Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox

didde writes "It seems like our friends in Redmond are quite happy about IE. According to this article, they won't be updating it until Longhorn. My favorite quote would be [We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version. And in the meantime it's an extensible platform, and there will be a set of extensions that Microsoft does as well as others.] Oh boy, are they actually working side by side with the virusmakers and phishers?" That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.

Comments

We're heard this line before

[cybermint]

Microsoft said the same thing about Linux a while back. It took a while, but they finally admitted that it was infact, a big theat.

Re:We're heard this line before

[MoonBuggy]

I'm inclined not to take this at face value. While they are morally lacking and put out some pretty poor (in comparison with the alternatives) software, Microsoft have historically been excellent business people.

They've already lost the hyped up WinFS, while Spotlight is still on track to arrive in the next few months. People (and governments) are realising that Linux can often do what they need cheaper and faster (OSX can also often do it better, but it costs more and the design types that need it are already using it). Now MS is risking their place in the browser market, which is bigger than it might appear on the surface - once the average grandmother is using a different browser (because the big media told her that a virus would make her computer explode if she didn't) it's putting the thought into everyone's head that maybe there's an alternative to MS, that they don't define computing.

All of that does not look like good marketing to me, but MS lives on good marketing and little more, so it would appear that there are two possible outcomes here: either MS has something up its sleeve to counteract all of the things going wrong for their image lately, or that they honestly believe in their own untouchability, in which case they might just have a hard fall coming before Longhorn is out the door.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Haydn Fenton]

I think the grandparent is referring to the story about an MS article reviewing MSN Search which features a screenshot of MSN Search in the Firefox browser. Microsoft, being Microsoft, denied it completely, even though we all had the evidence on many websites.
Of course I may be wrong.

Re:We're heard this line before

[dougmc]

It's a lot easier to change a web browser than Switch to a new OS.

I agree. However ...

People like word and excel and the great selection of windows apps and will not easily dump these applications for their Linux equivalent.

... the example you give isn't about the OS at all. It's about *applications* that are only available on a few OS's. (i.e. Windows and MacOS.) (There is Crossover Office, which makes Office run under Linux via Wine, but it still has some pretty serious issues, at least it did when I tried it.)

And again, I agree. [Lack of] Microsoft Office is probably the number one thing keeping Linux off the desktop at many businesses today. (It's not the only thing, but it's the biggest thing.)

It's unfortunately, really, that projects like OpenOffice and AbiWord are graded, not upon their own features and merits, but on how well they interoperate with the de-facto standard, Microsoft Office. (Of course, Microsoft is fully aware of this, and it's probably the #2 reason that they keep mucking with the Office formats every chance they get -- to 1) force people to upgrade to read the documents sent by their peers who have already upgraded, and 2) to `break' things like OpenOffice.)

Re:We're heard this line before

[Juanvaldes]

once the average grandmother is using a different browser (because the big media told her that a virus would make her computer explode if she didn't) it's putting the thought into everyone's head that maybe there's an alternative to MS, that they don't define computing.

As I read this it occurred to me, has MS EVER lost a market once they came to dominate it? Obviously not OS or Office markets. They never owned the server market. Sure they have had some amazing failures and other offerings that any other company would have had to give up on long ago. But has MS ever lost a market like this before?

Re:We're heard this line before

[man_of_mr_e]

What it really boils down to is this. Microsoft knows quite well what Edward Yourdon wrote about "good enough" software. So long as they keep IE "good enough" for the majority of users, they won't get that many defections.

You might argue that IE isn't "good enough" but for the vast majority of people, it is. At least as far as they're concerned.

Microsoft staved off a lot of problems with SP2, which really goes a long way toward making IE "almost good enough". So long as they can address major security holes within a decent amount of time, people will be content to wait for all these big changes that will happen in IE7.

Until web sites start breaking, some major IE related worm comes along that claims 99% of the users systems, or something equally as serious. They won't budge more than a few percentage points.

Of course it doesn't hurt MS that they have to keep IE around anyway to run Windows Update, or use the help system, run Quicken or a number of other apps.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Rew190]

Do you know how many users believe their web browser is basically their operating system? There are a lot of folks who have computer for the sole purpose of email, internet, and instant messaging. For all intents and purposes for this group, the browser IS as important as the OS, if not more so.

Re:We're heard this line before

[killjoe]

They only dominate in OS and Office software. Obviously monopolies of that magnitude are not going to go away overnight.

That's not the really important thing though. The really important thing is that they have been unable to leverage those monopolies to gain monopolies in other fields despite trying desparately to do so.

They have suffered one severe setback another whether it's MSN, MS-TV (whatever the hell that was), set top boxes, MS at work, SQL server, IIS, NT server, Active directory, .NET, sidewalk, xbox, etc.

Some of those products are successful but none of them have achieved a monopoly which is the only goal for MS that counts.

As long as MS fails to leverage their monopolies to achieve other the world is a better place.

In time their current monopolies will erode and wither, all empires fall eventually but the big ones take a while.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Kizzle]

Actually in Windows, IE is basically the operating system because of all the integration.

If they have to say they aren't worried...

[geoffrobinson]

they are probably worried.

Having an IE monopoly is a lynchpin in their designs for server-side control. Unless I'm completely off-base.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[nizo]

Thankfully apache kicked their butt here, or else you wouldn't even be able to use any other browser except IE to surf the web. I mean, imagine if microsoft controlled as high a percentage of the web servers as they do browsers.

A year?!

[Xtifr]

Just a year's head start? You sure are optimistic about the Longhorn release schedule, aren't you? :)

Worse=better

[j_heisenberg]

As could be read on Joel on Software, Webapps are becoming major competition to MS. That's why a better browser is the last thing MS wants. Worse browser = better browser.

browser security check

[exhilaration]

If you're still using an older (more than 6 months since you've patched) web browser, I suggest you check out this browser security check, which will test it for exploits.

At your own risk, of course. Firefox 1.0PR passed with flying colors.

Re:Working with phishers?

[mcleodnine]

Probably for the same reason people put those "Free iPod" links in their sigs - gullibility and no sense of humor.

The second F!

[SuperJason]

The second F is supposed to be small!! Argh!

That is all.

Some other famous quotes...

[H_Fisher]

...from like-minded individuals throughout history:

T. Rex, 30-some odd million years ago: "Mammals? Ha! I'm the biggest predator in town! Why the hell should I worry, I rule this place!"

Roman generals, c. 200 a.d.: "Barbarians, you say? We've got nothing to worry about. We're the biggest army on the planet. What could possibly go wrong?"

A Confederate general, 1861: "Those Yankees ain't nothin' to worry 'bout! We'll run 'em back across th' Potomac in a month, then we'll go back to plantin' cotton."

Adolf Hitler, 1942: "We can fight a war on two fronts! The Russians can't stop us! We're invincible!"

The Iraqi information minister, 2003: "The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad."

Re:extensions

[Alien Being]

"Is IE really an extendable platform?"

Sure, but instead of "extensions" we call them "exploits".

Head Start?

[__Maad__]

That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.

They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. This is a tremendous amount of work, but I for one would be more than willing to contribute bits and pieces as I come across them. This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform -- and to a greater extent, more modern w3c standards (DOM2/3,CSS2/3,etc).

I think that what the Firefox devs have done is an absolutely amazing feat of marketing and UI-cleanup, however, there is a huge amount of legacy code in web applications and scripts and pages in general dedicated to MSIE's own proprietary DOM, ActiveX, and rendering quirks. We need to bring those people to the standards-compliant world and, to a lesser extent, to the Mozilla platform.

I just don't see that critical mass in the application side of things yet, and that will be part of winning the battle. If XAML and so-forth start to make inroads, we are in trouble.

Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Andy_R]

I know this sounds outlandish, but given that Microsoft don't make any money from IE, and it's vulnerabilities are giving them a lot of bad publicity, is there any sound business reason for them not to scrap it (and the staff that write it), save themselves a fortune by recommending Firefox? This would also solve their legal problems with the EU over bundling.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

And the Firefox developers aren't even trying to fix the bugs people want fixed.

I've watched Mozilla development for a few years now, and I can tell you that this is actually a good thing... By listening to everyone you end up with (among a million other things) a kitchen sink. The developers must follow their own vision, otherwise there is no vision. If that vision turns out to be wrong, someone should fork and prove it.

Now, I'm not saying your pet enhancement-bug isn't important, just that the devs have decided it's not worth the amount of work at the moment. Remember that there are over 5000 open non-enhancement bugs on the firefox product only...

Also, the enhancement you're talking about is going to be very, very difficult to implement without breaking stuff. I'm 99% sure that it's not even possible to do it without breaking some valid web-pages with onload and onunload javascript (and no, Opera hasn't succeeded in this, see this for an example). Unless you have a solution for those problems, I suggest you choose a different tone for your critique...

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[roca]

> Today, Firefox's security advantage lies in one
> single factor: The very little attention it is
> getting from the people who write exploits.

People keep saying that, but you can't prove it until we get equal market share with IE. I'm looking forward to that.

In fact there are lots of other reasons why Firefox is more secure than IE. For example:
-- We use a string class library for almost all strings that flat-out prevents buffer overflows associated with those strings. My impression is that the IE code mostly does not.
-- IE is designed to be lax in its interpretation of the HTML, CSS, HTTP headers etc that it receives. Gecko is designed to be strict --- well, as strict as possible while making it possible to view 99% of the Web. IE's approach leads to confusion, which leads to security bugs. A great example is the raft of security bugs where different parts of IE guess the MIME type of incoming data and the guesses are inconsistent.
-- The IE-Windows integration means IE supports a lot of magic features such as special protocols that Gecko doesn't support or just blocks. So IE has more attack surface.

SP2 has improved things for IE a lot but they started from a bad position.

Re:Working with phishers?

[heptapod]

It's hard to take anything this site says about MS seriously.

Deep breath.

You must be new here.

It all goes back to the OS

[Infonaut]

In the end, if there were enough Apps to use on a browser, you could switch to Linux, or to any OS supporting a browser - OpenBeOS, BSD, whatever.

That's it in a nutshell. Despite all the other endeavors Microsoft engages in, without the monopoly rents they receive from Windows and Office, Microsoft is dead in the water. They know this, and are doing everything possible to extend the Windows monopoly to the Internet. Once the majority of their customers realize that the OS has become of secondary importance, they're screwed.

For them it's about leveraging their browser dominance until the browser is fully integrated into the OS with Longhorn. They're relying on the ol' FUD train to keep things going in the interim. All declarations of confidence aside, they know that there is more pressure on them than ever before. With a year or more before Longhorn's arrival, I expect to see Microsoft talking more and more about how wonderful the browsing experience will be in Longhorn, while painting Firefox et. al. as relics of a bygone era.

Before long I expect to hear Ballmer say something like, "People just don't understand that the rich browsing experience built into Longhorn is going to make the tired old standalone browsers look pathetic!"

Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say? Mod me down as a troll, but even if people jump ship en masse to Firefox, that is not a problem for Microsoft. There are several reasons for this - times today are very different from the good ol' days of their browser war with Netscape.

During the browser war between Microsoft and Netscape, Microsoft's primary worry was not people using Netscape Navigator as much as the Windows platform losing importance. Remember Andressen's quote saying that when Netscape was done, Windows would be reduced to a set of poorly debugged device drivers? Its easy to say that was foolery in retrospect, but Microsoft was sincerely worried about that. As far as Microsoft knew at the time, Windows could have lost importance in the same way that minicomputers declined after the rise of the personal computer.

Fast forward to the twenty first century. Microsoft is having a crapload of problems with spyware and this product called Firefox is getting rave reviews. But the worries of the mid nineties are gone. The reason that Microsoft stopped IE development is because they do not want to see web apps get more powerful; they hope that when Longhorn comes around, people will write distributed .NET apps.

Firefox does nothing to stop this future. While Firefox is a nice app and IMHO better than IE, it is not pushing the frontiers of web application capabilities, the way that Netscape did in the nineties. As nice as it is to not worry about slimeware, Firefox is just enabling the same ol' web.

As nice as Firefox is, it is not enabling people to switch away from Microsoft technologies other than IE itself. People are not switching to Linux because of Firefox. When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping .NET web applications, from MSFT's perspective it is fine if people use Firefox 90% of the time and use IE for the 10% of .NET mission critical apps. As long as those apps exist, people are still tied into their platform.

Perhaps at some level, Microsoft risks losing mindshare from Firefox. But even if this is the case, they risk to lose much more mindshare by acknowledging Firefox as an issue so their response is expected.

To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

MS makes most of it's money from Windows and Office. If they lose Windows and Office they can shut down shop. So they must do whatever they can to protect the income from those 2 areas, and specifically Office because Windows is nothing without Office for the average user.

Now the problem with the web is that browser-based apps (think gmail) threatens Office and by extention Windows. We live in a time where bandwith is cheap and fast enough to run a high-quality spreadsheet or word processor as a web application. The ONLY thing stopping this from happening is the pitiful state of IE. If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.

If IE matures enough for this to happen, all applications can be web-based and run off ANY COMPATIBLE BROWSER on ANY PLATFORM. Thus I can move my grandma to Linux with Firefox 3.0 and she won't even know that something has changed, because she was already accessing all her apps via a browser. This can also happen if Firefox becomes the de-facto standard browser, and they start implementing all these new and great standards that's waiting to unleash the power of the web-app.

So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.

My company develops software for a specific vertical market. All web-based. It's great for our clients because they can access their data from anywhere, any time. It's great for us because we can upgrade and improve the system whenever we feel like it without sending out upgrade disks. 90% of all support calls we take right now is because of IE (spyware / 'special' toolbars). Lately we've been installing Firefox for all clients when training them, and that's helped a lot.

So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn. I don't know what MS plans for a browser in Longhorn, but I know it will be bad for all other browsers.

Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox

[Repugnant_Shit]

I would say *not* to set the maxrequests to a number like 30. 3-6 should be good enough. You don't want to hammer a site with 30 simultaneous requests.