Firefox to overtake Internet Explorer by Dec-2007
I recently noticed that 25% of the users on The Humor Archives where using Firefox. I got to wondering how and when Firefox had picked up quite so many users so I grabed the raw figures from my log analyser packaged and using JFreeCharts I slung the below graph together.
and so it seems that not only has the percentage of Firefox users been increasing for the last 2.5 year but the rate of increase in the percentage of users has also been increasing. However I wanted to get a worse case senerio of when Firefox would overtake Microsoft Internet Explorer. To get the worst case I plotted a linear regression to forecast the growth. I then messed around with various other regressions to see what more optimistic regressions gave. The results are below.
| regression type | overtake date |
|---|---|
| linear | December 2007 |
| logarithmic | December 2007 |
| exponetial | July 2006 |
Now my University Mathematics lecturers would probably turn in their sandals at the mathematic rigour of my analysis as it is only based on one website with just 4,000,000 page views per month however it does give some indication of when Firefox will eventually take over as the dominant browser.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:04 am
The graphical plot does not illustrate 100% of the use, I assume that the remaining browsers belong to other categories, such as Opera, Mozilla, Avant, etc.
The growth of Firefox use seems appropriate, but this is only a linear regression technique. The real world is dynamic, and contains noisy inputs. For instance, at certin time later, IE 7 may be introduced and “could” function much better and thus attracted more users to use IE instead of Firefox, the graph will be different. Furthermore, it is likely that with the next generation of Windows Vista released, the browser market will likely to change as well.
However, in conclusion, this is a very good indication that Firefox is becoming popular to many users, partly due to enterprise and home users encouraging the switch to using Linux.
Nonetheless, the date seems too near to be true.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Interesting analysis although one can prove anything using statistics.
I think the site you are using is not an average site the number of Firefox visitors seems higher than the Net’s average (which is just over 10%). Also the percentage for IE is lower than the average.
All in all, the trend is obvious, just how much the upcoming IE7 will influence the rise and downfall is a big question mark.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
I install firefox wherever I go, both at internet cafe’s and homes. I’ve even installed in on a few machines in Japan.
Let me put it this way, I would trust my mother’s internet access to anything other than Firefox & thunderbird. I talked her through the latest upgrades over the phone, just this weekend.
Properly configured and with the right extensions, it’s simply a better, and more secure browser. I’m staking my families well being on it.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Are you aware that one physical person has the ability to use multiple browsers ?
Are you aware that users can change their browser user-agent ?
Are you aware that one website isn’t the web ?
Have taken into account IE7 release ?
“firefox will overtake IE” propaganda is starting to make people sick. who cares ?
I means what a user want is a secure, standard compliant, fast, fully featured innovative browser. At the moment the closer to that is opera 9, and firefox is really far behind.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Another Blog posting speculation as news. This is why I laugh at blogs as a news source. Author is so proud of himself, that he forgets this article should be titled as a commentary or analysis.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
We can’t go by the statistics of one sight. For eg: I have 2 websites, one for my family pictures (http://www.arun-prabha.com) and other for technology (http://tech.arun-prabha.com). The number users using IE is more at my family site whereas Firefox users are more at my tech site. That shows that Firefox is being used more by tech savvy people rather than mom, pop kind of users. Firefox might have to struggle little more to ride into the non-tech community since IE7 release is also nearing. I don’t think it’ll surpass IE in near future, but it might get to 25% market share by middle/end of next year.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
i definitiely feel IE7 is copying all good features of firefox. but there are some tradeoffs. for one thing IE is better then other thing firefox. its always user preference
April 25th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
It’s funny to see how bent out of shape the IE zealots get over the impending Firefox take over. Why are they resisting?
April 25th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Nice comments, losers! The guy said it’s not scientific, so don’t analyze it so much. Overall a nice post.
And for the idiot who commented…
“firefox will overtake IE” propaganda is starting to make people sick. who cares ?”
A lot of people care, you retard. There are a lot of BIG web sites that still don’t support Firefox, and they are starting to pay the price. The “dominant browser question” has profound implications on content of the entire internet, choice of operating system, and is a big deal for anyone writing web-based software.
P.S. - Opera is for pussies!
April 25th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
I’ve been a big fan of Firefox since 0.7. As of this week, I’ve decided to move back to IE. Sure, I’ll miss the tabbed browsing, but Flash animation (which is on most of the sites I visit) is killing Firefox, leading to 100% CPU utilization, and the memory leak thing (that’s a ‘feature’ not a bug) is slowing me right down. I’m over it.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
I aced the Master’s exam in Statistics at UIC in 1974. I remember reading How to Lie with Statistics and being amused. It is well known that anyone with enough technical skill can fool lots of people who have none, and one of these ways is with bogus statistics. In other words it is possible to lie and use statistics in the process. It is not, however, possible to prove anything using statistics. Standards of proof, shall we say, exceed the levels typically required to exceed a threshold of credibility.
Now to the specific case at hand. What you have is a moderately large data set (by polling standards), but in a very narrow niche. While there may be no reason to suspect that visitors of the Humor Archives are exceptionally literate in technical matters, the very fact that they are using a somewhat elaborate interface does suggest their average intelligence quotient is significantly above 100. This fact alone already skews your results.
How that extrapolates to the general population of Internet users is anyone’s guess at this point. Of course, your prediction of Firefox dominance by Dec 2007 may well be conservative for the particular web site. The introduction of IE7 and Firefox 2 will, of course, change the numbers significantly, but I doubt whether anyone can predict how at this point.
April 26th, 2006 at 2:33 am
Nice propaganda, now get the facts:
http://www.FirefoxMyths.com
Statistics are consistently used to mislead people about Firefox’s popularity look at the market share Myths and this link:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39204643,00.htm
April 28th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Personally this kind of thing interests me, I use both Firefox and IE7 (beta) at work… I find I really miss tab browsing etc whenever I do go back to IE… which I do at home where I have Firefox and IE6.0.
There are still a fair numbmer of sites that rely heavily on IE and hence have non functioning areas within Firefox..
But those hoping for something amazing in IE7 will currently be disappointed… evne though it is in beta phase, there are still a lot of bugs to iron out.. things I have noticed more and more as I am using it.
Dont get me wrong, there has been significant improvement.. and hey.. everyone loves tab browsing right?
but I have noticed sites not functioning correctly in it…. not displaying properly… so I think there is still a little way to go on that one..
April 30th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
[…] And if Firefox market share really overtakes IE in 2007 (http://hedges.net/archives/2006/04/24/firefox-to-overtake-internet-explorer-by-dec-2007/ - a ridiculous claim), everything will be in place: Firefox will be the new IE. Congrats. […]