Opera: Firefox user figures 'inflated'


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Opera: Firefox user figures 'inflated'

A feature in Firefox could mean that its current market share figures are unrealistic, claims a rival browser maker

The chief executive of Opera Software claimed on Monday that the market share figures for Mozilla Firefox are inflated, due to its support for link prefetching.

Link prefetching is a mechanism that uses browser idle time to download Web pages that the user might visit in the near future. This feature is enabled by default in Firefox 1.0. Google added support for link prefetching to its search engine earlier this year, which means that Firefox will pre-load the top search results into its cache.

Firefox and Opera have a market share of 8.7 and 1.0 percent respectively, according to the latest figures from Web traffic measurement company OneStat.com. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser, accounting for 86.6 percent of Web surfers. But Jon von Tetzchner, the chief executive of Opera, claimed that Opera's market share is likely to be higher than these statistics suggest, as it does not support pre-fetching and has a more efficient caching mechanism.

"Sadly the statistics are undercounting Opera and overcounting Firefox. Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn't access Web sites as often as other browsers. Firefox has added a pre-loading feature that Google has made use of. This inflates the numbers on the statistics," von Tetzchner said.

Opera's caching mechanism is not the only feature that could deflate its marketshare. Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer, a setting that users have to manually change to allow Opera to identify itself correctly.

There are between 10 and 15 million active users of Opera, according to von Tetzchner. He said that Opera is being downloaded between two and three million times per month. Opera also produces a version of its browser for mobile phones, which has been downloaded over one million times and "many millions" of licences for this browser have been sold to handset manufacturers and operators, according to the Opera Web site.

James Governor, an analyst at RedMonk, agreed that market share figures can be inaccurate, but said download figures can also be unreliable.

"When they're looking at downloads, they're not counting who uses the thing ? I have Opera on my desktop that I don't use. For all that Opera is supposedly being used on mobile phones, do people actually use it?" queried Governer, adding that "you have to be careful about throwing stones."

Although a free version of Opera is available, this version has advertising built-in, while a paid version without advertising is also available. Von Tetzchner admitted that the adverts put off some users, but as his firm does not have independent funding it has little choice.

"A lot of people don't like our ads, which is sad as we don't have a rich sugar daddy like the Mozilla Foundation. They [the Mozilla Firefox team] don't have to think about money as they're being funded. We're not being funded," said von Tetzchner.

Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39204643,00.htm

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Clearly Opera can't handle Firefox...

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I really wish the Opera guys and the Firefox guys would quit bickering over stupid crap like this. So fricken' what. Both are good browsers. They need to focus on the real threat, IE.

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Firetruck usage statistics are 'inflated' anyway, aren't they? Because the download statistics include a crap-load of people who are all downloading it for the second and third and fourth time, right.

Either way, i don't care. I'm an Opera fan, but if Firefox has more users, good for them. I'm glad.

Plus, you know, numbers aren't everything. Otherwise you guys would all be posting stories about NETCRAFT CONFIRMS IT INTERNET EXPLORER REACHES 900 BILLION DOWNLOADS

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There are no clear statistics. The last paragraph is blatant mudslinging and as such is quite humorous.

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But it's true. Mozilla has resorted to similar tactics, and Opera has suffered from it. Time to fight fire with fire I guess.. although I don't really agree with it.

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Very interesting point made by Von.He isnt a man who would speak rubbish.

Also it is a fact that quite a no of opera users are mistaken to be using IE!

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Plus, you know, numbers aren't everything. Otherwise you guys would all be posting stories about NETCRAFT CONFIRMS IT INTERNET EXPLORER REACHES 900 BILLION DOWNLOADS

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Who downloads IE? And why? - I never have, it comes default on Windows no?

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Firetruck usage statistics are 'inflated' anyway, aren't they? Because the download statistics include a crap-load of people who are all downloading it for the second and third and fourth time, right.

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Firefox downloads: 65,325,527

Its labeled as downloads. Those are the number of downloads. I see no inflation.

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They download IE for windows updates I guess..... 98,2000,ME don't come with IE 6, so they must download it. They may also count the number of versions of windows that have been sold. They all come with IE, so they should count as a download.

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I feel sorry for them, they have a great software but FF is as good as opera and it's free. I use FF,tried opera for a while, one thing that caught my eye is that even in an older machine th browser is very fast.

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Who downloads IE? And why? - I never have, it comes default on Windows no?

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(1) People who don't use Windows XP need to download Internet Explorer 6.

(2) I use XP and i still had to download 6.0.2029029023802830230 or whatever.

(3) It's called a joke. Laugh.

Firefox downloads:  65,325,527

Its labeled as downloads. Those are the number of downloads. I see no inflation.

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It's inflated when people use it as usage statistics or when they act like they're all unique downloads.

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They are two perfectly good browsers. Any browser is better than vanilla IE.

Those statistics mean nothing though. The # of downloads doesn't mean much unless they take into account that a single user may download the file a few times, which I doubt.

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who cares. opera is a garbage browser, it has ads, its not free, and its not even that stable. it has crashed quite a few times on me and i wasnt even surfing. i was on google.ca and it was idle.

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It's inflated when people use it as usage statistics or when they act like they're all unique downloads.

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It MIGHT be inflated. Remember, these statistics are not counting in downloads from download.com or Linux people downloading Firefox through their package manager.

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I really wish the Opera guys and the Firefox guys would quit bickering over stupid crap like this. So fricken' what. Both are good browsers. They need to focus on the real threat, IE.

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i didnt know that Internet Explorer was a threat to the internet world.

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Should I change the browser setting to identify itself as Opera? Is there a reason to? How would I do it?

I think they have a point, but they do too much mud-slinging (like our dear Asa of Firefox).

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Should I change the browser setting to identify itself as Opera? Is there a reason to? How would I do it?

I think they have a point, but they do too much mud-slinging (like our dear Asa of Firefox).

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Yes. Use UA.ini if you need to spoof particular sites.

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There are no clear statistics. The last paragraph is blatant mudslinging and as such is quite humorous.

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Albeit mudslinging, it's true. ;)

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Should I change the browser setting to identify itself as Opera? Is there a reason to? How would I do it?

I think they have a point, but they do too much mud-slinging (like our dear Asa of Firefox).

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like vcv said, ua.ini is there if some sites dont work at all with opera

I browse some site, lie my banking site that only work under ie and firefox

I use this ua.ini file to add my bank site there and that makers opera to work

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who cares. opera is a garbage browser, it has ads, its not free

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That's inaccurate. It either has ads or is not free. Not both.

I'm using Opera now. It's very fast, and I like it better than Firefox, mainly because Firefox gives me problems (it often won't let me do anything, and it has that crap with choosing profiles, etc.).

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i didnt know that Internet Explorer was a threat to the internet world.

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Well a lot of people would consider IE as a threat to the internet (with all the security problems and such :p ), however what I meant was that IE is a threat to Opera/Firefox.

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I'm greatly amused by the irony behind this. Opera is trying to claim that Firefox's ability to load websites faster is...somehow a bad thing...

And take a look at the wording in that article... Opera's cache is "more efficient", because...it doesn't help the browser load search results faster? Hmmm...don't you just love marketing? Remember guys, its not "global warming", its "global...climate change."

Reeks of desperation, plus, I bet Opera isn't too happy with the whole misunderstanding/misrepresentation of what awards they got (or rather, didn't) from PCWorld. They're just stung, and are trying to shoot back.

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