People in Germany Are Switching Browsers

Ken Kovash

26 responses

Last Friday, an agency of the German government issued a warning against the use of Internet Explorer.  What has been the impact on Firefox and the Mozilla community?  Looking at the chart below, we can see that over the past few days there has been a huge increase in the number of Firefox downloads from IE users in Germany.  The orange area is meant to represent the “incremental” impact, i.e., the number of downloads beyond what we would have normally expected on those days.  As the chart highlights, the orange area adds up to just over 300,000 downloads during the recent Friday-Monday period.

Impact_from_Germany_v2

26 responses

  1. Daniel Glazman wrote on :

    Ken, please post the data for the french users when you have some cycles. The french CERT issued same warning and we’d love to see how it affected the market share. Thanks !

  2. Petit wrote on :

    I wish my Government do like this too.

  3. Thomas wrote on :

    I like it ;). If an average of 50.000 users will download FF in the future in about 1600 days all people in Germany would be provided with the best browser in the world.

  4. Paul wrote on :

    I love the Firefox and think that is now the beast browser.

  5. Lukas Blakk wrote on :

    The Australians did too: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/19/2795684.htm

  6. Lincoln Baxter wrote on :

    Could you get the US convernment to do this please? Thanks…

  7. Andreas wrote on :

    You think that really all people in Germany do use a Personal Computer?

  8. Indian Art wrote on :

    I think people will be a lot safer for switching to Firefox.

    I wish my Government issues a warning about Internet Explorer’s vulnerability too.

  9. Indian Art wrote on :

    People in Germany Are Switching Browsers

    All I can say people in Germany are smart.

  10. renantech wrote on :

    I found most users used firefox than internet explorer because it is faster. And now because of the problem of internet explorer most users used internet explorer will go firefox and other browser. Microsoft must fix this problem ASAP. Sikat ang Pinoy

  11. sergio wrote on :

    “All I can say people in Germany are smart.”

    If they were smart, they would have been using Firefox from the beginning 🙂

  12. Gary wrote on :

    As this growth in downloading happened over the weekend these are home computers not office ones – I wonder what is happening in the work environment? Does the following Monday to Friday period show a similar trend? Or will it once Firefox passes any internal testing required before companies roll it out?

  13. jmdesp wrote on :

    What’s funny is that it’s not the first time that CERTA and BSI issued a warning against IE, and they used this time no stronger word than previously (their recommendation is actually only temporary, until IE is fixed). There seems to be a threshold of popularity were such a message has much more effect. If so the influence in France will probably be weaker than in Germany (Germany has a quite higher user of Firefox from start).

  14. Wolfgang wrote on :

    Hi Andreas,
    You’re right.
    I’m sitting in Germany and not using a Personal Computer.

    Just playing with my laptop 🙂

  15. Philipp wrote on :

    Great, but also great that Opera also participates. I think the goal should not be a market share of 100%. Not for IE, not for FF and nobody else, since a mono culture is not fruitful enough, nor is is a particular safe setting. Anyhow I still like my grown up Phoenix and hope that FF will evolve further!

  16. Torsten wrote on :

    @Andreas: Over 95% of all Germans DOES has a PC and internet access!!! Does Americans believe that people in other countries lives on the back side of the Moon??? Germany is -technologically- much more ahead than the U.S. in many ways.

  17. PasBern wrote on :

    There is even a follow-up on the ministry’s warning about the security issues of Microsoft’s internet browser. On January 20th the BSI published a warning about security problems of Windows’s mail programmes (Outlook 2000, 2003; Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live – in fact all of Windows’s mail software) and the operating system in general. Interestingly, it did NOT recommend to use any alternative OS. Is Microsoft’s lobbying power to big to tell consumers that there are other (definitively better) operating systems around? What about Linux or Mac OS?
    But I guess computer users should realize themselves that Microsoft’s products are best to be left alone. Are we so immature or lazy that we need government to tell us which software to use?

  18. Feuerfuchs Fan wrote on :

    Hi Sergio,

    Firefox is used in Germany by more users than IE, at least most Germans are smart. Is IE really most popular in other countries?

  19. felix wrote on :

    Why is the download button not highter at http://www.mozilla.com/de/ ?
    http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ says that only 98% see it fully???

  20. Old Nick wrote on :

    HI Feuerfuchs Fan,
    Not anymore. In CIS(Russia, Ukraine Belarus etc) Opera is very popular.
    Here is yesterday’s statistics of popular in Ukraine portal I.UA

    MS Internet Explorer 151’033 36.0%
    Opera 149’260 35.6%
    Firefox 110’933 26.4%
    Others 25’186 6.0%

  21. Robin Cox wrote on :

    Oh how I love the Germans a day like this! I hope my government (Sweden) will do the same some day. It seems that Germany are ahead of us though.

    By the way, you should visit my website!

  22. Fred Flint wrote on :

    Oh how ironic that today the German government have given the same warning about Firefox.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8580716.stm

    Not so smug now eh?

  23. Scaune de birou wrote on :

    This are the results from my site (in Romania)

    Internet Explorer 54.3 %
    Firefox 33 %
    Google Chrome 5.8 %
    Opera 4.7 %
    Safari 1.3 %

  24. Colin Hall wrote on :

    It is amazing that people are still listening to ‘Government Agencies’ in this day and age, but certainly a good thing for Mozilla.

    Here are my stats from that period onward:

    January Firefox 33% | IE Mixed Versions 55%
    February Firefox 29.58% | Granparadiso .4% | IE Mixed Versions 62%
    March Firefox 22% | Granparadiso 8.6% | IE Mixed Versions 56.5%
    April Firefox 22% | Granparadiso 9.2% | IE Mixed Versions 55.9%
    May Firefox 23.5% | Granparadiso 9.7% | IE Mixed Versions 55.2%

  25. hannah wrote on :

    Firefox is great… I mean the greatest among its kind. It’s no surprise why is is popular to all online users.

  26. Pingback from Internet Explorer Fix Tool Available; Critical Security Update on Hold until Tomorrow | HOTforSecurity on :

    […] Explorer breach, as it also did at the beginning of 2010. Mozilla then proudly announced that “people in Germany are switching browsers,” and the Firefox community expanded steeply due to the number of downloads. Tweet […]