Twenty-Five Percent Of Surfers Use Firefox: Report
Firefox, which just turned five, now claims 25% of end users, according to market research firm Net Applications. Calm down though: it was about a year ago that Net Applications said Firefox hit 20%.
Obviously Firefox isn't gaining market share by leaps and bounds. It's growing slowly, and with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, it has more competitors than ever. Still, Mitchell Baker, the former CEO of Mozilla Corp. and the current chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, mentioned the 1-in-4 figure in a post to her personal blog earlier this week when she celebrated Firefox's fifth-year anniversary.
According to Net Applications, for the week of Nov. 1 through Nov. 7, Firefox accounted for 25.1% of all browsers. Internet Explorer led all browsers with 63.3%, while Apple's Safari (4.4%), Google's Chrome (3.9%) and Opera Software's Opera (2.3%) trailed.
Look at that Chrome percentage, though. Chrome advertises itself as the fastest browser, and that makes a difference for many. Last month, for the fourth time in the last year, Chrome's market share increase bettered Firefox's increase. Extrapolating current trends, Chrome could reach a 5% share in March 2010, six months ahead of Google's announced goal of September 2010. After that, Google's next target is to make 10% sometime in 2011.
It's quite possible. Chrome is fast, but what it lacks is an extensions network like Firefox's. Google is working on that hole, however, and it they plug it, you could see a number of users switch ... like me, perhaps.






