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Firefox browser ignites a fire under complacent Microsoft

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MrX:

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IN DEPTH: EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
From the February 25, 2005 print edition
Firefox browser ignites a fire under complacent Microsoft
Janet Rae-Dupree

When Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer to crush Netscape during Browser War I in the 1990s, the Web surfing application that comes pre-installed on every new Windows PC appeared invincible.
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Look out for Browser War II. The opening salvos came last November in the form of Firefox, a wildly popular open-source browser conceived by a 19-year-old Stanford University sophomore and polished by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation based in Mountain View.

With 25 million downloads in its first 99 days, Firefox -- with versions compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac's OS X -- has turned into a firestorm. Already, Firefox has a 5 percent market share, taking virtually all of its business from the dominant IE browser. So far, Firefox's spread shows no sign of slowing.

"You all are spreading Firefox to a quarter of a million people a day," crowed the youthful creator, Blake Ross, under the headline "Do you all ever sleep?" on the SpreadFirefox.com community blog Feb. 16. "What was just a small flame 100 days ago has since exploded into a phenomenal demonstration of the power of open source."

In fact, without Netscape's decision in early 1998 to release the original code for its browser to the open source community, Firefox never would have existed. Call it, if you will, "Son of Netscape." The code that Mr. Ross modified to create Firefox came from Mozilla, the name given Netscape's browser after its code was released.

While most open-source software is used primarily by techies and enterprises (see main story, page 15), Firefox is generating the most enthusiastic consumer response the community has ever seen. Fed up with the security flaws and pop-up ads plaguing Internet Explorer, users are singing Firefox 1.0's praises and downloading it as fast as the Mozilla Foundation's servers can dish it out.

Now the open-source community awaits the reaction to Firefox 1.1, which Mozilla has scheduled for a "preview" release in April.

"Overall, they're gaining lots of attention," analyst Robert Lerner of Current Analysis told TechWeb News last week. Despite that, however, he doesn't expect Firefox will ever overtake Microsoft's IE. "That's not going to happen, but over time there may be pressure placed on Microsoft," he says. Firefox "is gathering steam and gaining traction."

Microsoft has noticed. After saying late last year that Microsoft would focus its efforts on Longhorn -- the new operating system whose release has been pushed back to 2006 -- Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates told developers at the RSA Conference in San Francisco earlier this month that Internet Explorer security upgrades would regain some priority. Beta testing of IE 7.0 is scheduled for some time in April.

Even as Microsoft moves to defend its dominant position, however, others are wading into the growing melee. America Online just started beta testing its own stand-alone browser. Ask Jeeves is negotiating with the Mozilla Foundation to build a branded browser for it based on the Firefox code.

And while Google will neither confirm nor deny rumors that it is working on its own browser, tongues have been wagging furiously since Google hired Firefox's lead engineer, Ben Goodger, and a key Mozilla developer, Darin Fisher. Both men say Google plans to let them continue working on Mozilla-related and open-source projects, but neither would reveal what their Google-specific responsibilities will be.

The Mozilla Foundation isn't resting on its laurels. In December, it released an e-mail client, Thunderbird, one of the first open-source competitors to Microsoft's Outlook. Only a bit more than one million downloads have been recorded so far-- Firefox saw a million downloads on its release date -- but analyst acknowledge that it can be more troublesome to switch e-mail clients than it is to switch browsers.

JANET RAE-DUPREE is the Business Journal's technology editor. Reach her at (408) 299-1840.



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Aloone_Jonez:
I wonder if they're going to add any new features like tabbed browsing and a faster rendering engine.

Calum:
let's see if microsoft still has what it takes to cripple the competition in an underhanded and dirty browser war, in a world where the competition are no longer doe eyed idealists, and the legal system is no longer in the sixties...

M51DPS:

--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez ---I wonder if they're going to add any new features like tabbed browsing and a faster rendering engine.
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I would settle for a standards-compliant rendering engine....

Ward:

--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez ---I wonder if they're going to add any new features like tabbed browsing and a faster rendering engine.
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I hardly consider those to be 'new' features when the competition has been using them for the better part of 7 years.

I just wished MS would see sense and let IE6 die as it should have 2 years ago. Its not even a proper 6th generation browser. And even IE7 doesn't look like its going to pass the grade as a 7th generation browser.

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