According to Mozilla, Firefox 4 has been downloaded nearly 7 million times in the 24 hour period of its launch. Microsoft claims that its Internet Explorer 9 was downloaded 2.4 million times in 24 hours of its launch. So why was Firefox 4 downloaded more than IE9?
As ComputerWorld reports, Mozilla’s Firefox 4 beat out IE9 in the first day download contest because Firefox 4 can run on Windows XP. IE9 does not support the 10-year-old operating system.
It should be noted that as of February 2011, Windows XP accounts for more than 61% of all copies of Windows used on machines that went online. This interesting find comes from a Web metrics firm called Net Applications.
Microsoft backs its decision to ditch Windows XP support for IE9 by saying, “The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on and a browser running on a ten-year-old operating system tethers the Web to the past.”
So for those of you still on the world’s most popular OS, Windows XP, you can download Firefox 4 here if you haven’t already done so.
Further reading: Firefox, Internet Explorer 9
