Big Month for Firefox
By Kimberly Hill NewsFactor Network December 27, 2004 11:44AM
Open-source software group Mozilla is on a roll as the year ends. Its Firefox Web browser has been downloaded 13 million times since November, and the companion e-mail program was released in December. Mozilla’s success is putting pressure on Microsoft to improve its products.
As December comes to a close, the group that launched the upstart Web browser application Firefox can look back on 2004 with satisfaction. Mozilla has seen the Firefox browser downloaded over 13 million times since its release in November. A companion e-mail program — Thunderbird — was released in December. And the nonprofit organization has announced the ambitious goal of achieving a 10 percent share of the Web browser market during 2005.
“Uptake on the consumer side is pretty aggressive,” Yankee Group’s Jim Slaby told NewsFactor. And that trend likely will continue. Where Mozilla probably will encounter resistance is in the enterprise space, he said. “It’s one more application for network administrators to track and plan for, and they will resist that,” he said.
One of the biggest reasons users are turning to the new browser is that they perceive Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to be full of security holes, Slaby pointed out. Firefox has yet to experience a hacker exploit, although Mozilla has announced holes and issued updates.
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