Mozilla On Browser Ballot Glitch: Millions Of Firefox Downloads Lost

By | November 1, 2012


Mozilla On Browser Ballot Glitch: Millions Of Firefox Downloads LostMoments after sending the delicious cake to Microsoft’s IE team, Harvey Anderson, the Vice President of Business Affairs at Mozilla, has published a blog post, which investigated the consequences of the browser ballot glitch.

According to Harvey, Firefox downloads saw a decrease of 63% to as low as 20,000 per day and increased by 150% to 50,000 per day after the fix was issued.

In addition to that, he claims that Mozilla lost 6-9 million Firefox downloads during the 15 month period.

Speaking of the market share, ComputerWorld says that, “from March 2011 until June 2012, Firefox lost 7.5 percentage points of share in Europe”, “an average monthly decline of nearly half a point. In the 16 months prior, Firefox lost just 2.3 percentage points, an average of 0.14 point.”

EU is yet to fine Microsoft.

[Via: Lockshot]


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Comments (11)

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  1. Mehran says:

    The statistics does not matter, since I use IceDragon, many use similar projects like Waterfox, … but they are still FF, although it does not count. BTW, I’ve been surfing the net for so many years, and I know well what a good browser is.
    I love FF

    • Przemysław Lib says:

      I wouldn’t be so sure.

      Stat counters can put straight derivatives of FF (Waterfox) into “FF” category. And you can always check market split into engines.

  2. Tiago Sá says:

    I can’t believe they are blaming their low market share on Microsoft. Sure it played a part, but it certainly was more due to them halfassing most of the features they implemented, and them focusing more on chromification than on relevant stuff that still TODAY hasn’t seen the light of day and was scheduled (and then dropped) for Firefox 4…

    Today, Firefox 16 or whatever, is still largely the same browser Firefox 3 was, apart from a few things extensions were doing back then, and stability, performance and standards…

    • Przemysław Lib says:

      FF downloads went down when MS stopped delivering ballot screen, and went up again when MS repaired mistake.

      Strong correlation I would say.

  3. Boray says:

    I think the whole idea of a ballot screen is quite silly. It’s declaring the users as idiots. Seems Mozilla wants the idiots for users then…

    • Przemysław Lib says:

      Its matter of ease of use.

      In order to install FF on Win7 you NEED to turn on IE. THAT is wired.

      Win8 have its own app center. On Win8 ballot screen would be silly.