We're at about 1.25 to 1.5 million Firefox 3 downloads per day right now. That puts Firefox daily downloads and add-ons daily downloads at about the same level. Interesting.
Posted by: Waleof Suous | November 19, 2008 7:23 PM
Waleof, I don't follow your logic. We have as many Firefox downloads as we have add-ons downloads. That, to me, means that the typical user uses, on average, one extension.
Posted by: David Tenser | November 19, 2008 10:41 PM
David: True, but that also means there are half a dozen people with 0 extensions to make up for my 7. I'm not saying Waleof's logic follows: For every 6 people who like Firefox just fine out of the "box", there's a web developer like me who needs, at a minimum, 4 extensions just to do his job.
Posted by: Jason | November 20, 2008 6:34 AM
Well, what I believe Asa is trying to say is that Add-ons have become more mainstream than he would have assumed. Especially, as he seems to see so little value in them (by the way: Asa, you're right, there are no indespensable add-ons, but they still all have a value and making browsing a lot more comfortable).
Posted by: Aaron Strontsman | November 20, 2008 12:46 PM
Aaron, yeah, I love how much value add-ons provide -- especially to the long tail. They really do let people make Firefox their own. I was surprised at this number and really wish we had some privacy-sensitive way to measure how many people are using add-ons and how many add-ons they're using.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | November 20, 2008 1:10 PM
Erm, Asa... "I love how much value add-ons provide"
Aren't you clearly contradicting your 2 past articles in which you bragged about your empty add-on list?
Posted by: Stifu | November 22, 2008 3:42 AM
Stifu, absolutely not. Add-ons provide _me_ next to no value but for millions of others, they provide a lot of value. That's the beauty of Firefox. If you want a browser that works, "out of the box" for most people, you just download Firefox. If you want a browser that caters to special needs, you can grab any one of about 6,000 add-ons. If you have a lot of special needs, you can grab dozens of add-ons ;-)
My needs are pretty standard and Firefox caters to them quite well without add-ons.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | November 22, 2008 11:53 AM
This is fascinating - thanks. There are a lot of passionate projects, causes, collective intelligence efforts and businesses built upon Firefox. I'm part of a team building a complex social game in a Firefox extension. It's hard to imagine any other platform that offers us the chance to reach hundreds of millions of people - hundreds of millions of people who have made a choice about their web browser.
The download and use statistics for Firefox are especially impressive when you think about the fact that each time someone downloads Firefox, they're expressing a preference beyond "operating system standard" for their web browser. We're one of many businesses that hope those selective, educated web surfers will continue to "level up" their internet use.
Posted by: Justin Hall | November 30, 2008 1:15 PM
Again it proves that only very few people who uses Firefox actually uses add-ons. the most hyped feature of Firefox is actually NOT used by most Firefox users.
I thought the add-ons/Firefox download ratio should be close to 20:1, but it turns up only 1:1, LOL.