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Mozilla IT

Firefox Usage Near 25% In Europe 391

Posted by kdawson from the edge-of-the-wedge dept.
A user writes "French researcher Xiti claims that Mozilla Firefox keeps winning terrain in Europe. 24.1% of Internet users in Europe use Firefox. Slovenia (44.5%), Finland (41.3%), Croatia (36.5%), and Germany (36.2%) lead the way, followed by a group of mostly Eastern European countries. Remarkably, The Netherlands is only at 13.3%, right before Andorra. Oceania maintains a slight lead over Europe, at 24.8%; the rest of the world trails at 11.9% to 15.1%."
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Firefox Usage Near 25% In Europe More

Firefox Usage Near 25% In Europe

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  • .... In 3 - 2 - 1....

  • Yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by misleb ( 129952 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:37PM (#18759433)
    Wasn't the Amiga also popular in Europe at some point? Nothing wrong with the Amiga, just pointing out that you can't always use Europe as a gauge for success. ;-)

    -matthew

  • IE States: More Useful? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gamefreak99 ( 722148 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:39PM (#18759467)
    Wouldn't it be more useful to look at the stats for Internet Explorer than those for Firefox? I'm sure many Europeans use Opera or Safari, besides just Firefox?

    Got to give props to the Firefox guys though. They're getting there :)

    • Useful for what? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by David Gould ( 4938 ) <david@dgould.org> on Monday April 16, 2007 @07:38PM (#18760341) Homepage

      Wouldn't it be more useful to look at the stats for Internet Explorer than those for Firefox? I'm sure many Europeans use Opera or Safari, besides just Firefox?
      I guess that sort of depends on what you're interested in tracking: the death of IE, or the growth of Firefox.
      • Well, I know Opera isn't, but aren't a bunch of other browsers based on the same engine as Firefox? Seamonkey/Mozilla, Konqueror, etc?

        • Re:Useful for what? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Alphager ( 957739 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @08:18PM (#18760989) Homepage Journal

          Well, I know Opera isn't, but aren't a bunch of other browsers based on the same engine as Firefox? Seamonkey/Mozilla, Konqueror, etc?
          Seamonkey, Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Epiphany, Flock, Nautilus, K-Melon, Maxthon all use Gecko
          Konqueror and Safari both use KHTML (although Apple has forked it and added some things KHTML still hasn't)

  • sounds way of low for home users (Score:5, Informative)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:41PM (#18759503) Homepage Journal
    I'm getting around 82% firefox, 16% IE.

    OS platforms are 88% windows, 9% Mac, and nearly 3% Linux.

    Are other people seeing this?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by seaturnip ( 1068078 )
      Maybe it's just that most people going to your site have clicked on your slashdot link?

    • Re:sounds way of low for home users (Score:5, Insightful)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:58PM (#18759791)
      I'm getting around 82% firefox, 16% IE.
      OS platforms are 88% windows, 9% Mac, and nearly 3% Linux.

      This tells me nothing until I know the target audience for your site and the number of visitors.

      • Re:sounds way of low for home users (Score:5, Funny)

        by ant-1 ( 120272 ) <`eman.hcuop' `ta' `1-tna'> on Monday April 16, 2007 @08:07PM (#18760851)

        This tells me nothing until I know the target audience for your site and the number of visitors.
        Dude, GP poster has an ID lower than 5000 ! He could well have the data compounded from half of internet servers, including yours. So do as every smart slashdotter would do : accept his numbers and nit-pick them a bit and pray he doesn't pull the plug from your petty web server...

        • Re:sounds way of low for home users (Score:5, Funny)

          by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @08:33PM (#18761229) Homepage
          Dude, GP poster has an ID lower than 5000 ! He could well have the data compounded from half of internet servers, including yours.

          Or he could have been running a Gundam doll fan site for the past five years ("They're not dolls! They're action figures!!!"), thereby solidly representing the browser choices of the still-living-at-home-at-35 demographic.

        • Re:sounds way of low for home users (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @12:47AM (#18763497) Homepage Journal
          If ID counts, here's some more numbers. It's from my game site, which has a fairly broad audience (few grandfathers, but lots of fathers and kids from 11 up) from around the world:

          Firefox - 4295627 hits - 65.3 %
          MS Internet Explorer - 1651317 hits - 25.1 %
          Opera - 319524 hits - 4.8 %
          Mozilla - 127876 hits - 1.9 %
          Safari - 64764 hits - 0.9 %

          And that with IE dropping and Firefox gaining share has been a steady trend for the past 3-4 years. Maybe my site gets more early adopters, and I am actively pushing Firefox (the only banner/ad I've ever had on my site), but the trend is still there.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by odie_q ( 130040 )
      I admin a varied collection of sites in Swedish. The metrics for a couple of these over the last month follow.

      University amateur theater (spex) site: 73.4% Firefox, 22.0% IE, 1.4% Opera, 0.2% Safari
      Family discussion board and photo album: 85.9% Firefox, 7.8% IE, 1.8% Safari
      Professional photographer's site: 49.4% IE, 32.9% Firefox, 13.1% Safari
      Linux laptop installation instructions (English): 49.1% Firefox, 38.2% IE, 2.8% Safari, 2.8% Opera
      Personal page about my boat: 59.6% IE, 35.8% Firefox, 2.2% Safari, 0.

  • A small victory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hansamurai ( 907719 ) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:43PM (#18759531) Homepage Journal
    I'm impressed with Slovenia and Finland at over 40% penetration. Though they're relatively small countries population wise, the Firefox teams have really made a substantial impact there. These successes are what it really takes for people to notice Firefox in the mainstream. 40% probably puts them near the share Internet Explorer has locally which is definitely a great step. The article also shows Australia at 25% which is awesome. Great numbers all around, keep up the great work.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by uni4dfx ( 1078287 )
      I am from Slovenia and proud of this. I think the reason why Firefox is so widespread here is in current high popularity of broadband internet - yes, we have broadband, in fact I'm writing this using a 10Mbit VDSL connection, and believe it or not, I'm getting FTTH somewhen next month which is very cheap by the way. Also, our schools have also contributed largely to spreading of Firefox. I do not think I know a school where they wouldn't use FF. What is best of all, the number of Firefox users is still risi

    • I'm from Slovenia ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Pegasus ( 13291 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @01:54AM (#18763969) Homepage
      And heck, I use opera. Ffox is too slow for what I expect from "internet expirience".

      Also I maintain three of the top 10 visited sites in Slovenia (mostly by teenagers) and the stats there are:

      ie 70%, ffox 27%, opera 1.6%.
      ie 6 50%, mozilla 37%, ie 7 9%, opera 1.5%
      ie 6 60%, mozilla 29%, ie 7 7%, opera 1.6%

      So there ... I have no idea where did this survey dig those numbers.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jovius ( 974690 )
      The school institutions in Finland are actively pushing firefox because it has the reputation of being secure. (Ministry of Justice changed to openoffice since 2007 btw). The IT at the place I study replaces IE with firefox in all the machines they install (hundreds of machines). Firefox penetration in schools of all levels, universities etc places is nearly 100 percent. I have seen only a few machines with IE. IE is nearly non existant. The public internet booths and libraries use Firefox. If not firefox,
  • 1. It mentions 96,000+ web sites were monitored for the purpose of determining this. What were they? Were they evenly distributed by raw population? By internet-using population?

    2. Does this survey make any attempt to take into account 'individual PC users' vs. 'internet cafe' users? i.e. Is this percentage of COMPUTERS or percentage of USERS? (Or, more likely, percentage of individual web hits?)

    I can't find any technical details on how this survey was conducted, other than the slight mention of number of websites involved.

    • Re:Two important questions... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:50PM (#18759659)
      Another question,and this is not a troll.

      For years many OSS and Firefox proponents have claimed that MS crippled the web and killed innovation with IE. Now that the IE monopoly is crumbling whats changed? I dont use either browser and frankly my browsing experience is the same as it has been for the last few years. Wheres all this innovation I was told I was missing?

      • Re:Two important questions... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16, 2007 @07:01PM (#18759825)

        We aren't held back by everybody using Internet Explorer. We are held back because enough people use Internet Explorer. Even if only one in ten people use Internet Explorer, that's enough to force the average website to ensure compatibility.

        Furthermore, it's a vicious circle. If web developers aren't taking advantage of nifty things like SVG, then there's far less pressure on browser vendors to incorporate these features.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Frogbert ( 589961 )
        If you don't see a difference I'd direct you here [sonymusic.com] to the website of popular Rap duo "Kriss Kross". This page hasn't been updated since about 1996.

        See the difference now?
      • Even if IE is crumbling, it's still big enough to hurt. Even 25% is still enough that a website would be stupid to block IE users at the door.

        And as long as we can't just block IE users at the door, it makes it very hard to show you any of the cool stuff we might have done, had the Internet not been so crippled.

        However, I will point to AJAX -- if Microsoft had its way, this would not have worked, or would have been IE-only. If you understand what's going on under the hood (CSS, the DOM, etc), you will under

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by NamShubCMX ( 595740 )
          By "killing" I guess you meant "inventing".

          I spend most my days fighting stupid IE bugs in CSS or JS, but most Ajax-related stuff works well in IE...

          I really wish IE would die the death it deserves but seriously if there is one single good thing its done, its that XMLHttpRequest object...

  • I must be ignorant (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:45PM (#18759577) Journal
    Whats Oceania? I thought it was a made-up supernation from Orwell's 1984.

    Firefox is fast becoming newspeak for "web browser".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by r_cerq ( 650776 )
      *grin*

      Ok, what did you think the continent Australia is in was called? :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k_187 ( 61692 )
        Australia

      • Re:I must be ignorant (Score:5, Funny)

        by IthnkImParanoid ( 410494 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:55PM (#18759745)
        It's called Australia, after the only nation of any importance on it. Sort of like "America", but slightly less kick-ass.

        :p

      • Australia (Score:3, Interesting)

        by esme ( 17526 )
        I know there are some different opinions [wikipedia.org] about how many continents there are and what they're called. But most Americans consider Australia to be its own continent, and count all of the other islands as part of Asia. In fact, in American questionnaires about race, you will see the category "Asian/Pacific Islander".

        • Re:Australia (Score:5, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16, 2007 @07:11PM (#18759989)
          > But most Americans consider Australia to be its own continent

          That's just demonstrating the ignorance of Americans. Australia shares land borders with several other countries, such as Queensland to the north and Victoria to the south. Calling the whole continent "Australia" while ignoring the contributions of the other countries on the continent, Oceania, just because they're not populated by westernised whites is a combination of political supremism and just plain ignorance.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SeaFox ( 739806 )

          I know there are some different opinions [wikipedia.org] about how many continents there are and what they're called. But most Americans consider Australia to be its own continent,

          Because they are taught that way in school.
          I just point that out as whether Americans really consider 'Australia' a continent is not so much a question of how they personally perceive the divisions of the landmasses, but rather what they have been told is "correct". When I was younger, I questioned Europe being a separate continen

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by stuartrobinson ( 1003887 )
      Oceania includes Micronesia (e.g., Guam), Melanesia (e.g., Papua New Guinea), Polynesia (e.g., Hawai'i), and Australasia (e.g., New Zealand). It's mostly made up of island nations.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania [wikipedia.org]
      • Everything I learned of world geography came from the game Risk, and in Risk, Australia is a continent.

        ...its also the best place to hole up and defend yourself from attack as you build up your forces to "yuk-a-stuck"...or however its pronounced, so you can attack North America.

  • The numbers for the Netherlands are not surprising (Score:4, Informative)

    by name_of_feather ( 1036518 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:49PM (#18759641)

    Remarkably, The Netherlands is only at 13.3%

    I don't find that remarkable at all. I lived in the Netherlands for a few years, and one of the things that struck me was how Microsoft-centric the universities were. A huge percentage of the Computer Science students had never even tried an OS other than Windows! (I come from one of those sunny countries in the south of Europe, and that's where I attended university. There, the various flavours of Unix — mainly Linux of course — ruled and continue to rule inside the Computer Science department). Therefore it doesn't surprise me at all that the Dutch are still stuck in the yesteryear of Internet Explorer.

    As time passed, I realised that part of the reason for the Dutch situation has to do with a certain spirit of conformity and of "trying not to distinguish yourself too much from your peers". Granted, it has its positive sides — like a fairly equalitarian society — but also downsides like this one.

    • More technically educated users are more likely to choose Firefox, as less technically educated users can only use what they are spoon fed.

      If you look at the map in TFA, it is almost more-or-less a map of how much countries spend on equipping their schools properly and providing decent technical skills to their population. These countries will run ahead within the IT industry of Europe. Sadly my nation (UK) will probably not be one of them.

    • I find it remarkable that 13.3% is considered "low."
    • I don't find that remarkable at all. I lived in the Netherlands for a few years, and one of the things that struck me was how Microsoft-centric the universities were.

      Isn't marijuana legal, or at least decriminalized in The Netherlands? That would be a plausible explanation of that statement.

      Soko

  • One by one... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frakir ( 760204 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @06:52PM (#18759687)
    First IE slowly being replaced by superior FF.
    Then Open Office (or less bloated equivalents like Abiword) will come and kick out Word and al from grandma computers. Then average Joe will not be able to watch his movies on Vista and noone will have a copy of XP handy. So his 12-year old will install Ubuntu.
    And wmv and other non-open formats will die, too. People are getting burned by DRM tricks and lock-ins.

    Well... I like to dream.
    • +1 Wishful thinking
    • It is happening, and in that order.

      Firefox has the lowest "risk of looking stupid".
      "Go on, click the Red Fox instead of the Blue E..."
      "Gee, it loads webpages... just like Internet Explorer??!!!!"
      "Yep... Now let's just put the Fox right on top here where you can find it, and the Blue E down there in the corner..."

      Open Office is a little harder, because many programs insist on proprietary export interfacing to MS Project or Excel. But 2 licenses of Excel and 25 users on Open Office works pretty well here.

      Lin
      • OpenOffice.org is also harder because it simply is not as good as Microsoft Office. I use it daily, it is just clumsier and buggier than MS Office.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) *

          OpenOffice.org is also harder because it simply is not as good as Microsoft Office. I use it daily, it is just clumsier and buggier than MS Office.

          Clumsier, perhaps. Buggier? You should spend some time working on large (100+ pages), complex documents in Word. I've lost more work to that crash-prone piece of crap. On occasion it even manages to take out the auto-save files when it goes down, and to corrupt the main document beyond salvation. OpenOffice.org has the occasional quirky behavior, but it's much, much more stable.

  • Languages? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RealGrouchy ( 943109 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @07:31PM (#18760241)
    Could it have anything to do with how easy it is to get Firefox in your local language?

    Correct my North-American egocentrism, but aren't most of the countries listed predominantly non-English speaking?

    - RG>

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )
      Irrelevant - IE is also localised, so is Opera (BTW, alternative browsers combined for my place, Poland, are close to 50% now...)
  • If you look at the number of teams to population size for Software Freedom Day (which often involves people handing out CDs with Firefox and other free software) you'll see some correlation to these usage stats.

    For example, compare the USA [softwarefreedomday.org] (24 teams) with Australia [softwarefreedomday.org] (19 teams). When you consider that the US population is over ten times bigger than Australia's population (298,444,215 vs 20,264,082), is it any wonder that Software Freedom Day is more effective in "Oceania" than it is in the US?

    Not to mention
  • W(here)TF is Turkey? They might have problems with censorship and stuff, but they're part of Eastern Europe... And these guys already got many comments about Turkey being part of Europe.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Semptimilius ( 917640 )
      Only Istanbul (Constantinople, Byzantium) is technically in continental Europe. The rest is in Asia.

  • Germany 36.2% - yet Seibel web apps are msie only (Score:3, Interesting)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @07:54PM (#18760619)
    I know Seible is owned by Oracle now, but not for that long.

    Where I work, we use a web-based Seible product called crmondemand. It will only work correctly with MSIE. The Firefox MSIE plug-in doesn't help.

  • Firefox 64% / IE 31% (Score:3, Informative)

    by Eric Pierce ( 636318 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @07:59PM (#18760709)
    Ok, absolutely shameless of me to post this here, but this site I maintain has Firefox at 64% (and IE at 31%). Nothing to do with Europe whatsoever. Sorry.
    http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/website_stats.php [sourceforge.net]

    Note: it's a total Windows power user app too. That partially explains it.

    Eric

  • Yeah 25% and growing. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by truckaxle ( 883149 ) on Monday April 16, 2007 @08:05PM (#18760825) Homepage
    There was a time when the very real fear that if Microsoft achieve total dominance on the client that they could (and would) leverage that influence to the server by coupling new extension that only work with IE/IIS combination. The WWW would become the WMW :(

    So this increasing market share of Firefox is good news. The threat of a single client achieving complete dominance is past now, I believe - a bullet dodged.

    As an aside. I have a customer that was concerned about this several years ago and she wanted to do her part so she requested a special mod to her shopping cart that recognizes the browser and gives a "Mozilla Users Discount" for the kindred users.

    Interesting to see that it still works Sam McGees Hot Sauce [sammcgees.com]"

  • Firefox 100% is not the target (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ceeam ( 39911 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @01:10AM (#18763675)
    It's nice but it's not _the_ measure I'd like to see grow. What I'd like to see is the sum of all standards-compatible browsers to grow. I'd include at least all Geckos, Operas, and KHTML/WebKit/WebCore browsers.

  • Data indicates a clear majority amongst home users (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mha ( 1305 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @02:12AM (#18764109) Homepage
    Not long ago spiegel.de, Germany's largest print magazine's website (also one of the most visited), reported that after work hours Firefox users are the overwhelming majority, and only during work hours, when most visitors visit the site from their corporate computers over which the IT depmt. has control, does MS IE have the lead.

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