Which market research organization would you trust more, the one that puts Netscape at 0.7% or the one that puts Netscape at 11.85%?
The answer should probably be "none of the above" since all of these metrics have their strong points and their weak points and comparing them to each other is not an apples to apples comparison. Geography makes a big difference, as you can see by Xiti's measurement of Firefox at nearly 25% in Europe overall, and as high as 44.5% in Slovenia and 41.3% in Finland. The type of user surveyed makes a big difference too. The latest report from FreshBooks puts Firefox at 38.95% share among small to medium-sized businesses and BoinBoing.net has Firefox at nearly 50%. The time of the survey also impacts the results with the total web using population dropping some in the summer and on or right around holidays like Christmas.
So how should we measure Firefox growth? Well, first, we shouldn't be looking at any single-sourced metric. Second, we probably shouldn't be looking at month to month data and instead look to longer trends that cross seasons or even years. Maybe we shouldn't be looking at usage stats at all and move to some other metric. That's a lot on what we shouldn't do. What should we do?
What do you all think? The trends are clearly going well for Firefox over the last three years and we're seeing consistent increases in browser downloads and trials with each of our new releases. As I've said for quite some time, though, downloads don't all turn into users and as the paragraphs above suggest, usage patterns are quite different depending on geography, the kind of user, and the time of year one measures. So, what and how should we measure so that we can make the most informed decisions regarding our efforts to increase the pace of adoption?
