Mozilla’s very own baby, Firefox, turned five years old this week – just five and already a war veteran.
This is about the browser wars, of course. Firefox was the little engine that could turn Microsoft’s Internet Explorer monopoly into a frail house of cards. As Richard Koman at NewsFactor notes, Firefox has “blazed a path for others, including Apple, Inc.’s Safari and Google’s Chrome.”
This doesn’t mean that Firefox or any of its allies (because of a common enemy) have toppled Microsoft’s hold on the browser market. The big, bad man is still very entrenched in the majority of computers around the world.
According to Net Applications, IE had 64.64 percent of the browser market in October, while Firefox claimed 24.07 percent of the pie.
In 2007, IE boasted more than 79 percent of the market while Firefox fell shy of 16 percent.
Safari got 4.42 percent of the market in October, followed by Chrome with 3.58 percent and Opera with 2.17 percent.
More specifically, Internet Explorer 6.0 has 23.30 percent of the market, while IE 7.0 has 18.16 percent and IE 8.0 has 18.12 percent.
Firefox 3.5 boasts 13.90 percent of the market, which reflects a noticeable gain from its 12.7 percent share in September.
Though a look back at Firefox’s impressive uphill progress may lead to warm and fuzzy sensations, not all is gravy for the browser. Cenzic, a California-based Web security firm, found that Firefox is the most vulnerable Web browser. This appears to be quite contrary to the notion that Firefox was the more secure of the two big browsers.
Cenzic indicates that Firefox accounted for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009, followed by Safari with 35 percent (“the biggest surprise,” according to the report), IE with 15 percent and Opera with 6 percent.
There were a total of almost 3,100 vulnerabilities reported in the first two quarters of the year, a 10 percent increase.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Firefox is the least secure Web browser on the market.
“At the end of the day, the number of vulnerabilities is only one measurement of a browser's security,” said Lars Ewe, chief technology officer at Cenzic who uses Firefox for his personal browsing. “We're not trying to point a finger at any one browser. I would certainly not abandon Firefox because of this.”
The next five years should be even more interesting than the previous five as the browser wars will likely see Chrome disrupt the landscape if Google has its way with its slowly-but-surely forming operating system.
Sources:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0210018H8NTC
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140582/Firefox_flaws_account_for_44_of_all_browser_bugs
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140582/Firefox_flaws_account_for_44_of_all_browser_bugs
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=6094
http://www.cenzic.com/downloads/Cenzic_AppSecTrends_Q1-Q2-2009.pdf
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