On Jan 1, 3:24 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The Netscape Story: From Mosaic to Mozilla
> Firefox has 'at least' 126m users
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | John Lilly, Mozilla's Chief Operating Officer, has estimated that Firefox,
> | the company's popular open source web browser, is used by at least 126
> | million people aound the world.
> `----
>
> http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12/03/firefox_has_at_least_126m_use...
After reading the document carefully, it appears that even this was
probably an undercount. The Firefox survey counted IP addresses, not
persistent cookies or other controlled and unique Identifiers per PC.
Keep in mind that Microsoft controls the largest number of IP
addresses, because they have MSN, AOL, and AT&T, each of which has
several Class A addresses, which are assigned using DHCP. Conversely,
corporate connections can have 100,000 users hiding behind a single
public IP NAT router address. Most schools also have only one NAT IP
address. Many cable companies use NAT routers, and even those that
offer public IP addresses assign a single IP address which tends to
persist for months at a time.
There may be some resistance on the part of Microsoft against IPv6,
which would use a 128 bit IP address, and would uniquely identify
every PC. Furthermore, since IPv6 addresses aren't so scarce, you can
preserve the IP address to MAC address relationship for prolonged
periods of time, which eliminates or reduces the ability of Windows
machines to grab 30 to 100 different IP addresses over a month, while
Linux machines which are often only rebooted when a kernel update is
required - every 2-3 months, can retain the same IP address for months
at a time.
Ironically, Mozilla and NAT firewalls are tightly correlated. Most
people use Mozilla because they like the superior resistance to
viruses. Those who want better security will also tend to use a NAT
firewall and keep it connected (meaning only one public IP address).
NAT firewalls are often used for families sharing a cable modem, small
businesses, and large corporations. Security is a bigger issue in
these environments as well. This would mean that there would be more
of a bias to "hide" more Mozilla browsers.
Of course, this would also skew the counts for the updates as well.
Since the updates were counted against the IP address, there could be
thousands of updates to a single IP address, and many wouldn't respond
to a "ping-back".
Keep in mind that many corporations also have their own update
services. IBM, for example has it's own IBM Standard Software
Installer Update service which determines which updates should be
applied (after screening and testing updates provided by the vendors),
then provides the updates through their own update services. Most of
the largest companies, especially those with 100,000 employees or
more, tend to use these corporately managed update servers to prevent
an update from taking out thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
computers that would have to be manually recovered via a telephone
support line.
When you think about it, that could be over 100 million PCs being
"hidden" from the count just on that basis alone.
Whether FireFox has grown to 10% (126 million) or 40% (400 million)
it's still not a small or insignificant number. Futhermore, since
many of these FireFox users are corporate users, as well as security
conscious users who make purchases via the Internet, it's a big deal
to make sure that you don't say "Internet Explorer Only" anymore. Do
you want to turn away 40 million visitors with an average income of
over $75,000 per year?
Remember too, that these are the users who have high speed cable
modems or DSL modems. They are the ones who can purchase downloaded
movies and music over their high bandwidth. They can download
software such as OpenOffice and Linux in a matter of minutes. They
also tend to use the Internet as a primary source of information for
everything from News to finding a new restaurant or even buying a new
car. And they use Mozilla, because identity theft is a bigger problem
(since they have higher credit limits and lower outstanding balances).
FireFox might want to try doing some things to improve their
tracking. They could add serial numbers (perhaps by getting the CPU
identifier or MAC address of the ethernet card interface, or the MAC
of the internet interface (WiFi, Ethernet, or other), and include it
in the "Signature" so that each FireFox browser could be uniquely
Identified.
FireFox should also encourage, or even REQUIRE that the correct
operating system be included in the signature line, rather than just
using "Generic" signatures that could imply any version of UNIX but
would not be counted as "Linux". It might also help to identify how
many "Vista" licensed machines are actually "XP" machines. Perhaps
they could gather this information during start-up.
Of course, there is also the possibility that Mozilla WANTS to present
the lowest possible number to keep the courts watching Microsoft as
closely as possible. Something tells me that if Judge Koller-Kotelly
decides to let the settlement judgement lapse, that the gloves will be
coming off.
Microsoft will be twisting the arms a whole lot harder, but OEMs and
large corporations will be more prepared to retaliate and opt for
alternatives such as Linux, OpenOffice, and Mosaic. The industry as a
whole might even reject all single-platform "Windows-only" software,
including Quicken, Tax-Cut, Turbo-Tax, and Money.
Has anyone come up with a "Base" application that will help you, or
your accountant fill out your tax forms, or even print the forms for
you? I'd happily pay for such an application, even as much as I would
pay for Quicken & TurboTax or TaxCut.
Rex
http://www.open4success.org
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