Looking Foxy on its One-Year Anniversary
Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of Firefox v1.0 (beta versions of the browser were available before that). So how much has the browser grown over the past year? About 5 percentage points, according to exclusive data from WebSideStory (Nasdaq: WSSI), a leading provider of on-demand digital marketing applications.
- As of Nov. 5, 2004, Firefox had a browser usage share of 3.03 percent in the U.S.
- As of Nov. 4, 2005, that percentage had grown to 8.13 percent. (Note: For purposes of accuracy and consistency, WebSideStory always compares weekday averages, usually Fridays).
So, although Firefox's growth has slowed considerably in the past several months (see previous post), it's overall growth over the past year is impressive.
And what of Microsoft Internet Explorer? The venerable browser has dropped nearly 5 percentage points over the past year, from 92.89 percent on Nov. 5, 2004, to 88.61 percent as of last Friday. That's a significant chunk that Microsoft has lost (mostly) to a browser that not many people had heard of 18 months ago.
U.S. Browser Usage Share as of Nov. 4, 2005:
Internet Explorer: 88.16 percent
Firefox: 8.13 percent
Other: 2.02 percent
Non-Firefox Netscape and Mozilla browsers: 1.61 percent
Browser usage share is the percentage of browsers that are being used within WebSideStory's network of sites. WebSideStory tracks between 30 million and 40 million daily Internet users worldwide.
Questions? Call Erik Bratt, WebSideStory's Director of Corporate Communications, at 858-775-0882 or WebSideStory Analyst Geoff Johnston at 480-219-0585.