Microsoft Skeptical of Firefox's 1 Billion Downloads

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It seems Microsoft isn't exactly bowled over by Mozilla's claim of one billion Firefox downloads.

Most of you were pretty pleased to hear that Mozilla had reached one billion downloads. Given that a lot of you use the browser, you were happy to hear you played a small role in something so huge for the company. However, it seems Microsoft isn't exactly convinced of Mozilla's achievement. According to The Guardian, Amy Barzdukas, a general manager at Microsoft in charge of the company's Internet Explorer browser, said that Mozilla's recent milestone announcement made for "interesting math."

"It's an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area," Barzdukas said.

Mozilla's one billion figure includes every update and all downloads since Firefox's 2004 launch. Do you think Mozilla is correct in its claim? Let us know in the comments below!

Jane McEntegart
62 Comments Comment from the forums
  • chuckdalton
    If Microsoft were to post the quantity of downloads they would probably include updates and all, so yes, mozilla is corect to include everything.
    Reply
  • brendano257
    I think Microsoft is being a whinny little kid ^_^
    Reply
  • leo2kp
    I think it's possible to have a billion downloads when you consider every single update, and some people download multiple times for whatever reason.
    Reply
  • dingumf
    I've downloaded Mozilla several times for clean installs...
    Reply
  • warezme
    I don't think Firefox would even need to include updates to get that number. I personally have installed it on my home computer (1), my laptop with 3 separate OS's on two drives (3), and on my workstation at work (1), as well as doing updates on all of them and including it as part of an image for no less than 150 staff workstations and 25 checkout laptops.

    So I personally have installed it at least 5 times and 175 times by association. That does not count updates.
    Reply
  • Burodsx
    Considering all the updates as of late... yes I fully agree with this number. Either way, I've always been a Firefox fan. Microsoft on the other hand... well... save that one for another topic.
    Reply
  • mtyermom
    Lol, MS talking fuzzy numbers.... do I believe Firefox has been downloaded 1 billion times? Absolutely. We're not talking unique, individual users/computers here. I'm just one person and I've probably downloaded Firefox hundreds of times (counting updates, etc).
    Reply
  • griffed88
    Yes, Firefox could easily have 1 billion downloads. On our campus there is easily 1000 computers(not including students), each one has Firefox. It's included on all of our images and we always update it. I bet our campus alone accounts for at least 10,000 downloads.
    Reply
  • 1 billion "downloads". Not "users". Where is the problem with that?
    Reply
  • ThisIsMe
    Well I'm sure if Microsoft counted downloads of IE in the same manner, the number would easily be in the tens of billions and likely even hundreds of billions.

    But, they didn't think ahead and never started counting. Mozilla's marketing team beat them in that game, just like Apple beat them to the punch with the "I'm a Mac and I'm better than you are PC" tv ads. Now if Microsoft started counting, or just released some numbers that it can at least account for, it would be too late and be like the "I'm a PC" tv ad fiasco.
    Reply