The Early Rise of Firefox 3 Adoption

Ken Kovash

3 responses

We’ve known for some time that Firefox 3 (beta versions) is being adopted at incredible rates.  In other words, in terms of aggregate numbers of active daily users, we’ve seen far more users of Fx3 beta than we ever saw with Fx2 beta.

I was curious about taking this knowledge one step further – how does the adoption rate compare on a percentage basis across time periods?

In late September 2006 (one month prior to the official release of Fx2), here’s what the situation looked like:
(Fx2 beta users)/(Fx1.5 users) = 1.4%

Today, here’s what the current situation looks like for Firefox 3:
(Fx3 beta users)/(Fx2 users) = 2.0%

How should one interpret these numbers?  There are certainly different ways to think about this.  However, I think the biggest takeaway is two-fold: (1) Firefox 3 rocks and (2) our users remain extraordinarily passionate.  Downloading a beta product requires a user to both make an informed decision and go out of their way to intentionally take an action, and the fact that millions of people around the globe have already taken this step with Firefox 3 is utterly amazing.

3 responses

  1. boemer wrote on :

    I think Firefox 1.5 was okay, Firefox 2.0 was not really an improvement. (For example the setInterval/setTimeout was a complete catastroph.

    Firefox 3.0 is faster, looks great on a mac, and just rocks…

    The only problem it is still a beta….

  2. Bob the Milkman wrote on :

    I like lots of features of firefox 3, and I use it, but it is a good thing it’s still a beta – I have been getting crashes and such with b5. Unfortunately, many extension developers have not been keeping up with the frequent updating of the program 🙁

  3. pd wrote on :

    one way to look at it is that Firefox 2 performance e was so crappy, those who are passionate enough to still hate the opposition will be inclined to give Fx3 a go. Luckily it seems to finally improve perf to a satisfactory level. Otherwise your beta levels for Fx3 might have seen a big downturn.