July 2009 Archives

The 1 billion Firefox downloads celebration has generated a lot of buzz and some questions around browser metrics. Rather than addressing each question individually, I figured I'd just wrap them all up in a single post that I hope explains why we count things.

Right now, we keep a pretty close eye on three global measurements. The first, and all the buzz today, is the Firefox download count. The second is active Firefox users. And the third is market or usage share.

We count downloads, and we're celebrating 1 billion downloads today, not because it's a good proxy for how many people use Firefox or how much they use Firefox. It's not. We count and celebrate download milestones because it's something our community of advocates can directly contribute to and see the actual results of their work.

Firefox doesn't ship on every new PC like IE or on every new Mac like Safari. Those guys don't actually have to do any work at all to put their browser in front of users. That's not the case with Firefox. Virtually all, more than 95%, of our growth comes from people downloading Firefox.

We've never had the budget to rely on advertising as a primary driver of Firefox downloads the way other successful software companies do. As a matter of fact, more than 80% of our users say they found out about Firefox from a friend, co-worker, or family member.

So, people helping other people download Firefox is critical. It's how we've achieved the success we have. Take that away and there is no Firefox phenomenon. In that light, it would be a huge insult to all of the Firefox contributors that have been helping other people get Firefox if we didn't celebrate their work.

The second number we watch is active Firefox users. This is a bit more difficult because Mozilla has never and never will track individuals using Firefox. At the same time, it's fundamental to our mission that we empower people with more control over their Internet experience. If we don't keep an eye on how many people we're actually helping, it's somewhat more difficult to know if we're getting better or getting worse.

So while the methods are indirect, we have come up with a pretty good way to get an approximate number. Every Firefox browser makes a security check with Mozilla each day. This mechanism is fundamental to keeping users secure, but it can also tell us how many users were running Firefox in a 24 hour window. From that number, we can extrapolate how many people use Firefox in a given month.

Today we have about 300 million active users. That's actually a pretty large percentage of all of the people on the Web and we're rightly proud of that because it says that for 300 million people and growing, our mission of promoting choice and innovation and empowering participation is succeeding.

The final number we watch is called either market share or usage share. I think "usage" is a better way to describe it so as to avoid confusion with the more traditional definitions of market share which are usually measured quarterly and in terms of sales.

Usage share, more precisely, the percentage of Web traffic that comes from a particular browser, is reported by several large analytics companies and widely reported on in the press. For browsers with increasing share, it can have a positive impact on raising awareness, but more important, I think, is that it helps us understand if we're actually improving the Internet as a whole.

The Web moves forward when Web developers believe that a new Web capability is widely deployed enough to start building sites and apps that can take advantage of that capability. It's not enough to know how many users a particular browser has, though. The Web is growing by about 100 million new users a year so you actually need a percentage here. Sites measure that kind of platform deployment with analytics packages that can identify different browsers and what percent of their traffic comes from those different browsers.

But not all projects have representative sites where they can make those measurements themselves so they turn to the analysis from companies like Net Applications and StatCounter. These companies aggregate website statistics from all over the globe and publish some or all of that data publicly.

We look at the numbers for almost the same reason as a Web developer would. We're interested in how much of the Web's traffic comes from people who are using a modern, standards-compliant browser. Because we're not just about improving the online experience for individuals, but also advancing the entire Web platform, the bigger that percentage, the better we're doing in our mission.

So, each of these measures has a somewhat different purpose, but all of them help us measure and celebrate our accomplishments and taken together, and over time, they help us understand what kind of impact we're having on people and the Web.

1 billion downloads is pretty amazing when you consider that the overwhelming majority of those downloads resulted from word of mouth. Mozilla's advocacy community is unmatched in the software world.

Now, of course that doesn't translate into 1 billion users. Some of those downloads were second or even third downloads onto the same machine (though there were also many large-scale deployments at huge companies like IBM where a sysadmin made one download and pushed it out to tens of thousands of desktops.) But we're not talking about automatic updates either. These are real user-initiated downloads and that's a lot of pro-Firefox activity no matter how you slice it.

A couple of other measures that are relevant: Firefox's global usage share is somewhere between 22% and 28% depending on who you believe, and the Firefox active user base is north of 300 million users.

(Note: This is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect Mozilla's position or any formal statement from Mozilla. I expect that Mozilla will make some kind of public comment on this topic, but this is definitely not that.)

On Friday Microsoft released a statement and a number of documents that they hope will lead to a settlement with the European Commission with regards to the ongoing legal case against Microsoft for violating EU anti-competition statutes.

The first collection of documents, on "Browser Choice", directly addresses the EC case and, if accepted by the EC, would presumably become the legally binding settlement with the EC.

The second document group called "Interoperability" is scoped beyond just the EC and the EU and is not intended, as far as I can tell, to be a part of any binding settlement with the EC.

When Mozilla became a participant in all of this, Mitchell Baker started a series of blog posts to develop a set of principles that Mozilla believed should be addressed by any remedies in the case. The principle discussions were not about specific remedies themselves, rather they were about the goals that we though any remedies should meet.

As I read through the Microsoft settlement proposal, it looks to me like Microsoft has at least made a nod to each of Mozilla's principles and I find that encouraging.

But I suspect there's two ways to read this. The casual reading, as if it was a press release or a blog post, may suggest that Microsoft has responded favorably to most of the concerns that most people voicing concerns (including Mozilla) laid out. From that reading, things probably look pretty good.

There's potentially another way to read this, though, as an excruciatingly precise legal document. Reading it in that light might elicit a different reaction -- it did for me and I'm not even a lawyer (though I presume to be able to think like one.)

Assume for a minute that Microsoft's exact language here was codified as the legal settlement document with the EC. What might lawyers on either side be able to assert or defend based on the exact language in the document. How do things look in that light?

I've tried to convey some of both readings in my reactions and I encourage those of you with the interest to try reading it both ways as well and to share your thoughts here in comments.

I structured this blog post by trying to connect each of the principles that Mitchell described with the part of Microsoft's settlement proposal that most closely aligns with that principle and I'm interested 1) whether or not you think there's really alignment between the two, and 2) whether the remedies Microsoft is proposing would, in your view, effectively satisfy each Mozilla principle.

From Mitchell's EC Principles: Synthesis blog post:

Of the various principles I proposed, the ones that get the strongest positive response are those that protect the choices people have already made or are trying to make. These are outlined in principles 1: Respecting Previous Choice and 2: Windows Must Not Provide a Technical Advantage to IE.

Let's take the first one first. Windows cannot subvert a person's choice of an alternative browser. Here's how Mitchell described the principle:

Once a person has chosen Firefox or Opera or another browser this choice should be respected. Neither Windows nor IE should use the presence of IE to encourage or promote a return to IE, or to automatically open a different web browser than that which the user has selected. Otherwise, the monopoly presence of Windows on 90+% of the world's personal computers means that people are forced to choose alternative products over and over again.

Mitchell went on to describe some specific area of concern:

• Use of IE for operating system purposes cannot bleed into web browsing
• IE must close after OS purposes complete
• IE may not ask to become the default browser or make itself the default browser except in specified legitimate circumstances, like perhaps when a person downloads IE separately from Windows or from a Windows update

It will be useful to identify the ways in which Microsoft products -- including Office, as suggesting in a previous comment -- lead people to IE, or open IE as the browser even when another browser has been selected as the default. Feel free to add them here or let me know through other channels.

And here's the relevant text from Microsoft's settlement proposal:

1. (1) Microsoft will make available a mechanism in Windows Client PC Operating Systems within the European Economic Area (EEA) that enables OEMs and end users to turn Internet Explorer off and on.

1. (3) Within Microsoft's PC Productivity Applications [Microsoft Office 2007] distributed in the EEA, Microsoft shall not include any icons, links or short-cuts or provide any other means to start a download or installation of a Microsoft web browser. Microsoft shall not use Windows Update to offer any new version of a Microsoft web browser to users within the EEA unless Internet Explorer is turned on on the user's computer.... Windows Client PC Operating Systems shall enable end users to choose their preferred default web browser. Windows Client PC Operating Systems, including Windows Update, and Internet Explorer, shall not override the user's choice of default web browser.

So how does that sound to you? Will that put an end to Microsoft's ability to use Windows to undo or otherwise subvert user's choice of browser?

Here's what I see in this part of the Microsoft proposal:

Microsoft will provide users a switch to turn IE off at which point it disappears from the system and won't be turned back on by Office 2007 or Windows Update. That sounds good, but I don't think it will have much practical impact. For this to be meaningful, I think Microsoft needs to to do one of two things. One, they could make the IE off switch a public API so that it can be offered as a checkbox in browser installers ("Would you like Opera to replace Internet Explorer?") where it might actually get used some. Or, two, they could change the language to say they will not use Windows Update to ask users to make IE the default browser if the user has already made another browser the default. Microsoft has a long history of using Windows Update to undo user choice and they're basically saying here that they'll continue those practices unless IE is fully turned off. So, in my view, it needs to be really easy to turn off, or they need to extend the language to cover the case where IE's on but not the default browser.

Microsoft agrees to not advertise IE, either through links, icons, or shortcuts, from within Office 2007. That's a good start but I think it doesn't go far enough. What about Microsoft programs other than Office 2007 (I read that Office 2010 is just around the corner, for example,) and what about non-Microsoft programs that call IE directly when they really should be calling the default browser? If Microsoft wants this provision of their settlement proposal to matter, I think they need to cover more than just Office 2007.

The second principle that Mitchell articulated was Windows can't provide a technical advantage to IE.

Windows has provided technical advantages to IE through techniques such as those listed below. This list is not meant to be conclusive. It is meant to illustrate the range of ways in which Windows can and has made it difficult for other browsers to provide a competitive experience on Windows.

• Making information available to IE before or differently than that information is available to others.
• Making it difficult for other browsers to access browsing information stored in Windows, thus making migration and syncing painful for users and difficult for other browser makers to implement well. This includes information such as formats and metadata related to IE favorites, website passwords, and website cookies.
• IE use of undocumented Windows APIs.
• Providing APIs to IE available to Windows developers as part of the "Windows" API. As a result applications developed by third party developers can send URLs directly to IE rather than to the browser the user has selected as his or her choice.
• Requiring the use of IE to use the Windows update service. (Microsoft appears to have phased out this practice, or to have provided alternatives. I include it as an illustration of the ways Microsoft has, and could again, use Windows to damage competition in the browser space.)

The ubiquity of Windows brings this artificial competitive advantage for IE to almost every single person using a personal operating system. Redressing this setting will help refocus competition on the merits of the browser itself.

And here's what Microsoft is offering the EC:

1. (1) Microsoft will ensure that if Internet Explorer is turned off, then (i) it can only be turned on through user action specifically aimed at turning on Internet Explorer; (ii) the user interface cannot be called upon by applications; and (iii) no icons, links or shortcuts or any other means will appear within Windows to start a download or installation of Internet Explorer

2. (14) Microsoft will ensure that all the Windows APIs on which Internet Explorer relies are disclosed in a complete, accurate and timely manner, so that non-Microsoft web browser suppliers would not be at a competitive disadvantage compared to Microsoft when designing a web browser for Windows. For purposes of this paragraph 14, Internet Explorer consists of the code that is distributed separately from Windows and trademarked or marketed as Internet Explorer.

3. (17) For Windows Vista and successors, Microsoft shall ensure that access and the full functioning of the Windows Update online service (currently available at www.update.microsoft.com) is not dependent on the use of the Internet Explorer user interface.

What do you think? Does that go far enough to mitigating the IE and Windows integration technical advantages?

I personally think this, on the face of it, represents reasonable steps in the right direction, but I'm bothered again by the fact that IE simply won't be turned off all that often so applications will continue to launch IE at which point IE will attempt to undo the user's default browser choice.

The API commitment sounds strong to me, so long as one assumes that the APIs are scoped in such a way that they were actually usable by browsers from other vendors. I'm also a bit concerned about their definition of "Timely Manner" which is "as soon as Microsoft has developed a sufficiently stable 'beta' testing version of Windows (including Service Packs and Updates) and has made this implementation available to third parties for testing purposes for the first time." There are two issues I'm concerned about here. First, is the first beta really early enough for third parties to take advantage or to alert Microsoft about concerns with the API that could negatively impact browsers from other vendors. The second issue is that I do not see a provision for the situation where there's an API that's new to a new Windows release but isn't yet utilized by Internet Explorer. If the requirement is to disclose only APIs that IE is using at the time of the Windows beta, what happens if the API isn't used at the time of the Windows release but IE later takes advantage of that API?

Windows Update is already pretty well separated from Internet Explorer with the stand-alone Automatic Updates program, but if I'm reading this right, Microsoft is saying that the online version will also not depend on IE. I'm a little unclear though, because they're not saying it won't require the IE rendering engine, just that it won't require the IE user interface. A more explicit "Windows Update online service at www.update.microsoft.com will work in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera" would have made me feel a lot better here.

The third Mozilla principle was Windows must enable people to choose other browsers

Mitchell put it like this:

How much distribution advantage can Windows provide to IE? If one answers "as much as Microsoft wants with no limits" then this principle wouldn't be implemented. If one answers "Windows can't provide any distribution advantage to IE" then one would likely end up supporting a remedy that requires Windows to install a browser separately, based on a consumer's decisions. If one answers "some" then one looks to a type of "must carry" remedy; a remedy that has been reported as of interest to the EC.

In her synthesis post, Mitchell added,

The more direct, product based Principle 3, Windows must enable people to choose other browsers, generated some very positive feedback and also some concerns. The positive response comes from the idea that one can't address the problem without addressing the product. The concerns seem based in (a) complexity of user experience concerns; (b) concern over unintended consequences.

Here's what Microsoft is offering the EC for browser choice remedies.

2. (7) Microsoft will distribute a Ballot Screen software update to users within the EEA of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Client PC Operating Systems, by means of Windows Update

2. (8) The Ballot Screen will give those users who have set Internet Explorer as their default web browser an opportunity to choose whether and which competing web browser(s) to install in addition to the one(s) they already have

2. (11) The Ballot Screen will be populated with the most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows with a usage share of equal to or more than 0.5% in the EEA as measured semi-annually by a source commonly agreed between Microsoft and the European Commission

2. (12) The Ballot Screen will in a horizontal line and in an unbiased way display icons of and basic identifying information on the web browsers

2. (9) ...Microsoft may offer tools to volume license users that prevent the Ballot Screen update from being installed on all computers covered by the licence

2. (10) Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser or discourage the user from downloading and installing additional web browsers via the Ballot Screen and making a web browser competing with a Microsoft web browser the default.

This remedy had supporters and detractors both inside and outside of the Mozilla community. Whether you came down for or against, since Microsoft has put this on the table as one of their big offers to the EC and since it's getting the lion's share of press coverage, I'm interested in what you think Microsoft's offer would actually accomplish and whether or not it would address the principle involved, Windows must enable people to choose other browsers.

I'm of mixed feelings on this one. I think that a lot will depend on the actual implementation of the ballot. In the current incarnation, I'd be surprised if any major changes resulted.

First, by putting IE in the left-most spot, they're directly contradicting paragraph (10). That layout makes IE the "default" choice because it places it first in a horizontal list. For real unbiased ballot, the primary offerings should be in randomized order, or some other order that doesn't recreate the priorities that MS obtained unlawfully.

If the ballot is to go beyond just offering a real choice and the goal is to actually effect real change, IE should be placed last on the list so that users arrive at IE after evaluating the descriptions of the other browsers first.

IE has essentially twice the representation on this ballot screen as the other browsers, maybe more. Since it already is the default browser for Windows, "no user action" is the same as choosing IE. That means there are two ways to achieve IE as the default, either by selecting it, or by ignoring the question. That's a very large advantage for IE.

(Most common user behavior when confronted by roadblocks is to take an action they believe will most effectively remove the roadblock. We've learned this lesson well in dealing with browser security warnings and other dialogs that interrupt the user's flow. Users are going to instinctively dismiss the entire window or pick the default or most prominent choice.)

But even with all those items addressed, there's still the very large problem with this implementation. If we assume that the user choice to pick a different browser in this ballot is a clear signal of the user's intention to actually get and at least try out that alternative browser, then we have to have some better mechanism for fulfilling that intention. Clicking a download link does not guarantee that the user will achieve the goal of getting and trying a new browser. Far from it. There are quite a few steps between clicking the link and a new browser window in arriving in front of the user. At Mozilla we're very experienced with this and we probably have the most effective system in place for helping a user through the process of clicking a download link and having a first run experience with the a new browser, but we still see significant drop off at every stage of that process. For example, if you count the number of people that click the "download Firefox" button at our Website, and then you count the number of people that actually completed the download, located the downloaded file, launched the installer, and completed the installer, you'll find that only about 57% of the people make it through that process and ever even get a first look at Firefox running. And we're really really good at this. There's even further fall-off when you look at people who can still locate and use Firefox a month later resulting in a conversion of only about 35%. So, if you want to fulfill the user's intention, it's simply not enough to put a download link on the page. The effort a user must understand and put forward to achieve a browser change is significantly larger then the effort required to maintain the status quo and that just isn't a recipe for meaningful choice or real change.

Finally, even if a user does manage to acquire a new browser, IE still has the advantage of starting out with the default status and the most prominent placement on the Windows Desktop and the Start menu. For ever after, even something as simple as an accidental or habitual click on the "blue e" will result in another easy opportunity for Microsoft to undo the user's choice.

It's my view that to make the ballot meaningful, Microsoft would have to address all of these issues, and possibly a few more I haven't thought of.

The fourth principle, Microsoft's financial and other incentives to distributors must be browser-neutral, didn't generate a lot of discussion in the Mozilla community. I think this is because the OEM channel is opaque to most people, or even worse, works almost precisely opposite from how one might guess.

Here's Mitchell again:

(This [OEM] distribution channel is *so* valuable that Microsoft's early efforts to promote IE in the 1990's included threatening the OEMs with the loss of their ability to ship Windows (and thus the end of their business) if the OEMs didn't ship IE exclusively. This practice stopped after the US judicial system determined a set of these sorts of practices to be illegal.)

Historically, software vendors generated revenue on upgrades and the licensing of subsequent and additional products. Today the models are diverse and complex, and may also include revenue-sharing between OEMs and software or service providers. For example, if you use a desktop search functionality, chances are high that the company you bought the machine from is getting a piece of revenue from the search provider.

This principle does not challenge these general business models. Like the other remedies, it is tied to the monopoly status of Windows, which requires all PC OEMs to work with Microsoft. In addition these programs cannot be matched by others because the Windows monopoly gives Microsoft a raft of unique tools. This principle prohibits the use of those tools to promote IE in ways that are unavailable to other browser manufacturers. It asserts that Windows monopoly status cannot be tied to financial incentives that further damage browser competition.

Microsoft's settlement proposal says:

1. (4) Microsoft shall not retaliate against any OEM for developing, using, distributing, promoting or supporting software that competes with Microsoft web browsers, in particular by altering Microsoft's commercial relations with that OEM, or by withholding Consideration.

1. (5) Microsoft shall not enter into any agreement with an OEM that conditions the grant of any Consideration on the OEM's refraining from developing, using, distributing, promoting or supporting any software that competes with Microsoft web browsers.

1. (6) Microsoft shall not terminate a direct OEM license for Windows Client PC Operating Systems without having first given the OEM written notice of the reasons for the proposed termination and not less than thirty days' opportunity to cure.

So what do you think? Is this sufficient to calm fears that Microsoft would strong-arm PC makers into distributing IE or making it the default browser rather than some alternative?

This sounds to me a lot like what Microsoft was already forced to agree to in the U.S. after they were convicted of anti-competitive practices for exactly this kind of behavior at the turn of the century. If this wasn't already the status quo, it certainly would be a good thing to make it so.

Mozilla's fifth principle was Microsoft must educate people about other browsers.

Mitchell introduced this principle saying

One of the results of the Windows / IE integration is that millions of people believe that the "blue e" icon IS the Internet. They are unaware of of Microsoft's control over their online lives through this blue "e" or that they have additional choices. This principle asserts that Microsoft should participate in correcting the misconception that it has created. The monopoly of Windows and Microsoft in people's computer experience means there is no other entity that can substitute for Microsoft here.

And here's what Microsoft is offering that aligns with this principle.

1. (1) Microsoft will maintain a web page on www.microsoft.com that explains how users can turn Internet Explorer on and off, and will maintain that page so that other browser vendors can link to it if they wish.

2. (8) The Ballot Screen will provide two links associated with each web browser. An "install" link will connect to a vendor-managed distribution server, which, upon the user's confirmation, can directly download the installation package of the selected web browser (and only a web browser, including software to update the web browser only) for local execution (the resulting situation will therefore equal a scenario in which the user himself had downloaded and executed the installation package without being aided by the Ballot Screen). An "information" link will connect to a vendor-managed web page from which the vendor can offer users more information about its browser and installation options. Users will be able to select one or more of the web browsers offered through the Ballot Screen. Microsoft shall ensure that in the Ballot Screen users will be informed in an unbiased way that they can turn Internet Explorer off.

This is obviously not a major education campaign, but I'm interested in whether or not you all think these documents will address the principle that Microsoft must educate people about other browsers.

In my view, this principle was always going to be difficult to put into practice outside of what could be accomplished in some implementation of principle 3, but Microsoft does have a pretty big footprint in publishing and education so there's no shortage of places Microsoft could create and deploy content that educated people about Web browser choice. I think, though, that the most effective education would be delivered through Windows itself with something like the proposed ballot. The information included in the ballot would need quite a bit of improvement over what Microsoft has proposed, at a minimum prefacing the choice of browsers with a clear description of what a Web browser is and how they can differ from vendor to vendor.

The sixth principle, Microsoft tools for developing content must not produce IE specific or Windows-specific results and the seventh "potential" principle "IE must comply with web standards" (Opera has suggested that Microsoft must support web standards they have promised to support) go un-adressed in Microsoft's remedy offer to the EC but are somewhat covered in an accompanying proposals that Microsoft calls a "Public Interoperability Undertaking" which as I noted in the intro to this post isn't legally binding.

Still, Microsoft is on record saying that it will support a set of Web standards and that it will do more to increase interoperability between its products and products from other vendors.

How do you think that will work out? Do you think Microsoft will follow through with this Public Undertaking? Will it have the impact that Opera and other advocates of using legal pressures to force standards compliance were hoping for?

I think that six was actually a pretty important principle and I would have liked to see Microsoft address this specifically in its settlement proposal. Microsoft's IE hegemony has been consistently bolstered and supported by the IE-specific or IE-advantaged Web content that is produced from other Microsoft products. When you save an Office document for the Web, for example, it has always favored the IE browser and disadvantaged competing browsers. When you produce a Web site or even a simple Web page using Microsoft's Web development tools, that site or page has always worked better in IE than in competing browsers. This has the very real impact of discouraging the use of competing browsers and persisting Microsoft's dominance in the space.

The idea of legally mandating standards never appealed to me. I think I understand what Opera and other supporters of this principle were trying to achieve, but I think there were always just too many pitfalls here. It's even more than just the question of which standards and what "support" actually means. If, for example, the EC mandated that Microsoft fully support CSS standards that were ratified by the W3C. Well, Microsoft is a member organization with standing on the CSS Working Group and they could simply derail useful CSS advances in order to avoid having to comply with the EC. No one wins there. In my view, the standards bodies are already problematic enough and I really wouldn't want to see them further perverted by member organizations seeking legal or political gain.

I'll just close by re-stating that I think Mozilla's involvement in this has been quite positive and I believe that Microsoft's settlement attempt addresses many of the concerns that Mitchell spelled out. Whether it addresses them well or effectively, I'm interested in hearing from you all. I'll reserve my judgements for a later post.

In case you haven't seen it, there's a great feature on Mozilla this weekend in the New York Times called For Mozilla and Google, Group Hugs Get Tricky. Ignoring the headline, which doesn't do the article justice, it's really quite a good take on what we are and what we're about.

If Adobe is to be believed about the reach of the Flash Player plug-in, then virtually every computer connected to the Internet is vulnerable because of this Adobe security flaw.

The good news for Firefox users is that there's a very simple way to avoid risk while we all wait on Adobe to fix their flaw and roll out an update to the billion or so people affected.

In Firefox, simply go to Tools -> Add-ons and select the Plug-ins tab. There you'll find a list of your installed Firefox plug-ins. Protecting yourself is as simple as selecting the Flash plug-in by clicking that row and then clicking the "Disable" button. (When Adobe has updated your system, you can restore Flash by repeating these instructions and clicking the "Enable" button.)

I mostly agree with Haavard Moen's Opera blog post.

My first thought after reading his post was that Haavard's point could have been made better by simply reminding people what it was like on the Web in 2003 and 2004 before Firefox came on the scene and when Internet Explorer constituted about 95% of Web browsing.

Not only did IE make up the overwhelming majority of browsing before Firefox, but it was ancient technology that had been mostly abandoned to new development by Microsoft (since IE 6 shipped in 2001.)

Because an exploit in IE 6 meant an exploit for virtually every computer connected to the Web, it became a very appealing target for bad guys trying to infect computers with worms and viruses and other malware.

Because it was an old technology that Microsoft had relegated to a very low priority, newly discovered security holes were left open for weeks, months, and even years while fundamental architectural flaws meant that finding new holes and developing new and ever more sophisticated and powerful exploits and payloads was getting easier for the bad guys with every passing day.

The result was that browsing just wasn't a safe activity. Users couldn't protect themselves except by not using the Web.

That was a Web monoculture and those were pretty bad times for everyone online.

But then I reminded myself that almost half the people online today weren't even using the Web back in the days before Firefox. Half a billion people online today don't remember a Web before Firefox because they weren't online before Firefox.

If it's not particularly useful to try to personalize the danger of monoculture with the "remember the days before Firefox" example, then how can we explain it, in terms that will really hit home, to all of these more recent Web users?

I don't think Haavard's post will really sink in for most people reading it. It works for people who already understand the concepts and have the historical context to see how bad things can really get. But I'm afraid that most people won't believe that it's a real danger because we haven't seen any catastrophic infections recently.

That's just plain luck, though. The recent Flash Player flaw Haavard mentions opens the door to an exploit that if deployed carefully could infect virtually every Web connected computer. I'll say that again. Virtually every web-connected computer is at risk right this minute.

Hopefully Adobe will correct this flaw and deploy it to the billion or more people affected, but until that roll-out is complete, we're talking about a very serious problem.

We'll be lucky if this isn't catastrophic. I suspect it won't be, but that's not because of anything Adobe has done to date. It's because we're probably going to get lucky. But is trusting luck really a viable long-term approach to security of the Web? I don't think so.

Will it take a year of exploits like we saw in 2003 and 2004 to get people thinking again about the dangers of internet-connected software monocultures? I sure hope not.

Internet explorer 8 has been available for 4 months now and it's had a pretty major impact -- on IE 7.

This is a crude chart, showing just two points, where things were the day IE 8 was released, and where things are today. (data from Net Applications)

As I've said in previous blog posts, browser releases, Microsoft's or any of the other vendors', are having no impact at all on IE 6. IE 6 is on its own trajectory that's probably much more aligned with the PC upgrade cycle and the growth of the Web.

But IE 8 is reaching a lot of IE 7 users and I expect this trend to continue for some time. Users that were willing or able to upgrade to IE 7 are probably going to do the same thing for IE 8. With IE 8's compatibility mode and increased security and standards support, there's really no reason for people who are on IE 7 not to upgrade.

The results are pretty interesting right now. IE 7, the most popular browser version on the planet, accounts for less than 30% of browser usage. IE 6, the scourge of the Web, now accounts for less than 15% of Web usage. And IE 8 has just topped 20% of browser usage.

This is a very different and I think a much improved state of affairs from where things were when we launched Firefox 1.0. Back then IE 6 was the most popular browser with almost 85% of Web usage followed by older IE versions accounting for another 10 points of share, and with all other vendors' browsers accounting for only 5% of usage.

In less than three weeks, more than 30 million people have taken the initiative and downloaded a copy of Firefox 3.5.

This, it's worth noting, has happened without prompting from Firefox's update system. Firefox 3 has not yet been instructed to notify users of the availability of Firefox 3.5 so this is all organic adoption, fueled by the buzz around our release and not by any direct outreach to Firefox users.

If all goes well, we'll be turning that notification on for Firefox 3 users in the near future and that's when we can expect to see an even more substantial movement of users from the old version to the new.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer team has fixed, albeit a bit late, the IE 8 set-up to not trick or confuse people into making IE 8 their default browser.

The problem was that most Windows users were getting a prompt from Windows Update to get the new IE 8 and that new version was causing a lot of people to accidentally replace their current default browser with IE 8 because "express settings" which most people were opting for looked like the best way to complete the setup, included the action of undoing the user's default browser choice.

Updating your Windows software, even if you don't use it regularly, is a good thing because some "broken" Windows apps will call programs like IE directly instead of the default browser. Having old and insecure versions of IE on your system is actually dangerous so I'm glad people are upgrading.

But, upgrading non-default and rarely used software shouldn't have the side-effect of undoing user choice. Microsoft's update process was doing just that. Microsoft is taking a good step to remedy this and that's a good thing.

Maybe more important than the Windows Update for XP and Vista users is that Microsoft has indicated that this will also be fixed for people upgrading their OS to Windows 7. Until now, it had appeared that people upgrading to Windows 7 were also going to be misled into accidentally replacing their current default browser with IE 8.

Microsoft is a convicted monopolist in the US and is facing serious anti-competition allegations in the EU and because of that they have to be a lot more careful about using their status as OS provider to undo user choice like this. They're a bit late on this for the IE 8 roll-out, which has been going on for several months now, but I'm glad they're getting it fixed before Windows 7.

We've just pushed out the first update to Firefox 3.5.

This release fixes a slow start-up issue that was making Firefox painful for some users. It also addresses the security flaw that was disclosed earlier this week.

Getting the update is as simple as clicking Help -> Check for updates... in your Firefox browser.

You can read more about this statibility and security release over at the Mozilla Developer News blog.

Of course our project and technologies go back much further, but it was on this day in 2003 that the Mozilla Foundation was launched.

Since then, we've grown up as a project, transitioning from the old Mozilla suite to the stand-alone Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird email client while increasing the size and capabilities of our community of contributors by an order of magnitude or more. We've developed as an organization, from half a dozen full-timers to about 250 today. We've increased our influence on the Web, extended our reach from a few early adopters to more than 300 million Firefox users worldwide. And we've helped to move the entire industry forward by introducing great technologies and user experiences and by re-invigorating the competitive landscape.

There were a lot of folks that said it wasn't possible, that no one, and definitely not a tiny non-profit open source project, could take on Microsoft's overwhelming IE monopoly -- especially after AOL cut the cord. Then again, people have been writing Mozilla's obituary since 1998 and yet we keep moving forward, every day working to build a better Internet for everyone.

And I think that's one of Mozilla's great strengths. We're in this for the long haul -- and it's been and continues to be a long haul. We didn't get 75 language versions of Firefox into the hands of 300 million users in 160 countries overnight. We didn't go from zero to almost a quarter of global Web usage in one or even two releases.

The Web is a very large and growing thing and it moves a lot slower than most people understand. But we're here for the long haul. And we're here for the public benefit.

I think that's pretty important and so today I celebrate everyone that has been and everyone that currently is working with Mozilla to bring more choice, innovation, and participation to the Web.

John Gruber over at Dring Fireball says, "It makes no sense to me why Chrome OS isn’t based on Android. "

I wonder whether he though about and discounted (and if so, why?) the seemingly obvious reason, that Android is a Java platform and Chrome OS is intended to be an Open Web (HTML+CSS+images+JavaScript) platform.

If that's not an obvious distinction and sensible differentiation to smart folks like John, maybe I'm the one that's missing the right answer here.

Still, it sounds to me like Android is a platform for installed Java apps and Chrome OS is supposed to be a platform for hosted Open Web apps. Java really isn't at all the same thing as Open Web tech. Local and remote apps aren't really the same thing either.

I think this is Google betting on the Open Web, the way the that Palm did with WebOS on the Pre, rather than betting on native apps the way Apple, Linux, and Microsoft have.

There's lots of Google Chrome OS buzz around the Web today, much like what we saw 9 months ago when Google Chrome browser was announced. The headlines are, predictably sensational.

I have a question though. When all the hype has blown over, how will we know if Google Chrome OS is a success? What's the measure? What kind of penetration do we expect in the next few years?

With the Google Chrome browser there was an awful lot of speculation that it would destroy Firefox (or IE) in no time at all. We're more than 9 months out from that hype and the Chrome Browser has destroyed nether Firefox nor IE and has only just beaten out Opera in terms of usage share with about 2% of the global browsing market.

So what is success in Google's new "war" with Microsoft? I'd like to offer a measure of success that's at least somewhat rooted in reality.

If Google Chrome OS has 2% of OS usage three years from now, I think it will be safe to say it's been "wildly successful."

What follows is some back of the napkin math, some educated guesses, and some wild speculation that led me to that 2% figure.

Here's my thinking. Google has stated that they're targeting netbooks first. 2008 saw about 10 million netbooks sold. Considering the ongoing global recession, 2009 will probably see that double to 20 million sold. Let's imagine that it grows to 30 million in 2010, 40 million in 2011 and 50 million in 2012. This is wild speculation, and I suspect it's on the high side, but I'm trying to imagine the best possible landscape for Google Chrome OS.

So, from the time Google gets into this market, a year from now, through their first two years of Google Chrome OS distribution, there would be approximately 85 million netbooks sold. What percentage of that do I think Google will represent? Well, that's a difficult question to answer but I think a generous guess would be that they could take 1/3rd, or just over 28 million in sales away from Microsoft. That's kind of an ugly number, though, so I'm going to round it up to an even 30 million.

The installed base of Web-connected computers is about 1.2 billion and if growth continues at about the same pace, it will be about 1.5 billion by the summer of 2012. (See this post for more on that number.)

And we do the math. 30 million divided by 1.5 billion gives us 2%.

If Google does everything right with their Chrome OS and they manage to acquire a full third of netbook sales in their first two years, then we'd see Chrome OS represent about 2% of Web-connected computers by the summer of 2012.

If you accept that, then you sort of have to admit that the headlines around the Web today are pretty over the top.

This goes to a larger point, I think. New markets on the Web can emerge an grow really quickly. There's lots of opportunity for something like Facebook to take over in just a few years. But that's not really the case for PCs and desktop software. The installed base is just really, really large, and the growth and upgrade cycle are much much slower than with Web services.

Firefox has been the most successful piece of desktop software to ever challenge Microsoft's offering. We started the effort 10 years ago and finally arrived at a successful product 5 years ago and in the 5 years since we shipped that product, we've managed to gain about 300 million users and a quarter of Web browsing usage.

Apple has been the most successful operating system to challenge Microsoft ever and they've managed in the 8+ years of OS X availability to grab only about 5% of the global OS installed base.

It's just not fast or easy to move a market that's more than a billion large. Anyone that thinks that major change can happen in months, or even a couple of years, doesn't understand this space very well.

It feels like we've been moving forever, but it's really only been a few weeks. Our current status is about 80% moved to the new home. Things are looking up.

We're still sleeping, along with Ptolemy and Munch, at the old place while we wrap up veterinary visits, travel, and other odds and ends. If all goes well, we'll have transitioned our primary residence to the new house by the end of this month.

Ken Kovash, over at the Mozilla Blog of Metrics, has a nice rundown on week one of Firefox 3.5. I'd just like to second Ken's comment that this is all quite extraordinary.

One thing you'll notice is that Firefox 3.0 had an unprecidented first week and 3.5 is slightly below that in downloads. To understand why, you'll have to look back to our Firefox 3.0 Download Day campaign where the global Mozilla community worked really hard to get everyone available to download on the first day of availability. The campaign was a great success and did a lot to raise the general awareness of Mozilla and Firefox.

With Firefox 3.5, we didn't make that kind of push. We're watching a more "normal" adoption curve. I'm convinced that within another week or two, we'll see the Firefox 3.5 downloads outpace what we saw with 3.0 and that when we look back to the first month's downloads, 3.5 will be solidly in the lead.

Still, it's worth going back to what Ken said, "I think it’s safe to say that not many pieces of software have ever seen more than 10 million consumers make the conscious decision to download within a single seven-day period."

There's been a lot of talk the last few days about Internet Explorer's drop in usage share. I'm still waiting on the Net Applications June numbers which I think more highly of than the StatCounter numbers, but one thing is clear, IE 6's downward trend isn't changing.

When Microsoft shipped IE 7 in October of 2006, it moved a lot of IE 6 users.

As you can see from the chart, the Windows Update system did a pretty good job of moving users in the first few months. Then things slowed for a bit. Seeing the slowdown in migration, Microsoft decided in October of 2007 to lift the WGA requirement and you can see the line get much steeper again 

But by October of 2008, after a year of WGA updates and then a year of non-WGA updates, Internet Explorer 7 was no longer pulling in large numbers of IE 6 users. At this point, I think it's a safe bet that anyone who was going to update from IE 6 to IE 7 had done so.

And not only had the remaining IE 6 users stopped moving up to IE 7, they didn't move to IE 8 either. By the time Internet Explorer 8 was released, IE 6's trajectory had stabilized and even a major release from Microsoft couldn't budge it.

So what is driving IE 6 share down at this pretty consistent rate of 9/10ths of a point per month? My theory is that this is a combination of two factors. The first, and larger factor, I think, is the PC upgrade cycle. Every month, some number of PCs get replaced with newer PCs and so IE 6 installs are disappearing from the Web at least at that rate. I think that the second factor is overall growth of PCs on the Web.

Last year, about 300 million new PCs were sold. About 200 million of those were replacement PCs, upgrades of older computers. About 100 million of those were "new to the Web" computers. That is, they were not upgrades that replaced an existing Web connected computer and those represent the actual real growth of users on the Web.

As PCs are upgraded, we see some direct movement from IE 6 users to IE 7 or IE 8. As the total Web population grows, the IE 6 installed base represents a smaller portion of the pie. Taken together, I believe these factors are the only influence on the drop of IE 6.

That's some bad news and some good news. The bad is that there's nothing any of the browser vendors can really do to speed the withdrawal of IE 6 from the Web. Releasing new versions, the big lever we have to move the Web forward, just doesn't reach those IE 6 users. The good is that the PC upgrade cycle and the growth of the market are both relatively predictable and steady. That means that we should be able to predict pretty accurately what IE 6 usage is going to look like in a month or in a year.

Here's my IE 6 prediction. It looks to me like we could see Internet Explorer 6 finally fall under the 10% mark by the end of this year. If you extend that line, IE 6 would be essentially gone from the Web by the end of next year.

But I can do a little better than that :-) Because IE 6's trajectory is so stable, it's not really going out on a limb to make predictions 6 months out. I like going out on limbs :-)

The chart here looks at more fine-grained tracking information and so the trajectories of the newer and more active versions of Internet Explorer are a bit easier to discern. Still, six months is a long time in the browser world and seeing the trends sooner, as is possible with the more fine-grained data, doesn't mean seeing the trend better.

Having said that, wouldn't it be neat if at the end of this year, IE 6 and IE 7 were both under 10% share? With IE 6 and 7 quickly disappearing, will we look back at 2010 and say "there began the Modern Era of the Web"?

Data through May 2009 from Net Applications Browser Market Share Report. All newer plots are my own predictions

Erick Schonfeld, over at TechCrunch, takes a look at the StatCounter data (which still bothers me a bit because of the unexplained spikes) and notices something I've been saying here for a while. IE is falling pretty fast.

Here's a chart I whipped up from the StatCounter raw data.

Other, which is mostly Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and Firefox are both growing pretty solidly, and all at the expense of Internet Explorer.

The current state of things, according to StatCounter, in rough terms are this: IE is about 60%, Firefox is about 30% and Other is about 10%. It's not an ideal landscape, but it's certainly an improvement over just 5 years ago when IE was more than 95% of the browser market.

click image to visit source.

More here, including video.

This week, Internet Explorer 6 has finally been surpassed by Internet Explorer 8. This is a huge event for the Web. IE 6 is now the least popular IE version still in widespread use.

Browser tracking data from Net Applications Market Share Report.

When making decisions about how to code and test Web pages, priorities are starting to shift. The Web is getting better.

We just crossed the two days since release mark at about 8 million downloads. Not bad at all.

My good friend, and Mozilla contributor, Ken Saunders was just featured in an excellent Business Week article titled "Mozilla's Crowdsourcing Mystique.

Congratulations Ken! It's recognition well deserved.

We shipped Firefox 3.5 at about this time yesterday and already 5 million people have downloaded it. You can watch our live download stats here and see where those downloads are coming from. (In case you were wondering, no, that's not Flash. It's a nifty SVG, Canvas, and JavaScript app.)