The Firefox Update Conspiracy?

21 Apr, 2005 at 6:30pm ET Article published in Tech

Andy over at Popular Technology has posted a little article looking at the process that Firefox users have to go through to get updates for their browser and offers a few theories as to why Firefox’s developers require you to download the full program to obtain updates.

Whether or not this was intentional remains to be seen but it cannot be ignored that it is having this effect. Now think about it, say you have 10 million adopters of the initial v1.0.0 release, they all upgrade to v1.0.1, your download number now doubles to 20 million, these same users upgrade again to v1.0.2, you now have 30 million downloads. Finally to v1.0.3 with 40 million downloads and still only 10 million users! How much of the super hyped Firefox Download Number is due to the current users just getting the latest version? Much more then you think.

Some interesting points, but as per usual, it wasn’t a very balanced evaluation.

Source: Popular Technology

Comments

21 Apr 2005 ~ 6:55pm RWB I've udpated, but never downloaded the whole program. I used the little red arrow that appears, that's all. I figure most people do it that way.
21 Apr 2005 ~ 7:24pm primesuspect Yeah, but when you do that, it downloads the entire thing.
21 Apr 2005 ~ 7:50pm Garg That #&*$&^ red arrow never works for me. After I try it, I always end up having to uninstall, download the install from getfirefox.com, and then reinstall.
21 Apr 2005 ~ 9:25pm Nosferatu This article is from the idiot who posted the "Firefox - A New Religion?" rant on his blog... give me a break. Why feed the fire by posting a link to his biased babble?
21 Apr 2005 ~ 10:06pm Jolyon33 Yeah, I usually end up having to do a reinstall each time too. Always get some error when I try to update.
21 Apr 2005 ~ 10:45pm BlackHawk Helps maintain the program's integrity?
21 Apr 2005 ~ 11:31pm miseryfetus honestly...who cares? 10 million users, 40 million users, 400 million users. It doesn't make a bit of difference, firefox is still superior to IE. Blackhawk is right, it helps people feel more secure when they think 40 million other people use it. It really doesnt matter.
22 Apr 2005 ~ 12:01am Linc They don't calculate market share by downloads, anyway.

/me remembers he needs to update Firefox
23 Apr 2005 ~ 2:55am TheSmJ

miseryfetus (Guest) wrote:

honestly...who cares? 10 million users, 40 million users, 400 million users. It doesn't make a bit of difference, firefox is still superior to IE. Blackhawk is right, it helps people feel more secure when they think 40 million other people use it. It really doesnt matter.

Agreed.
23 Apr 2005 ~ 3:56am Thrax Referring to the article, it's a point well-made, however it could have been done less obnoxiously.

Lying about your popularity is something I would expect an elementary student to do, not a foundation like Mozilla.
24 Apr 2005 ~ 3:07am Preacher It's a well known conspiratorial fact that Mozilla is run by a foundation of insecure, obnoxious elementary students.
25 Apr 2005 ~ 10:19am Spinner

Preacher wrote:

It's a well known conspiratorial fact that Mozilla is run by a foundation of insecure, obnoxious elementary students.

If that's the case, then I think they've done pretty well considering.
25 Apr 2005 ~ 11:14am redchief RED arrow always works for me. FF works most places I go, except for a secure web interface to a unix database, then I have to use IE.
If it works it works.
25 Apr 2005 ~ 5:25pm Preacher All I know is Firefox is a much better piece of software than IE. It's significantly less buggy, noticeably faster, and way more user friendly. I'd download it twice each time to upgrade if I had too