On Sunday 23 December 2007, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 11:39:06AM +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote:
> > http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/article.php/3718191
> >
> > Can the Perl community learn somthing form them?
>
> Firefox the browser took off in a way that Mozilla the browser never
did?
Yes. Firefox now has about 16% of the browser market, while Mozilla never
h=
ad=20
more than 5%.=20
> What changed with Firefox?
>
I can think of several things:
1. Firefox was trimmed down and a lot of extraenous functionality was
moved=
to=20
plugins. This made it easier to learn and use.
2. The plugins mechanism was enhanced to easily allow removing plugins,
whi=
ch=20
I don't recall was possible in SeaMonkey.
3. The profiles dialog at startup was eliminated. Profiles are very useful
=
for=20
the power user (see=20
http://allium.zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2007-November/012370.html
),=
=20
but would confuse and annoy a great deal of users.
4. The homepage of Firefox was redesigned to make it easier to use and
more=
=20
marketing-oriented.
5. The spreadfirefox campaign ( http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
) did
several=
=20
activities to help promote and publicise Firefox.
6. More compatibility was added with MSIE, and they made it easier to
im****=
t=20
your settings from it.
> Also, how much advertising revenue do they get from Google and the like?
Quite a lot. A few tens of millions dollars.
> And how do they spend it?=20
=46rom what I know, they spend very little of it, at present. They are
stil=
l=20
looking for ways to spend it properly, and sorting out the legal
details.=20
Meanwhile, the money is just ac***ulating. :-)
> And does that help explain their success?=20
>
I don't think it does. The success of Firefox started shortly after the=20
departure from AOL, when Mozilla was not sponsored by Google. Most of
the=20
rise of Firefox happened in a short time frame, when the Mozilla
Foundation=
=20
recevied only a fraction of the advertising revenue they got from Google.
A=
nd=20
the spreadfirefox campaign was from what I know, sponsored and done by=20
volunteers, who even pooled the money to sponsor a 250K USD (AFAIR) ad in
t=
he=20
New York Times.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish (who has placed Firefox buttons on several of his sites, and
w=
ho=20
maintains an anti-MSIE page - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/
).
=2D--------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish shlomif@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.shlomifish.org/
I'm not an actor - I just play one on T.V.
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