TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Every few months, we learn about the state of browsers on the Internet and who is using what. The most common trend we've all noticed in the past several years is the slow decline of IE and the rise of Firefox. Depending on the region, we've seen Firefox take anywhere from a mere ten percent to upwards of forty percent and more of user's desktops. Just how many people are actually using Firefox, though? That's a figure harder to determine, but one that Mozilla has been trying to work. According to them, they estimate that there are roughly 270 million Firefox users in the world today.

Percentages are more important when dealing with things like market share, but having a nice round number to look at helps give you an idea of just how many people those percentages translate to – and 270 million certainly is nothing to shrug at. Mozilla doesn't have any breakdowns by region, and admits that the number is an estimate based on what metrics they have available. Interestingly, the blog post that shows this figure also asks for other vendors like Microsoft and Apple to publish their estimates, if only to make the data more accurate.