Human race bore IE6 for almost 7 years until it dropped to 49.9% of all the the browser share world wide in 2006. I still remember the day I read about Firefox in local newspaper 11 years ago. I really didn’t know what it was! I was in 10th standard back then. At that time Internet was IE. But today the scenario is almost upside down with Firefox is heading towards 50% mark of all browsers’ share in the web world. These statistics are taken from the renowned websites having millions of hits per month. Mozilla changed the game single handedly and that too, is big achievement as it’s an open source project (Free as in beer! or something like that).
What is so game changing about Mozilla Firefox?
Right question at right time makes sense. If you are not using Firefox, you might be asking this question. IE really sucks the way it handles CSS, images (especially PNG images), javascript and many other parameters. You might have felt this at one time or other. Firefox standardized the basic elements like CSS, html handling, better javascript engine and faster loading of web pages. I started using Firefox around 4 years before and never looked back and that’s the experience of almost all Firefox users. Meanwhile there was big ho-ha-hum when Google Chrome launched. I tried it too. But Firefox again emerged as clear winner without doubt.
How the Firefox cult evolved?
Back in 2004, people started taking Firefox seriously as a web browser. Its browser share increased to 16.5% (Yeah, that’s a big number when you have millions of users every day). It was totally mouth of word publicity as I feel (Somebody please correct if has knowledge of any big publicity campaign by Mozilla). And by 2007, Firefox’s share was 33% i.e. every 3rd user used Firefox. Still IE had more than 55% browser share inclusive of its IE5(1.5%), IE6(33.6%) and IE7(20.8%). But finally we are seeing paradigm shift in browser usage as Firefox’s share is 47% worldwide in the month of November 2009. By mid 2010, we might see it passing over 50% mark of all browser share. Hope doomsday strikes soon. 
Here are the detailed statistics.
Browser Statistics Month by Month
| 2009 | IE8 | IE7 | IE6 | Firefox | Chrome | Safari | Opera |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October | 12.8% | 14.1% | 10.6% | 47.5% | 8.0% | 3.8% | 2.3% |
| September | 12.2% | 15.3% | 12.1% | 46.6% | 7.1% | 3.6% | 2.2% |
| August | 10.6% | 15.1% | 13.6% | 47.4% | 7.0% | 3.3% | 2.1% |
| July | 9.1% | 15.9% | 14.4% | 47.9% | 6.5% | 3.3% | 2.1% |
| June | 7.1% | 18.7% | 14.9% | 47.3% | 6.0% | 3.1% | 2.1% |
| May | 5.2% | 21.3% | 14.5% | 47.7% | 5.5% | 3.0% | 2.2% |
| April | 3.5% | 23.2% | 15.4% | 47.1% | 4.9% | 3.0% | 2.2% |
| March | 1.4% | 24.9% | 17.0% | 46.5% | 4.2% | 3.1% | 2.3% |
| February | 0.8% | 25.4% | 17.4% | 46.4% | 4.0% | 3.0% | 2.2% |
| January | 0.6% | 25.7% | 18.5% | 45.5% | 3.9% | 3.0% | 2.3% |
| 2004 | IE6 | IE5 | Mozilla | N3 | N7 | N4 | O7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November | 66.0% | 10.2% | 16.5% | 0.2% | 1.2% | 0.3% | 1.6% |
| September | 67.8% | 11.2% | 13.7% | 0.3% | 1.4% | 0.3% | 1.7% |
| July | 67.2% | 13.2% | 12.6% | 0.4% | 1.4% | 0.4% | 1.6% |
| May | 68.1% | 13.8% | 9.5% | 0.6% | 1.4% | 0.4% | 1.6% |
| March | 68.2% | 14.6% | 7.9% | 0.8% | 1.4% | 0.6% | 1.4% |
| January | 68.9% | 15.8% | 5.5% | 0.4% | 1.5% | 0.5% | 1.5% |
| IE | Internet Explorer |
| Firefox | Firefox (identified as Mozilla before 2005) |
| Chrome | Google Chrome |
| Mozilla | The Mozilla Suite (Gecko, Netscape) |
| Safari | Safari (and Konqueror. Both identified as Mozilla before 2007) |
| Opera / O | Opera |
| N | Netscape (identified as Mozilla after 2006) |
What do you think of this browser game? Are you a Firefox Fan Boy (F3B !!)? Let everybody know through comments. Let’s spread the love and Free beer, of course.
Nice to know about the data of Browser Statistics..
And I am also shocking to read the usage of firefox compare with IE…
[...] is getting better and better. It has now almost captured 50% of all browsers’ market share. And the coolest feature about firefox is it’s add-ons. There are lots of them to chose from [...]