I have written here several times about the Firefox browser. Students in our Creating Infectious Action class have done great projects where they came-up with all sorts of great ways to spread the browser in 2006 and in 2007 (see The Sacred and the Profane, for example). So I was delighted to see a big story in The New York Times today about Firefox, called An Upstart Challenges The Big Web Browsers. It now has over 170 million users, and most of this 170 million number reflects an active decisions by an individual users or tech person to not use Explorer (bundled with PCs and set as the default) or not use Safari (bundled with Apple and set as the default), and instead to download Firefox and set it as the default.
Certainly, one reason that Firefox spreads is that has a large group of loyal and hardworking zealots who develop and do quality control for the product — and most aren't even employees of Mozilla (some are employees of other software firms and others work for free because doing so is an important part of their identity). For example, CEO John Lilly tells me that some 10,000 people each night check for bugs in the code. But the other reason that Firefox spreads is — since everyone at Mozilla and the huge open source community that develops it are committed to excellence above all else — it is simply a better browser than the rest. In addition to being absurdly easy to install and use, one area where Firefox has consistently walloped Explorer is security. I recall talking to an executive from a large financial services firm a couple years ago, and he told me that the security problems with Explorer were responsible for millions of dollars worth of fraud every year, but there had never been a single instance of fraud when customers used Firefox, and that it would save his company a lot of money if everyone just used Firefox. Interestingly, The New York Times story has a Microsoft executive seeming to admit that such security problems existed, at least until 2006:
"Microsoft waited five years before releasing the sixth version of
Internet Explorer in 2006. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer group, says the company was focused on
plugging security holes during that time."
I admit I am biased, as I've known CEO John Lilly for a long time and think he is both wise and smart, and have been most impressed with founding CEO and now Chair Mitchell Baker every time that I have met her (See this McKinsey interview). But I am fond of lots of other people in Silicon Vally too, like the folks at Yahoo!, and I don't argue that their software is better than the rest.
Firefox is about to release version 3.0. The Times claims it runs twice as fast as 2.0 and uses less memory. I look forward to downloading it.
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