Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home IT Management
    • IT Management
    • PC Hardware
    • Servers

    Microsoft Leaps to Exploit Mozilla Firefox Comments About Businesses

    By
    Nicholas Kolakowski
    -
    June 25, 2011
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      With Firefox 5, Mozilla ratchets up the cadence of its browser releases-this latest edition arrives a mere three months after Firefox 4 first entered the marketplace.

      For consumers, upgrading probably won’t represent that much of a hassle: You click “download,” and a few minutes later (depending on your connection speed) you’re tooling around with a new browser that, despite Mozilla’s claims of more than 1,000 improvements and enhancements, boasts virtually the same look and feel as the old version.

      Large enterprises, though, are expressing some worries about Mozilla’s newfound speediness. “I have 500,000 corporate users on Firefox 3.6,” read a much-circulated comment by IBM’s John Walicki on a June 21 blog posting by Firefox developer and consultant Michael Kaply. “I’m now in the terrible position of choosing to deploy a Firefox 4 release with potentially unpatched vulnerabilities, reset the test cycle for thousands of internal apps to validate Firefox 5 or stay on a patched Firefox 3.6.x.”

      Then, Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for various Mozilla projects, decided to dump roughly a gallon of gasoline on this particular fire. “Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours,” he wrote in a June 23 comment on Kaply’s blog. “Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.”

      Kaply felt compelled to respond: “You can’t play the [market share] card. Because even years ago when supporting enterprise meant getting a lot of [market share], Mozilla didn’t care.”

      To which Dotzler responded: “Today, I argue, we shouldn’t care even if we do have the resources [for enterprise] because of the cost benefit trade. A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy.”

      The debate erupted from there. Kev Needham, Mozilla’s channel manager, tried to dampen the spreading flames with a comment to PCMag: “We recognize that this shift may not be compatible with a large organization’s IT Policy and understand that it is challenging to organizations that have effort-intensive certification policies.”

      That being said, he continued, “Our development process is geared toward delivering products that support the Web as it is today, while innovating and building future Web capabilities.”

      Microsoft was quick to leap at Mozilla’s opening, with an executive very publicly asking Walicki to consider jumping back to Internet Explorer.

      “Although I’m in no position to question a competitor’s approach to customer and engagement and support,” Ari Bixhorn, director of Internet Explorer, wrote in a June 23 posting on his blog, “I did want to take the opportunity to clarify the Internet Explorer team’s commitment to, and support for, our corporate customers.”

      Specifically, he cited Microsoft’s commitment to the enterprise, and its support for each version of Internet Explorer “as long as the latest version of Windows that it runs on is supported.”

      (Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team, it must be noted, has a tradition of sending Mozilla a cake every time the latter releases a new Firefox version. Given Microsoft’s speed at trying to exploit Mozilla’s possible public-relations vulnerability, though, we can only assume that-to borrow a famous Internet meme-the cake is a lie.)

      Net Applications currently estimates Firefox’s overall share of the browser market at 21.71 percent, trailing the Internet Explorer franchise at 54.27 percent but ahead of Chrome at 12.52 percent and Safari at 7.28 percent. Moreover, Firefox’s share has stagnated in recent months, its last high of 22.97 percent in September 2010, while smaller rivals enjoyed gains over the same period.

      If Mozilla indeed pursues the path of rapid releases, how will that affect its market share? And if it loses market share-either from the corporate side of things, or due to simple attrition to its rivals-will Microsoft be the one that gains?

      Based on Bixhorn’s comments, Microsoft certainly hopes so.

      Follow Nicholas Kolakowski on Twitter

      Avatar
      Nicholas Kolakowski
      Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×