Firefox passes 50 million download mark

CNet News ^ | 04/29/2005 | John Borland

[r5boston]

The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser passed a significant milestone in adoption on Friday, with more than 50 million copies of the program downloaded, according to its distributors.

To commemorate the moment, the foundation said on its Web site that it would create 50 limited-edition coins, to be distributed to people with stories of spreading the browser online. An additional, a still-unnamed prize will be given to the owner of the Web site responsible for the 50 millionth download.

"It's funny how the counter just blows by 50 million without a care in the world, isn't it?" Mozilla developer Blake Ross wrote on the foundation's Web site. "But it's not just a number to us. It's a validation of half a decade of work, and the beginning of half a decade more."

With its first full-fledged release last November, Firefox has shaken up a Web browser market that most analysts had deemed almost wholly mature. For the first time in years, the market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has begun inching downwards as Firefox adoption rises.

Much of the interest in Firefox has been driven by repeated security holes found in Internet Explorer. Some prominent security researchers have even recommended against using IE if possible, a criticism that has stung in Microsoft executive suites.

[softwarecreator]

Iwish I knew why yours grinds down

So does mine and I've used it on Win XP, Win 2000, Linux Redhat and Mandrake 10.1

[LibKill]

Firefox is very nice. Tabbed browsing. IE does not have that.

[softwarecreator]

The U.S. Air Force doesn't agree with you. In fact, Firefox and Mozilla are banned from their network. IE 6 is the only authorized browser.

Stand by for the conspiracy hawks....

[toadthesecond]

The honeymoon is over - malware authors are now targeting Firefox as successfully as IE

I doubt it - firefox (and opera) do not allow the same level of access to the local filesystem as IE does.

[Drammach]

Sounds like a Microsoft / Government conspiracy to me...

[Abcdefg]

I've never had that happen.

[savedbygrace]

I've been running Firefox for several months and Thunderbird for several weeks, and I've had ZERO virus or spyware infiltrations. ZERO.

[Abcdefg]

My empoyeer specified Netscape because that is what their intranet web pages were coded for.

[frogjerk]

http://secunia.com/graph/?type=imp&period=all∏=11 http://secunia.com/graph/?type=imp&period=all∏=4227

Compare the two graphs. %30 system access and 19% security bypass for IE vs. %14 system access and 11% security bypass vulnerabilities for Firefox.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Highly critical
Product Affected By: 80 Secunia Advisories

Mozilla Firefox 1.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Less critical
Product Affected By: 15 Secunia Advisories

[ecurbh]

on my machine Firefox and Thunderbird both run slower and slower and slower until I have to kill both processes to even be able to use the computer.

Strange, I'm not sure what would cause that. I keep FF and Thunderbird running on my machine 24/7 for weeks on end with no such problems.

[MikefromOhio]

It wasn't at CENTCOM, which is at MacDill AFB....

[frogjerk]

See my post #29

[demlosers]

The USAF have contracts with Microsoft, and they standardize their software

[Psycho_Bunny]

I split my time between Firefox and IE on 5 or 6 different machines.  It runs perfect on my SuSE and Win 2000 boxes but bogs and crashes on my XP systems.  The bogging is pretty difficult to peg down.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Stand by for the conspiracy hawks....

I doubt if it's a conspiracy. The government is usually the last entity to give up on the old paradigms, and usually adopts new ones just in time for them to have gone stale. It wouldn't surprise me, ten years from now, to find the Army issuing its recruits fatigue pants with crotches that hang down to their knees.

[ecurbh]

I run spybot at least 3or 4 times a week and it almost always comes up with something...and I do use mozilla.

Are these actually installed spyware programs, or just cookie files? I would wager to say the latter, unless you are downloading lots of freeware programs and installing them willy-nilly.

Cookies are NOT spyware, but I think many spyware programs seem to pretend they are just so that it can find ~something~ and boost the claim that spyware is everywhere.

[frogjerk]

Take trip over to Secunia and read the truth rather than the factless noise you are trumpeting.

Here is some more useless noise:

IE: Of the 64 advisories from 2003-2005 for IE 6
%14 Extremely critical
%28 Highly critical
%22 Moderately critical

Firefox: Of the 15 advisories from 2003-2005 for Firefox
0% Extremely critical
%13 Highly critical
33% Moderately critical

[SengirV]

I was waiting for the 1st M$ clone to give a negative post.

[SengirV]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=8187287

[aft_lizard]

I just noticed though that some websites just dont support it at all and others have problems using macromedia in it, plus some java apps dont work too well.