December 29, 2004
we're taking back the web
Today, as we approach the end of 2004, and just seven weeks after the big 1.0 release, there have already been more than 14,000,000 Firefox downloads.
I've been involved with Mozilla since pretty much the beginning and I've been a full-time paid member of staff@mozilla.org, first as an AOL/Netscape employee and now under the Mozilla Foundation, for roughly four and a half years. Since I joined Mozilla, I've experienced some great highs and some pretty unpleasant lows. For nearly the first four years, all of our successes seemed to be balanced out with some failure or other. Heaps of praise were offset with comments of "but it feels 'not quite there' yet." Great successes like the release of Mozilla 1.0 were taken down a notch by things like flagging support from AOL.
But things are not now as they have been before. For this last year, being a part of "Mozilla" has been nothing but positive. The Mozilla Foundation has alleviated many fears about long-term organizational viability; the steady praise of our work is unaccompanied by a bunch of "if onlys"; the positive press isn't tempered by commentary on Microsoft's growing market share; the "tone" among our supporters is fundamentally changed from almost sisyphean to a cheerful optimism.
It's been a very good year. Thanks to everyone who contributed to Mozilla's great year and I look forward to sharing even better times in 2005.
Posted by asa at December 29, 2004 10:34 AM
Congratulations!
It certainly has been a great year for mozilla.
Great job Asa (and others). Keep it up !
Posted by: JS on December 29, 2004 11:48 AMThat's 4 million more than the number of Belgian inhabitants!! :)
Congratulations!
The last month has added just over 6 million downloads to the counter. If we extrapolate that into the future (considering there seems to be a fairly continuous download rate) that would mean 20 million by the end of January, and ~32 million by the end of March. Then though, if all goes as planned, we'll start over again (counting dl's of 1.1).
Posted by: David Naylor on December 29, 2004 12:54 PMJust another quick and rough calculation: OneStat said Firefox 1.0 had 1.79 % of their hits on the 22nd of november. Looking at Asa's shiny new graph, that seems to have corresponded to about 5.5 million downloads. That means that one percentage point equals roughly 3 million downloads. If we assume that all downloads result in the same amount of Firefox usage/browsing, then we should already have 14/3 = 4.7 % Firefox 1.0. If the extrapolation I made above turns out to be anywhere near the truth, and the above assumption holds (though I doubt that it does), we could have our 10 (OneStat) percent by April!
Posted by: David Naylor on December 29, 2004 01:02 PMCongratulations to those 14 Mio. I won't stop preaching each and every person I meet to start using Firefox.
Posted by: gibarian on December 29, 2004 04:50 PMAs someone who is possibly too good at seeing the "sisyphean" side of every goal and task, and pointing it out, I guess this is a good opportunity to attempt to be positive. :-)
As I said to someone the other day, whether or not one entirely agrees with the choice of primary goals, priorities and methods that you folks at the Foundation have gone for, it can only be a good thing that you/we are succeeding in achieving those goals.
Thanks for all your hard work over the year, Asa. I hope 2005 is another good year for you and for Mozilla. Happy New Year! (slightly in advance...)
Posted by: michaell on December 30, 2004 07:04 AM