

Brinkman [OneStat’s founder] attributed the difference between the two companies’ number to a larger sampling size for his data and the later reporting period. OneStat, for instance, claims it monitors Web usage at some 50,000 sites in 100 countries, while WebSideStory says it counts about 600 enterprises as its customers.

“And we did our research just last week,” he said. “WebSideStory’s research is already a couple of weeks old.”

This time period is especially pertinent when you consider that FireFox itself was only officially launched (v 1.0) 2 weeks ago. Since then users have downloaded more than 5.6 million copies of the free Firefox. Based on what I see and hear, I tend to agree with Brinkman that a couple weeks brings a lot of change with all the buzz around Firefox.

I still use the Mozilla suite (since 1999). I’ve spoken with other power users (as I type I have 3 windows open, one of which has 39 tabs open) and they say it’s not quite ready for prime time. Thunderbird (the Mozilla-based mail client) definitely isn’t, and Mozilla mail has finally become stable - I don’t want to play the crashing game. I’ll move to Firefox and Thunderbird together, once they are both stable. Updated: I hadn’t checked on Thunderbird’s status - but today I see that Thunderbird is nearing release and that release candidate 1.0 is available for testing. Full release of 1.0 is set for tomorrow!

I do, however, feel less cool not using Firefox too. In the Bay area, people have Firefox stickers and t-shirts and it is quite the topic of conversation, even (especially?) among the less technical folks. I feel sort of left out of the revolution. Well, I’ll just download Mozilla 1.8 alpha 5 and try my best to feel cutting edge.