Firefox is on the move
I never thought this day would come. Firefox, the once-bastard stepchild of the Mozilla project, is suddenly taking off. This is hardly news to anyone working in web development and/or the Slashdot peanut gallery, but the speed with which Firefox is beginning to eat away at Internet Explorer's market dominance is stunning, and as someone who works daily with the half-decade-old bugs of Internet Explorer, the move is downright exhilarating. How fast is the fox spreading? According to ZDNet UK...
ZDNet UK's own figures show that since the beginning of this year, there has been an increase in the percentage of site visitors using a Mozilla browser. In February, about 9 percent of site visitors were using a Mozilla-based browser; this increased to 19 percent in October. Over the same period, IE use decreased from 88 percent to 79 percent.
In other words, the number of web users accessing their web site using Internet Explorer dropped nearly ten percent in eight months. Ten percent. At this rate, the number of IE users accessing ZDNet UK will drop below 3/4 within a couple of months, if it hasn't already. That's a stunning reversal that once had Internet Explorer so close to complete, 100% market penetration that every other browser fell squarely inside the law of diminishing returns, and unless you were a supporter of web standards or worked for a company that required complete cross-browser interoperability, chances were IE was all you worried about.
But if the current trend line for Firefox holds, corporate support of web standards will no longer be a choice, but a necessity to conduct business on the web.
It should be noted that all usage stats are ultimately dependent on audience demographic, and ZDNet UK's audience is obviously more technology-savvy than, say, PGA.com (where I work a lot these days), which has seen a dip in Internet Explorer usage, but not as much as ZDNet UK. But a decline is a decline, and if you were to find the median browser usage between the two (as well as sites like Slashdot and The New York Times, for example) you'd still come up with the same overall trend -- less users of IE, more Firefox (and the wide range of other Mozilla/Gecko/Konqueror products).
The sudden change of pace, in my opinion, is due to three factors -- one, the technological stagnation and ad-ware infestation of Internet Explorer; two, the maturity of the alternate products, both in stability and usability; three, the clear identity of the second-most-popular alternative (Firefox) and the untold numbers of people that have built a grass-roots community around it.
Firefox is a lot like Apple -- it's well branded, has buzz, and captures a community of avid supporters that no one else has been able to grasp. Their supporters believe their product of choice is a superior one, and they're willfully (if not forcefully) spreading the news however they can. Not only that, but as evidenced by fundraising campaign to announce the availability of 1.0 with a full page ad in the New York Times, the community is willing to put their money where their mouth is. Even though the product is free.
It's a unique idea -- give the product away, but ask those who benefit from it to return the favor with money to pay for the marketing campaign; precisely the area where a lot of promising technology has traditionally fallen apart. Public mind-share and brand recognition is essential for maintaining industry foothold (unless of course you're a monopoly, like...oh you know), and by investing a large chunk of change in public relations and old-media advertising, Firefox is about to make the leap from a purely internet phenomenon to a street-level brand.
Could I be reading too much into all this? Possibly. But considering the browser's deepening market penetration, increasing download numbers, and unbelievably potent fundraising model, the little browser that could just might -- might -- within a few years become the most popular browser accessing the internet, which wouldn't necessarily be a victory against IE, but for the standardization of how document markup is rendered. And if the rumors are true about a Google-branded Firefox, then all bets are off.
One thing I can say for certain -- I'll be donating again.
