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Saturday, April 30, 2005

16 million Firefox users still at risk?

With Firefox being download over 50 million times, it's the time to celebrate! :-) However, something popped out from my mind: how many Firefox users are still using those ancient versions of Firefox?

We all know that before the first counter was broken, the download count was 25 million. After that, Firefox 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 were out. So let's assume that there are some royal Firefox users (like me) that download Firefox whenever there is new release (without using the software update feature). The number of such users will be (50-25)/3 million. Of course, I know that download count is NOT user count, but let's assume it is a one-to-one relationship, so as to make thing simpler. As a result, the number of users who are still at risk (that no one has exploited yet) could be about 16 million. WOW!

What can we do to these lazy users (including some of my friends who are still using Firefox 0.9.3)? They are simply too lazy to upgrade... ^^:::

posted by minghong @ 4/30/2005 03:38:00 am  

10 Comments:

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  • At 4/30/2005 10:15:00 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Lazy? Thats not a very nice. A lot of computer users just dont care or dont know enough to care about updating their browser. Thats why Windows includes an automatic update function now, because otherwise users wouldnt update on their own. Besides, most people have better things to do than to sit in front of a computer late on a Saturday night just so they can be the first person to download 1.0.3 and update Wikipedia.

     

  • At 4/30/2005 03:03:00 pm, Blogger minghong said…

    You know, there are still people who didn't have automatic Windows update feature as they didn't get that patch. ;-) One of my relative refuses to update to SP2 because the so-called "security feature" told her that her antivirus software is outdate (which obviously is). She simply don't know how to answer to this as she don't know what it is.

    My point is: most of the people who switched to Firefox should be technologically-savvy enough to know the important of keeping their browser up-to-date. I just wonder why some of them don't do that.

    P.S. I'm using Windows 2000 so there is no such "feature". Even for Windows XP (that I rarely use), I turned that "feature" off as it is annoying.

     

  • At 5/01/2005 12:16:00 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Sometimes I really confused by what this download counter mean.
    By simple calculation, 50000000 downloads means average 27 thousands per day.
    I just can't imagine that rate...

     

  • At 5/01/2005 12:28:00 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Oh.. after a little thought, I think *might* happen.
    Say, that there are 1000 diehard fans who want to boost the counter. So they boost it by downloading Firefox per each hour. Therefore these diehard fans would produce 24*1000 = 24 thousands downloads per day. Then it's not so far from the (actual?) rate.
    That just my little conspiracy....

     

  • At 5/01/2005 12:40:00 am, Blogger minghong said…

    I don't think there are such "diehard" users. No need to deny the fact: the download count is real.

     

  • At 5/01/2005 04:23:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

     

  • At 5/01/2005 11:33:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Myself, I dont believe the download count is completely fabricated or anything like that. But you always have to wary of the source of your information. Like Microsoft, Firefox is fighting for market share. Just like politicians, they are both using facts to present themselves in the best possible way. This is perhaps Firefox's greatest success: they've inspired a great passion in their users. Many of these 'dirhard fans' as twin calls them, can sometimes suffer from tunnel vision, believing that everything about Firefox is perfect and all other alternatives are completely inferior. Just go onto the Netscape forums and you'll see how bad the Mozilla spammers are, or check our Wikipedia's entry for IE and see how pro-Firefox the discussion is (as is the Firefox entry). (I appear to be ranting off topic now) My biggest problem with the download count is that its just kind of meaningless. Its like rating the success of a fast-food chain by how many cars drive by the front doors. I use Firefox because I evaluated it and it is the best right now, not because of the flashy, one-sided reviews.

    I agree with the comment above (in response to my first post) - Most Firefox users are techies. After Firefox has converted as many of these users as possible, growing its market share among the non-techies will be, to quote the devil, 'a long, hard slog'

     

  • At 5/02/2005 12:13:00 am, Blogger minghong said…

    > My biggest problem with the download count is that its just kind of meaningless. Its like rating the success of a fast-food chain by how many cars drive by the front doors.

    Yup. I agree. I can't wait for the reset of the counter when Firefox 1.1 arrives. A number that it truly meaningful (not a sum of Firefox 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 downloads).

     

  • At 5/02/2005 02:45:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I do not so trust the download counter, therefore I raised that conspiracy ;-)

    The more convincing source should come from the webstats of big traffic site such as Yahoo and Google, that not often visited by tech-savy guys.

    May be we should make a petition for asking these sites offering their browser stats?

     

  • At 5/10/2005 04:35:00 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    why not upgrade?
    well, some like the software working and looking exactly as it is. And absolutly don't want any new or removed button/menuchoice/option in settings/graphicstuff or anything.

    so please point me to a downloadlink where I can download a new version of Firebird, with bugs and securityholes removed but nothing else changed?

     

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