2 Billion Firefox Add-on Downloads
Since the launch of Firefox add-ons back in 2005, it took company more than 3 years to surpass 1 billion downloads mark (November 2008).
Yesterday, Mozilla announced that add-ons have now been downloaded more than 2 billion times and over 150 billion of them are used every single day.
Congratulations!
Illustration by Alex Woodbury.
[digg-reddit-me]
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.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
I have a off-topic question. I don’t know English very well.
There are two English types: American English, British English. and “billion” word have a different meaning with both of these English types… How can i know billion have 1.000.000.000 meaning or 1.000.000.000.000 meaning?…
I believe everyone uses short scale numbering now, so a billion is 1.000.000.000 and 1.000.000.000.000 is a trillion.
At least wiki says so: In 1974, the government of the UK switched to the short scale, a change that is reflected in its mass media and official usage.
Thank you for your answer. This is enough information. It means that (UK switched short scale) we’re learning very old English…
and Opera still believes, that no-extensions model is right.
yeah, right :)
let me count ‘opera unite’ apps.. 40?
It’s 49 actually… I wonder why didn’t you count the Widgets as well…
Anyway, now, count the useful Firefox addons that ara not included to Opera.
it would take days if not weeks to list usefull ff extensions that arent present in opera (nor they are possible to emulate with userjs/unite/widgets). just go to opera wish list, and search ‘like firefox’. youll find plenty of what people need, yet they cannot get, due to opera closed nature.
btw. widgets? who cares about widgets – but if you insist – yeah, 100+ more
I do care about widgets, I personally find them really useful and helpful. Especially now with geolocation and webworksers they have some great potential. Last month I wondered how can we track our mobile sellers (laptops) and create a map with their current location – now I know, I’ll try to use widgets – those guys have mobile Internet access all the time, and widget will periodically sent location to our server (each time when they will stop to sell something).
And I don’t agree that extension model is one and only way to go. Even more I think that Opera model is much better for common people, which now use IE or FF without any extensions at all. Some of them might sometime install some extension – but most likely it will be something which opera already have anyway. Its only advertising, promotion, marketing and stuff which is the problem for Opera.
problem with widgets and unite is that they’ve got ‘great potential’
i’ve been hearing this for years, and this technology is still marginal, with (almost) noone giving a damn.
if you want to track your workers/coleagues – mobile phone app is a much better way to go, always on, gps etc. laptop widget requires too much hassle to build and then use
as for the model. opera ‘all-in-one’ approach is already NOT working. opera is not capable of supporting their all features, and MOST of these are in the same shape as they were in 2001 or 2005. what is good for me from cookie manager, if it is simply outdated, broken and useless? there are many such features, that ‘are here, but are useless’. extensions are managed by their authors, and if one fails, you can always try another.
i’ve yet to find adblock equivalent (esp in part, where you select what to block from the website – i like to block fb connectors, stats etc – opera does not give me this option, i have to do it manualy – so i use adblock+firefox now), finding youtube downloader is also a joke, not mentioning developer tools (dragonfly is a CRAP! compared to what competition offers) for ocasional net inspection
no extensions = no users in the long run. both chrome and ff can be adapted to ones need, and people have, you know, different needs. some bilion of these ‘wants’ were fullfiled by firefox, what opera has to offer?
Actually, widgets are being used by several major companies, including AT&T, Samsung, Vodafone, and more.
Great potential? Opera is making lots of money from widgets.
Not that widgets have anything to do with extensions in the first place.
i havent seen ANY new product besides winMo 6.5 phones that use ANY of opera technology. samsung used them in Omnias (winMo 6.5) and then dropped. they use webkit browsers now, exclusively.
all android phones use webkit, iphone use webkit. opera runtime is nowhere to be found in tv sets nor set-top-boxes. so who is using opera NOW? (two years ago it was MUCH more widespread, but webkit killed it entirely)
samsung widgets use webkit runtime, vodaphone is a carrier and how is AT&T has anything to do with widgets?
as for opera making money from widgets.. given that they arent build around opera technology, I doubt that any money is being made by opera with these widgets. you are talking stuff that is 2 years old and obsolete.
widgets HAVE to do with extensions, because opera uses them as a substitute to extensions – thats the way opera users can extend their browsers, and it is pathethic
and i simply love to see that stupid opera no-extensions policy to backfire at opera again and again..
Why is nobbie spamming a Firefox discussion with Opera rants? GTFO.
take a pill