CNET is featuring a list of the top 10 downloads of the decade since they opened for downloads in 1996. ICQ and Winamp at #1and 2 are no surprise, but Acrobat Reader at a “lowly” #10 is (atleast to me). I guess everyone doesn’t use PDFs (really?!!).
Firefox’s popularity is evident from the fact that it is at #4 already, less than two years after it’s debut. Two old favourites, Winzip and Real Player are at numbers 5 and 9, either side of 3 relatively new entrants. iTunes is up at no. 6 and the latest “hot app”, Skype, is at 8. Sandwiched between them is Ad-aware, which is a sad refelction of what the windows world is like.
The biggest surprise, of course, is the old Napster which finds itself at no. 3. Remember this is a software which hasn’t had a single copy downloaded for years. P2P at it’s earliest best. No wonder they decided to go after it and shut it down – it was that popular.