Mozilla Usage Flat in July Following June Surge

"The general trend over the last two weeks, at least, seems to have mostly flattened out," Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory, a San Diego-based Web metrics company, told LinuxInsider.

After experiencing double-digit growth in June that allowed it to capture 4.59 percent of the browser market by July 9, growth slowed to under 2 percent by July 23, when it had 4.67 percent of the market, Johnston said.

Weekend Usage Up

He added that weekend usage numbers for the browser are significantly higher than the overall numbers.

"Traditionally, Mozilla/Netscape has had higher weekend numbers -- about a third of point increase," he said. "Now, though, it's about three-quarters of a point."

"It looks like its weekend usage -- which usually means users haven't got the OK to use it at work yet so they're using it at home -- is happening at a faster pace now," he reasoned.

Tsunami of Interest

"The uptake in the home market seems to be much faster than the uptake in the work market," Johnston observed.

Mozilla and its companion product, Firefox, experienced a tsunami of interest between June 14 and July 14, according to the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group responsible for developing and managing the open-source browsers. During that time, some 5.5 million downloads of Mozilla products occurred.

Much of that interest was fueled by recommendations by security experts, including the Department of Homeland Security, that users start looking for a more secure browser than IE.

IE Security Woes

"There are respected journalists and security experts who are saying, 'Don't use IE. Use Firefox instead,'" Russell Nelson, vice president of the Open Source Initiative, told LinuxInsider. "They're not hinting around. They're coming out and saying exactly that," he said.

Users concerned about IE security can breathe easier by shutting off JavaScript within the browser, Johannes Ullrich, CTO of the Sans Institute, an information security training and certification company based in Bethesda, Maryland, recommended.

"But if you disable JavaScript, be sure that you put in an exception for Windows Update, otherwise it won't work," he told LinuxInsider from his office in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Surprised by Reception

The reception Mozilla products received in the market surprised its developers a bit.

"We knew the products were worthy of that kind of reception, but we didn't actually know we would get it," Foundation President Mitchell Baker told LinuxInsider.

"We are really pleased that people have looked up and realized how good the products are," she said.

The Try-It Challenge

"In our world," she continued, "there's a challenge to building really great products, but there's also a challenge getting people to be aware of them and look at them and try them."

One user who has looked and tried Mozilla is Ken Godskind, vice president of marketing for AlertSite, a Web site monitoring firm based in Boca Raton, Florida. He noted that many people in his organization have started using Mozilla. "We're a bunch of old-systems guys who are used to working in open systems," he told LinuxInsider. "So we have a soft spot for the thing that quietly opposes the status quo."

He cited an informal survey he conducted of his coworkers about Mozilla. Security was one of their major concerns, he said.

Multiple Platforms

"Another reason they like Mozilla is because they often have to work on more than one platform, he noted. "Internet Explorer works on the Windows desktop, but if you're going to switch to Linux or Unix, you're going to need an alternative browser," he explained.

Although Mozilla is popular in his shop, IE remains on everyone's machine, he added. "There are some Web sites whose functionality does not work with non-Internet Explorer browsers," he said. "My phone company, BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) , for instance, states at its Web site that some functionality at its Web site requires Internet Explorer."