Firefox downloaded 75 million times

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Idealism and money.

Remember FireFox's history.

Comes out of Mozilla, which was set up by Netscape to obtain free code for new versions of their browser. After years of effort, the Netscape code was given up as hopeless. After more years Mozilla finally arrived.

In the meantime, harmed by this delay among a substantial number of other problems, Netscape was mortally wounded, and was purchased by AOL Time Warner. (AOL is included in the title so that the company's bad luck with internet related properties can be highlighted.)

AOL eventually gave Mozilla some resources and turned them loose. The money was running out, the Mozilla product was proving bloated and somewhat bug-riddled. FireFox was a return to simplicity which, I vaguely remember, was started by people who were willing to leave the Mozilla organization to do it.

To the rescue of the sinking ship came Nokia, which didn't care about desktop browsers, but did care about all the money they were spending on people at their own and other companies on a browser for their products.

Nokia paid $200,000, and in return development began on minimo, the employment killer Nokia wanted.


So, yes, some people working on FireFox have the attitude you describe, a kind of "let's make a browser!" approach that seems reminiscent of the "Let's put on a show to save Mrs. McGillicuddy's mortagage!" justification for old movie musicals.

But organizationally, I wonder whether the Mozilla Foundation considers FireFox, which does not make money for them directly, as more important than minimo, which pleases those trying to reduce employment.
I hope they do. Might seem ungrateful to Nokia and other companies that saved them, but to me ingratitude is a lesser offense than actively doing harm to employment.

So long as alternatives exist, they're preferable to me. Avoids this whole issue.


By the way, for most people, an "intuitive" interface means just like IE. Reinforces the similarity between products.
And neither of us knows how much effect the Catch-22 has actually had. But I think you can agree with me that it exists.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 07/27/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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