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Firefox’s growth has been slowing up for a while now evidently it has slipped again. I think it is obvious why it has been trending towards slower growth - all of the geeks and nerds already use it. It is time that we ( the friends of firefox ) take it upon ourselves to spread the use.

A couple of weeks ago I got both of my folks to switch from IE and Outlook Express to Firefox and Thunderbird. Don was already using Firefox, but didn’t realize I had installed Thunderbird and thought he had to use outlook. From a security outlook ( ha! ) using Thunderbird may well be more important them using Firefox - in my experience more scumware comes in through outlook then anywhere else.

So I got my folks switched over - and I started thinking how many other geeks have hooked up their immediate family? Prolly more then a few. So if the previous growth has been from geeks and the immediate family of geeks, who are the 90% of users still trapped using IE and Outlook?

I am thinking that there are a certain percentage of folks that use IE because they love everything Microsoft. I know it is hard to believe, but they are out there. Similarly there are folks that have a vested interest in using MS stuff, MCSE’s, stockholders, MS employees, .Net developers, etc. I think this group makes up maybe 25% of users.

Then there is the group of users that is locked in because of MS proprietary features, Active X, or sites that they have to use and that only work with Internet Explorer. I think this number is smaller then it used to be, maybe 10% of all users. There are also ~5% of users that use something other then a browser from MS or the Mozilla foundation.

If my numbers are anywhere close to reality, that means that there is only 60% percent of the market available to Firefox and that it already has 10%. This also means that there are still fully half of all Internet users that can be converted to Firefox users, and if they were, that firefox could overthrow IE and become the dominant browser.

So how do we get there from here? If every ( non fully ms ) geek and his immediate family are already converted, what do we do? We have to evangelize and proselytize. We have install Firefox everywhere that we find an acquaintance using Internet Explorer and explain the benefits of switching. We have to go beyond our immediate family and convince casual friends - and their friends to give up their dependence on insecure, buggy, Internet software from Microsoft.

And it’s not a hard sell ( like linux :^> ) Firefox is better, period. There is nothing new to learn, its just as easy to use, easy to install, and just as pretty. Thunderbird is great, at least as good as outlook express, and much more secure.

So go forth and turn someone on to Firefox, if we all did it this weekend we could reverse that slow growth trend by Monday.