Mozilla launch commercial subsidary

Serbian

Mozilla Creates Unit To Promote Firefox
Nonprofit Group Launches Corporation To Help Develop, Advertise Web Browser

By Anjali Athavaley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page D05

The Mozilla Foundation has started a for-profit subsidiary to promote its Firefox Internet browser, the nonprofit group said yesterday, in a move that bolsters its ability to compete with the dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The Firefox browser has emerged as an upstart challenger to Explorer, growing rapidly among tech-savvy Internet users and nibbling into Explorer's market since its official release in November. It has won praise from product reviewers for its security and ease of use.

The newly created subsidiary, called Mozilla Corp., will have 35 employees and will be based in Mountain View, Calif., where the foundation is headquartered. Mitchell Baker, a board member of the Mozilla Foundation, will serve as the corporation's president.

Mozilla Corp. will develop and advertise the Mozilla Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail, said Chris Blizzard, a corporation board member. The subsidiary will generate revenue through partnerships with businesses such as Google Inc.

"We do have the revenue to build the development staff to be able to compete better," Blizzard said.

Mozilla released an unofficial version of Firefox for download in June 2004. By the end of April, Mozilla's Firefox had captured 6.8 percent of the Web browser market, according to WebSideStory Inc., a San Diego Web researcher. Internet Explorer's share dropped to 88.9 percent from 95.5 percent in the same period.

Mozilla said yesterday that Firefox's market share currently stands at less than 10 percent. It has generated over 75 million downloads.

But there is a limit to how many customers Firefox can steal from Internet Explorer, said Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash., organization that tracks Microsoft Corp. Most Internet users who already have Internet Explorer, which comes on computers with Microsoft Windows software, won't bother to download another browser, he said.

"It's amazing how many people have never downloaded a program and installed it," Helm said. "That puts an upper bound on how big Firefox can get."

Still, Firefox will continue to pick off Internet Explorer users who are looking for alternatives, he said. The Web browser is open-source and free for download, meaning that it is easy to access and can be redistributed. It also has additional features, such as a tabbed Web browser, and is not as vulnerable to certain security risks that plague Internet Explorer.

"Firefox is still not very much used and consequently, still not very much attacked," Helm said.

But he said that Firefox is missing a "killer app," or "something that would make people want to go out and install it because they can't get it on any other browser." Almost all Internet applications accessible through Firefox are available to Internet Explorer users.

If anything, Firefox has put Microsoft on guard as it is faced with the prospect of losing market share, Helm said. Microsoft will likely update Internet Explorer more often and add new features already available on Firefox, he said.

Just saw this article. I didn't see it discussed in the computer board but I'm sure it's somewhere on Boards. It would be interesting to get a Web Developer perspective on it anyway.

The article vaguely specifies how Mozilla plan on making money (i.e. partnerships) but how will these partnerships be used to earn cash is something that is not addressed. It is probably too early to really know but I hope this isn't a sign that it is going to go down the same road as Opera and start placing ads in the browser itself. I think this would be shooting itself in the foot, as I believe Opera's success has been seriously hindered by the fact that there are ads in it.

It is good news, but I am a little confused about what this step really means. The developers can be renumerated for the hours of toil spent on the development of the browser, and they can also afford to have full-time employee's working to secure the browser's future market share, but as is pointed out above; there is an upper limit to the market share that Mozilla can take (no suprise there) but the statement about the amount of people who have never downloaded and installed a program would be a concern. I think even fewer people would think of downloading and installing a new web browser. For all intents and purposes, IE works fine for the average computer illiterate user, and for a lot of the experienced one's too.

Is Mozilla going to embark on a re-education program? I imagine the campaign to push users to FireFox will focus more on the weakness of IE rather than the strength of FireFox, because quite frankly, people won't care how good FireFox is if they can see nothing wrong with IE.

Sorry for the ramblings. Any thoughts on this?

maxheadroom

Serbian wrote:

Just saw this article. I didn't see it discussed in the computer board but I'm sure it's somewhere on Boards. It would be interesting to get a Web Developer perspective on it anyway.

The article vaguely specifies how Mozilla plan on making money (i.e. partnerships) but how will these partnerships be used to earn cash is something that is not addressed. It is probably too early to really know but I hope this isn't a sign that it is going to go down the same road as Opera and start placing ads in the browser itself. I think this would be shooting itself in the foot, as I believe Opera's success has been seriously hindered by the fact that there are ads in it.

It is good news, but I am a little confused about what this step really means. The developers can be renumerated for the hours of toil spent on the development of the browser, and they can also afford to have full-time employee's working to secure the browser's future market share, but as is pointed out above; there is an upper limit to the market share that Mozilla can take (no suprise there) but the statement about the amount of people who have never downloaded and installed a program would be a concern. I think even fewer people would think of downloading and installing a new web browser. For all intents and purposes, IE works fine for the average computer illiterate user, and for a lot of the experienced one's too.

Is Mozilla going to embark on a re-education program? I imagine the campaign to push users to FireFox will focus more on the weakness of IE rather than the strength of FireFox, because quite frankly, people won't care how good FireFox is if they can see nothing wrong with IE.

Sorry for the ramblings. Any thoughts on this?

Everything I've read about it seems to indicate its purely to allow them freedom in how they go about generating revenue in the future withut having to worry about how it affects their non-profit charitable status, For instance, they may get kickbacks from search engines for including them in the search bar's default config. It seems to be more about tax (and avoiding IRS audits) than anything else

reitoei

On a related note, Microsoft have shipped their first beta of IE7 and it sounds like it might not be a load of crap after all:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx

mneylon

reitoei wrote:

On a related note, Microsoft have shipped their first beta of IE7 and it sounds like it might not be a load of crap after all:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx

Depends on your definitions.

They've already admitted that it doesn't support CSS properly yet

evilhomer

blacknight wrote:

Depends on your definitions.

They've already admitted that it doesn't support CSS properly yet

Apparently the next version of the beta will have all the CSS2 standards implemented properly.

That is if you can believe a word that micro$oft tell the web development community.