Firefox Gets Ready for Ad Splash
Email
Print
Mozilla is kicking off a campaign to promote Firefox and its supporters in a New York Times advertisement. Meanwhile, downloads keep climbing for Web browsing alternatives to Internet Explorer.
The Mozilla Foundation is getting ready to take the browser wars to a new front: the advertising pages of The New York Times. The open-source development group on Tuesday plans to launch an online campaign to raise money to fund the ad, along with other marketing initiatives for the November launch of its Firefox Web browser. "Were billing this as the worlds first national print ad for the open-source community," said Rob Davis, a Firefox advocate and executive director of PlayPolitics.org Inc. who is leading the campaign. "To date, the majority of our marketing initiatives have been done online. This will be one of the first large, physical, tangible things people can hand to mom or that someone new to Firefox can read about."
Is IE at risk? Click here to read an eWEEK Labs opinion.
Even Netscape Communications—the first major Web browser maker, now owned by America Online Inc.—appears ready to take advantage of the potential chink in IEs armor. Netscape, which has been largely silent since it spun off Mozilla into an independent group in July 2003, last week issued a news release about reaching 4 million downloads of Netscape 7.2.
Netscape 7.2 was released in August as an update to the browser and is based on Mozillas browser technology.
Netscape already is preparing another browser update. AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said Netscape would put out a "more significant" browser release within the next few months. He declined to specify any upcoming features or to discuss Netscapes plans for promoting its browser.
The Netscape plans coincide with another Web browser track planned by AOL. The Dulles, Va., company reportedly is testing a new AOL Browser, which is based on IE rather than Netscape and, according to sources, will be available as standalone software.
Check out eWEEK.coms Enterprise Applications Center at http://enterpriseapps.eweek.com for the latest news, reviews and analysis about productivity and business solutions.
Be sure to add our eWEEK.com enterprise applications news feed to your RSS newsreader or My Yahoo page
As an online reporter for eWEEK.com, Matt Hicks covers the fast-changing developments in Internet technologies. His coverage includes the growing field of Web conferencing software and services. With eight years as a business and technology journalist, Matt has gained insight into the market strategies of IT vendors as well as the needs of enterprise IT managers. He joined Ziff Davis in 1999 as a staff writer for the former Strategies section of eWEEK, where he wrote in-depth features about corporate strategies for e-business and enterprise software. In 2002, he moved to the News department at the magazine as a senior writer specializing in coverage of database software and enterprise networking. Later that year Matt started a yearlong fellowship in Washington, DC, after being awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship for Journalist. As a fellow, he spent nine months working on policy issues, including technology policy, in for a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He rejoined Ziff Davis in August 2003 as a reporter dedicated to online coverage for eWEEK.com. Along with Web conferencing, he follows search engines, Web browsers, speech technology and the Internet domain-naming system.
