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I'm going to stick with one "blog" set up to post too, maybe do things in categories and then go from there.

Over and out...

Story #2
I just finished buying some paint from Kelley Moore last Saturday. My wife and I were out the door when this older gentleman stopped me and asked me where I got my Mozilla hat (hat w/ Firefox logo on it). He downloaded Firefox, loves it, and had heard about us through Business Week.

Mainstream? Yeah, I think so. Mind you, these are just two stories from last week.

I'd like more web sites to publish their browser market share data. It's not like publishing browser market share data is a big deal. From the top sites I talk to, the numbers are very, very interesting. It seems like we're already past the 10% market share goal and nearing the 20% range. (still pretty mind boggling).

It's funny how things get blown out of proportion or how blog posts are starting to be just as good as a press release, or how a blog can be quoted to serve as a basis for a news article.

Moral of the story is that we meet with lots of people, hand hold people through what's already available online, and that's about it.

Speaking of which, I spoke with some people at Lycos today and told them the exact same things:

1) make sure your site and applications work cross-browser and not specific to one browser, Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE 6. This (interoperability) is a key attribute of the Internet.

2) make sure you understand our organization, what we're doing, our platform/architecture, how to file bugs, learn our roadmap, etc.

3) push the limits and provide great new web sites worthy of 2005 e.g. maps.google.com that work with modern browsers.

But the keynote speech did little to quell the fears of some audience members. “He said the same thing last year,” said security expert Davi Ottenheimer, who runs network security at retailer West Marine.

Concerns about IE 7? Nope, it's a good thing. It's nice to see that Microsoft understands the issues and looks to be addressing the problems with IE through today's announcement. Problem is IE 7 isn't available now (Firefox is), there's no date to it, there's no understanding of what's actually in the "fix" for IE to make it more secure, and it sounds like it's just more of the same from Microsoft.

Well, we're going to continue to make Firefox available across multiple platforms and languages, work to make it even more secure and pleasant to use. At the end of the day we all just want software that works, that's fun to use, and can help us get our work done. Hopefully we'll see something like that from MSFT with IE 7 and their other products.

On a side note, Halo 2 seems to work pretty well. Maybe they should just ditch operating systems, browsers, and office applications and focus on games.

The problem they should be solving is providing a better web browsing user experience and tying AOL services into that experience to make it even better. If you try and solve that problem this is the product you'll have:

An AOL browser based on Firefox that's
- branded AOL
- has links to AOL's key services, mail, search, IM
- AIM chat extension
- overlay AOL and TW content for pages on the web, e.g. if on MSNBC, offer up related CNN links
- best of breed parental controls

That's it, all of one big extension (or three or four little ones)

On a separate topic, I just read this article about the difference between Google and Yahoo. Basically Google spends more money on R&D than Yahoo. Also more employees are computer scientists versus MBAs, etc. That's absolutely right on. The more engineers the better, and the less "business types" the better. The best people to hire are problem solvers and people who can get things done. I guess that's not so obvious.

It feels a lot like 1995. It's going to be an interesting second half of this decade.

Reading this alleged quote that a MSFT VP said: "cut off Netscape's air supply" got me thinking.

How the hell do you compete against a nonprofit from a marketing or organization stand point? I guess you can via a technology stand point. But from MSFT's standpoint, you can't exactly go and say "mozilla is bad, they're giving away their software and they're all about bringing choice and innovation on the Internet." It's like "that damn Red Cross -it's annoying that all they do is help save lives."

It'll be interesting to see how MSFT "competes" against a nonprofit Foundation who's mission is to provide choice and innovation on the Internet. IIS "competes" against Apache...barely.

So "cut off Netscape's air supply"? Payback's a bitch.

It's looking like after the SpreadFirefox admins (now sfx drivers) meeting today not to exceed 64% is going to be hard.

I remember checking it out back in the day and seeing what was happening at netscape. It was really cool. 10 years later it's happening again with other companies. Of course, MoFo/mozilla.org has been leading the way for quite some time, posting notes, product road maps, prds, engineering docs, oh yeah the code. Wondering if companies will go that far or just take it to the superficial level of company blogs = check out my company we're cool.

If a company blog is to succeed, it has to be sincere, off the cuff i.e. not coordinated (and it actually has to be interesting).

Lame blog = lame person/lame company.

It's true that some companies will take longer to switch their primary browser over from IE due to Active X. Most companies and most forward thinking companies will not have a problem. However, there's no reason not to install Firefox anyhow as a secondary/back-up browser nor prevent employees to use Firefox and Thunderbird at work.

The fact is, there are companies that have or will be deploying Firefox and Thunderbird in the enterprise space. An another fact is that employees have been downloading and using Firefox or Thunderbird at work because it works better for them.

The message to IT folks is let your employees use Firefox and Thunderbird. Deploy Firefox and Thunderbird as back-up solutions if not primary. Switch to Firefox and Thunderbird as your primary solutions when ready (and there are a lot of good reasons to do so--applications are free and secure, and they work very, very well).

Ben Goodger, lead developer for Firefox, and Darin, a key contributor to Mozilla are now at Google.

A couple items to note here:
- Mitchell Baker has a statement on this.
- This isn't anything new to the Mozilla Project. Most people who work on the Mozilla Project are employed by other companies or work on it because it's just interesting (hobby/research motivated).

The question here is, do you have someone employed at *your* company thinking about Mozilla or contributing to Mozilla? If you're not, you should especially if you truly consider yourself a web company.

If you're a business person wanting to learn more, shoot me an email.

Left to right it's cbeard, me, blake, dbaron (sitting), joe hewitt, and ben goodger. The hat on the bottom is Jay.