Firefox: By the Numbers

Apr 4 2010 by Jacob Gube | 45 Comments

Firefox—a web browser known for its security, performance, and customizability—has witnessed unbelievable adoption rates, becoming a symbol of open source software done right. In just 6 years, it has fastened itself firmly into the web browser arena, fanning the flames of the highly-heated browser wars.

This infographic presents some fascinating facts and figures pertaining to our beloved web browser: Firefox.

Click on the image to view the infographic in full size.

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development, and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

45 Comments

Justin Scott

April 5th, 2010

There are closer to 275 or so Mozilla Corporation employees (and thousands of community contributors).

Tony

April 5th, 2010

Chrome FTW! Firefox slowly lagging behind…

Jacob Gube

April 5th, 2010

@Justin Scott: Good catch. Updated it based to disambiguate the term “Mozilla” and number from this Wikipedia entry.

Keenan Payne

April 5th, 2010

Huh, interesting stats. i really, really love Firefox. The community, and everything they’ve done thusfar has been great. The only thing is that they need to speed their sh!t up fast. I mean chrome loads in a blink of an eye, while it takes 5+ seconds for firefox to do the same. if they can do that, they’ll get a lot of people back.

Duane

April 5th, 2010

Really surprised to see that Firefox had around double the amount of security vulnerabilities compared with IE.
I switched to Chrome a few weeks ago and haven’t looked back. I found that Firefox was just getting too clunky.
So far so good with Chrome!

SAJEERSTARLINE

April 5th, 2010

Super Duper Firefoxx…………..

Bb

April 5th, 2010

firefox better than chrome.thanks for article.

FoO Iskandar

April 5th, 2010

Firefox still rocking and better than other browser

Nexik

April 5th, 2010

In Poland Firefox have 52% marker share!!!

App Developer

April 5th, 2010

@Tony
Chrome is OK but IMHO GOOG already knows enough about us without knowing everything; because that’s what Chrome gives them!

BEBEN

April 5th, 2010

i am MOZILLA-er…wekekekekekkk :D
i ♥ firefox…hihihihi

Monie

April 5th, 2010

And why do people still using that stupid IE?
Congratulation Firefox!

Keyser

April 5th, 2010

Chrome for everyday browsing, due to its speed and sleek design.

Firefox for when I’m developing sites, due to all the web developing add-ons (Firebug!)

Daniel Adams

April 5th, 2010

Nice presentation gube. Just a little typo in the end though!

Amos Vryhof

April 5th, 2010

I use Chrome for casual browsing, and Firefox for debugging web pages. Most of the developer plugins for chrome don’t hold a candle to the Firefox ones.

Mosey

April 5th, 2010

I’m still using the old Firefox series (3.0.x) as I have an old laptop and last time I tried 3.5, it used up far too much processing power I could barely open more than 2-3 tabs. Really miss how fast 1.0.x and 2.0.x were… still, I can’t imagine not using Firefox.

lava360blog

April 5th, 2010

not only the browser but the firefox add-ons also are really terrific. love this browser and thanks for the stats.

Jordan Walker

April 5th, 2010

Interesting numbers about the adoption of Firefox.

Inside the Webb

April 5th, 2010

Firefox sure has exploded as the best browser over the past 5-6 years, I’m excited to see where growth will be over the next couple of years.

Samuel Paquette

April 5th, 2010

I switched to Chrome, and I’m really happy with it so far. Firefox was just getting a bit too clunky in my opinion.

Lee

April 5th, 2010

Chrome is a very decent browser, but I don’t feel as comfortable with it as I do with Firefox. I also think Firefox offers some really invaluable add-ons to help speed up web development.

Julien MARY

April 5th, 2010

For the number of tabs I’m surprised.
I’m working with 3 screens and usually have 3 browser windows openened, one of them being opera or something to see what I’m developping from an admin and a user point of vue with different rendering ways.
I need a fourth screen. I’m doing web devel on drupal : 2 rendering windows as explained, one window for documentation, one window for editing.

Without that, my productivity rate is lowering.

Penny

April 5th, 2010

Can that be correct? IE has fewer vulnerabilities? That has not been the experience in my labs..how was this info compiled?

Arpit

April 5th, 2010

Are we free to use the above image on our blogs, with a credit link to this URL?

Jae Xavier

April 5th, 2010

I loved Firefox but Chrome is starting to become much more… attractive. Omg… I’m an infidel.

taobao

April 5th, 2010

I just wish IE6 could die out ASAP

fab

April 6th, 2010

The Marketshare of FF in Germany is not right. It about 40%!
See http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-37253-galleryV9-bjfu.jpg

trash

April 6th, 2010

Hi,
the market share of Firefox in Germany is way higher than 9,5%! I assume 30-35%. I noticed you based your numbers on the downloads of Firefox 3.6, but – sorry – I don’t think those numbers are really representative.

Nick

April 6th, 2010

Chrome for speed & usability – The Fox for development – until Chrome rolls out a good enough developer extension.

TimHolmesDesign

April 6th, 2010

I think Firefox is a great browser and I use it for most of my web development needs.

Chrome, yes it is nice and fast, but to me all browsers are getting faster with the integration of better Broadband speeds. Plus don’t google already know enough about us. :o)

I have recently updated my version of Opera and found that this is also very very good…

My only problem as ever is the standards issues posed by IE… get it together “Browser Makers” and use the correct CSS standard that HAS to be roled to “All Browsers”, until then we will not see IMHO who has the best browser.

mintocity

April 6th, 2010

Interesting stats, I love Firefox… Chrome is becoming more and more exciting now.

Jacob Gube

April 6th, 2010

@fab: It’s global marketshare, based on Firefox 3.6 downloads (3.6 downloads were used because they track it in real-time, and thus, offers a relatively accurate way of determining global marketshare or adoption rate per country).

Omer Greenwald

April 6th, 2010

These are good news! I hope Firefox users will increase more overtime along with Chrome users.
Chrome is still a lot faster than FF, but there’s no browser better for web development than FF at the moment. thanks Jacob

Sidney Davenport

April 6th, 2010

I love FF, but it is incompatible with my new Windows 7 16-bit Dell Studio XPS. It won’t close without reboot. I’m using Chrome.

Nikos

April 6th, 2010

I was a big fan of firefox but since I’m used to have several tabs open simultaneously I think they could have done better with memory handling. A browser should not waste 1.5 GB of memory in any case. I catch myself using Chrome more more every day and useful chrome extensions keep showing up all the time.

LabsMs

April 7th, 2010

I try all browsers and choose firefox. It is so quick and i can use it my personality. Best browser for me

Firerox

April 7th, 2010

Firefox always rocks. I love Firefox as a web designer.

Antti Aapakari

April 8th, 2010

I love FireFox’s ad blocking add-on but aside from that I’m not particularly impressed. It’s a memory and resource hog and when shut down has a very annoying habit of leaving a process running so that when you go to open it later you get a message that it’s already running. I also loathe the way an errant keystroke will suddenly take the tab you’re working in and open it as a new window. It seems to get clunkier with each new release.

MrSiir

April 8th, 2010

SOURCE: …, WIKIDEDIA?

Thanks for the article

Lee Fuller

April 8th, 2010

Sure it’s a popular browser, but I am still going to stick with Google Chrome, faster and more secure!

pheldespat

April 9th, 2010

The market share for Germany and Brasil are just wrong.

Firefox has much more market share in Germany. Source: Multiple browser market share analysis companies.

Spokane

April 9th, 2010

We’ve been using Firefox for some time due to all the great SEO add-ons, but after reading many of the above comments we will surely be giving Chrome a new look over. Firefox just seems to crash a little too often. Thanks for all the comments as they have been very helpful.

Angela

April 10th, 2010

I use Safari, Chrome and Firefox, Firefox wins hands down in Add-ons it is superior sure its a bit slow but without all my wonderful extra you get just plain chrome and while it loads fast it reminds me in looks with IE, and that has been banned from loading on my pc since 1999. That people still use it tells me one thing only they are lazy to explore better options.