Firefox Hit One Billion Downloads Today

[mkrishnan]

Apologies if already posted. Firefox is forecast to hit its billionth (1,000,000,000) download, cumulative over all versions since release in 2004, today. Congratulations, Mozilla!

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43462/140/
http://www.onebillionplusyou.com/

The figure includes downloads of all versions of the web software, right back to its release in 2004. At the time of writing, it stands at 999,767,512. If you're the sort of person that likes to watch the car milometer roll over, you can watch the number rise here.

The company estimates it will hit the magic figure at around 15.11 UTC today.

The milestone comes just a month after the launch of Firefox 3.5, which received more than four million downloads in its first 24 hours. Last summer, version 3.0 scored double that figure.

EDIT: Looks like it's already passed.

 

[SilentPanda]

Whatever. I'm undownloading mine right now to screw up their count.

 

[mkrishnan]

Whatever. I'm undownloading mine right now to screw up their count.

No takebacks!!!

 

[xUKHCx]

It is an impressive number, that said I have probably downloaded Firefox approximately 20 times just on one computer if they count every single version.

Recently I downloaded it 5-7 times in about 10 minutes as the auto-updater took me through 3.0.5, 3.0.6, 3.0.7 ... 3.0.10 - 3.5 (numbers may not be totally accurate as off the top of my head) rather than from 3.0.5 - 3.5.

Still don't use it though.

 

[mkrishnan]

It is an impressive number, that said I have probably downloaded Firefox approximately 20 times just on one computer if they count every single version.

This is true (although it's true for most every other milestone like this)... across computers, I've downloaded Firefox many times, including all the times there's been a version-over-version update (not sure if that's included or not).

Still, their market share continues to slowly trend up, which I think is happy.

So you never use it, even in Windows, xUKHCx?

 

[SilentPanda]

I wonder if we can get 1 billion moderator posts in this thread in a row... now THAT would be a feat!

 

[edesignuk]

^ steps in to ruin it

I wuvs me some Firefox.

 

[xUKHCx]

So you never use it, even in Windows, xUKHCx?

Nope, on my windows box I only have 512MB of ram and Firefox chokes, it was a whole lot worse when it only 256MB of ram.

Opera, what I use on OS X and linux, worked fine on the windows box. Add to that Opera link which syncs my bookmarks, notes, speeddial, searches, typed history I can move between computers without really noticing.

It's just a shame that I can't use it on my iPhone as well.

It is on the windows box as the backup browser but on OS X if I need a backup I use Safari as launches so much quicker.

Don't get me wrong it is a good browser but on OS X I can't stand the font rendering which caused me to look at Opera and Opera is where I am happy.


edit:

^ steps in to ruin it

As an ex-Mod you still count.

 

[SilentPanda]

As an ex-Mod you still count.

Could always punish him and make him a mod again.

I used to use FF at work and Safari at home but then I got the Tab Kit mod for Firefox and I hate horizontal tabs now... so I'm stuck with Firefox... Vertical tabs just make so much more sense!

 

[ergdegdeg]

then I got the Tab Kit mod for Firefox and I hate horizontal tabs now... so I'm stuck with Firefox... Vertical tabs just make so much more sense!

True! Ever since I saw a blog post (?) by Mozilla about their studies on future browser interfaces, I tried to find a good mod for vertical tabs. I first had another one but then found Tab Kit as well.

 

[edesignuk]

Goes in search of "Tab Kit"....ohhhhh, niiiiiiice.

 

[SilentPanda]

Goes in search of "Tab Kit"....ohhhhh, niiiiiiice.

The scroll wheel and nested tab ability is hawt.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5447

 

[kainjow]

woo! mods-only thread


As a Cocoa-native perfectionist I dislike FF on OS X. I'd rather use a WebKit based engine anyways. Main thing I use it for is rendering XML in a nice format, which I'm surprised Safari hasn't done yet.

But 1 billion downloads is impressive. I wonder how many iCab has had

 

[mkrishnan]

Goes in search of "Tab Kit"....ohhhhh, niiiiiiice.

Yeah, that is pretty cool. I might just keep it.

 

[yg17]

woo! mods-only thread

Not anymore

 

[killerrobot]

woo! mods-only thread

Whoa, aren't you guys suppose to be putting people in time-outs or something.
These mods have way too much free time on their hands.

Wow. One billion downloads. How much bandwidth is that!?

 

[gavin83209]

Correct me if I am wrong, but at an estimated 40 MB per download on average, I calculate that is 37.2 petabytes of downloads. That is a lot of bandwidth.

 

[yg17]

Correct me if I am wrong, but at an estimated 40 MB per download on average, I calculate that is 37.2 petabytes of downloads. That is a lot of bandwidth.

It wouldn't surprise me if that much bandwidth is used up on porn each day

 

[mkrishnan]

Correct me if I am wrong, but at an estimated 40 MB per download on average, I calculate that is 37.2 petabytes of downloads. That is a lot of bandwidth.

I did some rough calculations, and using your numbers, I think it comes out to something like 250 MBPS? But where does 40MB come from? FF 3.5.1 is 17.6 mb for Mac, 7.7 mb for Windows, and 9.4 mb for Linux. (Which would push that number down, even if you just assumed every version was as big as 3.5.1 when it clearly wasn't) to around 100MBPS or less. Has Firefox ever been anywhere near 40 mb?

 

[clevin]

Has Firefox ever been anywhere near 40 mb?

never

Recently I downloaded it 5-7 times in about 10 minutes as the auto-updater took me through 3.0.5, 3.0.6, 3.0.7 ... 3.0.10 - 3.5 (numbers may not be totally accurate as off the top of my head) rather than from 3.0.5 - 3.5.

auto updater is not counted in the number, the number listed is user initiated website downloads.

Aza mentioned a 3.0.10 update generated 150m updates in a day, for that pace, 1billion would be passed years ago.

 

[gavin83209]

Sorry, 40 MB is the decompressed file size for 3.0, plus I forgot to account that older versions are smaller. As for the Win/Linux versions, I don't know. I'm going to bring that estimate down to about 5-12 PB. The exact number would then depend on percentage of the user base running which platform.

Again, my apologies for not checking the data first.