It’s such a nice feeling to see Microsoft’s Internet Explorer suffer the death by a thousand cuts it so richly deserves. Firefox is eating away Big Bill’s market share, and if they think it’ll be easy to win us back they don’t know jack. Why on earth would anyone consider going back to a vendor who has no concern for them? (Except, of course, when their customers start to turn elsewhere.)
My friend’s laptop is so crawling with spyware, everytime he tries to go to a business site a pop-up window tries to drag him to a different site offering a similar service. I told him after I installed Firefox I never had a spyware problem again. I can’t understand why anyone’s still using IE.
1
By joann
Exactly! I don’t know why anyone would still be using IE. Perhaps, because they still haven’t heard about Firefox! 😉
January 22, 2005 @ 12:37 am | Comment
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By Jeremy
I keep IE for two Websites that do not work in Firefox. Simple as that.
January 22, 2005 @ 1:37 am | Comment
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By Saad
IE is such a common target for spyware because it was the most common browser. Of course, every software has flaws.
And not like Firefox is the perfect software. Most of the so called “extensions” are half baked, unreliable. And give the virus/spyware people some time, they’ll come up with somthign to exploit it Firefox.
If a large population is using Firefox, they’ll start targetting this browser. For them business is not about Microsoft bashing, but getting people to their website.
And…
“Why on earth would anyone consider going back to a vendor who has no concern for them?”
Because it comes with your WIndows, you dont have to install anything, you dont have to download aditional plugins, and it’s from a company that will be around.
Not like made by people about whom you’ve never heard before.
For the record, I use firefox too, because of the tabbed browsing, even that needs a lot of work, but it’s really helpfull. When IE supports that (and it WILL) I’ll probably switch back.
January 22, 2005 @ 3:05 am | Comment
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By richard
Saad, I think you’re wrong about customers going back. Firefox has inspired people — users don’t just like it, they love it. And they feel betrayed by Microsoft becuase the problems with IE were going on for years and MS scarcely noticed. Now, as they lose market share, they suddenly notice, further reminding us that if it weren’t for competition they wouldn’t care if we all went to hell. People love the idea of not using Microsoft, and the fact that unknown Firefox in just a few short weeks has catapulted itself into a househopld name — well that says something, and Microsoft must be shaking in its shoes.
January 22, 2005 @ 8:44 am | Comment
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By boo
I’m not sure I understand how users moving from one set of free software to another that does 95% the same thing would make Microsoft worried. I welcome competition (I’m especially interested in XUL, which Firefox supports), but from a competitive standpoint the old Netscape model is still dead.
I use Firefox for the tabs in http browsing, but IE still has much better ftp service, and much much better integration with the file system (reminding you here that these days, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are basically the same thing).
January 22, 2005 @ 9:28 am | Comment
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By richard
Do a Technorati search on Firefox and see what the bloggers are saying. Now, it may well be irrational exuberance, but they love Firefox. It always terrifies Microsoft to see others take away their users, for a free or paid service. It’s about long-term goals of “owning” the Internet, which is why they are investing huge amounts of time and resources to go after the Google search engine, another free service. It’s free, but o0nce you have a captive user base there, there are all sorts of ways to profit from it.
January 22, 2005 @ 9:31 am | Comment
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By boo
Well, probably if your friend had spyware problems that disappeared he had too liberal an ActiveX acceptance policy (Firefox doesn’t support ActiveX).
Unfortunately, some companies rely on ActiveX for all sorts of things. So our IT dept. recommends Firefox for home use but doesn’t support it for the company. That won’t change for many years…
January 22, 2005 @ 10:27 am | Comment
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By richard
His spyware problems are still there — he never switched to Firefox. My own spyware problems went away the day I installed Firefox, though my machine never did what his is doing now. Also, IE used to crash frequently; Firefox rarely if ever crashes, and it’s faster. The tabbed browsing is reason enough to make it your primary browser.
Firefox has its problems, and it’s probably never going to command the marketshare of IE, if only because IE comes packaged with Windows. But it’s very encouraging to see the consumers speak out like this. It should send a strong message to MS that they can’t stop improving their products after they drive their comeptitors out of business.
January 22, 2005 @ 1:19 pm | Comment