AT&T Tech Support 360
December 12, 2004 2:25 PM PST
Firefox surpasses 10 million download mark
- Related Stories
-
School's out to shun IE
December 9, 2004 -
New Netscape embraces Firefox, IE
November 30, 2004 -
Firefox cutting into IE's lead
November 22, 2004 -
Fired up about Firefox 1.0
November 11, 2004 -
Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE
November 11, 2004
The free Web browser from the Mozilla Foundation surpassed 10 million downloads on Saturday as Web surfers continue to move away from Microsoft's market-dominating IE. The milestone highlights growing frustration with the security vulnerabilities that have dogged IE during the past few months. Nearly two dozen holes in the Web browser have been discovered during the fall, ranging in degrees of seriousness.
Firefox's surge has helped Mozilla cut into Microsoft's dominance of the Web browser market, with the software giant's market share dropping to less than 90 percent. Dutch market researcher OneStat.com reported last month that IE's market share had slipped to 88.9 percent in the third week of November, down 5 percentage points from its share in May. Mozilla-based browsers, including Firefox, rose to 7.4 percent, up 5 percentage points from May.
"It seems that people are switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's new Firefox browser," Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com, said in a statement in November.
"It doesn't jibe with what WebSideStory shows, and what neither of these count is corporate intranets where users aren't actually hitting the Web," Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, said of OneStat's statistics.
On Wednesday, the information technology services department at Pennsylvania State University recommended that students drop IE in favor of Firefox and Apple Computer's Safari to reduce attacks through vulnerabilities in the Microsoft software. The university said "media reports" and a string of warnings by Carnegie Mellon University's computer emergency response team led to its recommendation.
Malicious code writers have targeted security holes in the browser to launch attacks or install spyware. These attacks are often launched when a victim clicks on a specific Web link, opening the door for intruders to take over the person's computer. Once the PC is compromised, the attacker could access account information, load other software and delete files.
See more CNET content tagged:
OneStat,
Firefox,
Mozilla Corp.,
Microsoft Internet Explorer,
Web browser
Thanks, n3td3v at yahoo com
Many corporate intranets (including the one where I work) were built years ago to only support features which are specific to IE, and the developers either have all they can do to keep the system running or are too lazy to make the necessary changes to support industry standards. It is far easier to just say "sorry, we only support IE" than it is to modify existing code to support all browsers. There's no technical reason for my company's intranet to only support IE, that's just the way it was coded and our developers refuse to change it. That's a SCARY thought in the financial services market where our customers have tried to switch to Firefox to avoid IE's security problems only to be told we will only support them if they use IE.
- I downloaded once¸
-
by ipernar
December 4, 2005 11:53 AM PST
- and passed copys to 3 good friends of mine... what matters is statistic of usage, but if something is downloadad 100 milion times, it is more probable that it will have a bigger market share too... you cant deny that!
-
Reply to this comment
-
-
See all 31 Comments >>