Friday, October 22, 2004

Firefox [is] a revolutionary new browser that's catching on the way Mosaic did in 1993. In beta for the past four months, Firefox version 1.0 is set to be released in November.

Firefox, a free open-source browser that loads twice as fast as Internet Explorer, has already been downloaded 2.7 million times, and it has siphoned off nearly 2 percent of Microsoft's browser market share, now at 93.7 percent. Along the way, Firefox is fast becoming the browser of choice for anyone fed up with all the nasty things polluting the Web (pop-ups and viruses and spyware, oh my!). Google is rumored to be building its own browser based on the Firefox framework, and entrepreneurs are churning out hundreds of microprograms for it.

Hundreds of coders across 24 time zones kept banging on it, making it smarter, faster, and prettier. Its big moment came this June, when yet another Explorer-borne virus outbreak prompted the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team to advise government agencies to stop using the Microsoft browser. Coincidentally, the first truly stable version of Phoenix -- now renamed Firefox -- had just come out. Bingo.

Firefox is likely to inspire countless startups selling programs based on it. One of those, called Cenzic, has built an entire business around Firefox, selling a tool that scans e-commerce and financial firms' networks for security threats. CTO Ambarish Malpani built the prototype on Internet Explorer, but found it hard to work with. "If you run into a problem with Explorer, you have no control," he says.