Summary
I remember Netscape. Man!! What a browser. It set the benchmark for everyone else and no one could compare. Then one day, AOL bought them and they disappeared. Now it is back as Firefox.
Analysis
Competition is a funny thing, on the one hand it is good because it spurs innovation and then on the other hand it can be a catastrophe. The catastrophe usually occurs with the pioneer. The pioneer gets comfortable with their position, which is the first player in the industry and the perception that there are beyond reach and indestructible. When that happens you can bet even money that pioneer will have its head lopped off by a competitor they were not even expecting.
When I ran sales and marketing I used to say: “It’s not the view ahead I am thinking about it’s the view behind me I am worried about - I am looking for my competitor to come up behind me any day now”. This is not paranoia, this is caution, this is never believing the hype you are handing Wall Street, this is called Competitive Positioning, this is called watching your behind for competition.
When you are seeking to take the number one spot away from the current title holder, you have the advantage of seeing what the Number 1 Company is doing right and wrong. Further, the Number 1 Company is usually in the unfortunate position of dealing with backward compatibility with legacy systems; in other words “baggage”.
Mozilla is that company Microsoft should have been keeping an eye out for. Microsoft may have seen them coming but what could they have done about it? I got involved using Mozilla’s Firefox because of a recommendation from a colleague in technology development.
I had been complaining about Microsoft’s Vista and the recent upgrade to Internet Explorer. I have already noted my past feelings regarding Vista. In regard to Internet Explorer it was simply slow. I found Firefox lightening fast.
This is not a technical analysis. This is a user’s opinion based on personal usage. I am not going to get into discussions of architectural models or caching policies because the average user does not care about such things and it is the average user that will make or break any product. Customers want speed, convenience, performance, quality, easy access, and a reasonably low price.
Do a side by side customer comparison of Firefox and Internet Explorer using 1000 average people. See what happens.
Keep an eye open for Google’s Chrome.
Obviously the small impact Firefox has had has gotten Microsoft’s attention. Time for a consumer focus group to voice its opinion.
