The article's headline is inaccurate. From Harvey Anderson's blog post (http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/windows-eu-ballot-s...):
"Cumulatively 6 to 9 million Firefox browser downloads were lost during this period."
Well, they weren't gained, but they certainly weren't lost. I somehow doubt that people decided against downloading Firefox because it wasn't in the browser ballot.
Did you read the article?
>Daily downloads of Firefox fell by 63% to a low of 20,000 before the ballot was reinstated, Harvey Anderson, vice president of business affairs and general counsel at Mozilla, said in a post on his personal blog.
>After the fix, downloads jumped by 150% to 50,000 a day, he said - estimating that between six and nine million downloads were "lost" during the 18 months the browser ballot was missing.