Firefox crash search queries
Since I wrote a quick post about Firefox crashes, it's been one of the more frequent search term drivers of traffic to my blog .
So I ran a Google trends search on variations of "Firefox crash" and compared with similar searches for IE7 and Internet Explorer. Guess what? Looks like since the launch of Firefox 2.0 searches for information about it crashing have doubled.
Considering that Internet Explorer has much larger installed base, I think we can see that Firefox 2.0 may be causing a lot of people problems... roll on 2.1, I guess?
It seems that your stats are based on the search terms that people type in to google. Personally when I use windows I never search for fixes when programs crash, because I know that theres precious little I can do to fix it. The difference being that on linux using firefox because I've found an annoying bug, its fix will be online and I only have to search for it.
People searching for a fix for a crash is really also determined by their technical ability as long as a desire to fix it, people with no technical ability generally don't search for fixes for a browser crash.
What your graph does show is how many people searched for the firefox ie7 and internet explorer, trying to extrapolate from that the number of crashes in the above programs is completely worthless.
Posted by: Sean | 31/05/2007 at 15:02
Completely? Surely not...
There's a spike in that graph around that search term. That's a trend that suggests that something has changed for so many more people
Potential explanations include be a news story about Firefox crashes in some interesting way, a major worldwide push by the communtiy to find conversations or information about Firefox crashes or - possibly - a surge in the number of crashes people are experiencing.
But thanks, your comment wasn't completely worthless.
Posted by: Antony Mayfield | 31/05/2007 at 16:03
There is no question in my mind at all that Mozilla/fire fox 2.0 has a crash problem. With earlier versions 1, I had no problem as I am having now, the crashes are frequent and annoying to the extent that I have to reboot my computer. When I exit I find a non-responsive fire fox browser closing that I did not find to manually close in the program or processes tab of the task manager (XP Pro)
I don't want excuses, I want fixes or I am leaving fire fox.
Posted by: Robert Begnaud | 14/07/2007 at 17:57
Yup,
Firefox crashes 90% of the time I use the search function in Google Mail and intermittently otherwise.
Never had a problem with it before.
Search term "why does searching google mail crash firefox" got me here, just FYI.
Posted by: StalkerB | 03/06/2008 at 11:39
Obviously I'm a year late to this party, but it's a problem again :)
Posted by: StalkerB | 03/06/2008 at 11:40