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More on Mozilla/Firefox: 'The Tide Has Turned'

Yet another page of commentary on the Mozilla browser situation. This time, it's from Dave Whitinger, who 4 years ago, in the midst of The Browser Wars Part One (just before MS Internet Explorer became dominant, back in the Netscape 4.x days), wrote The Battle That Could Lose Us The War, where he concluded that "if Microsoft was able to dominate the web on the desktop, it would be a short matter of time before they could extend and dominate the web on the server."

But now, after plenty of (somewhat tumultuous) history in Mozilla, he is saying that The Tide Has Turned. An excerpt:

So much progress has been made, in fact, that today, more than four years since my gloomy outlook was keyed, with unspeakable pleasure I am now in a position to report that this tide has finally turned. The Gecko layout engine seems unbreakable and is reportedly more standards compliant than Internet Explorer. The Firefox browser is fast and stable, and supports the plugins out there that the users want and need, and, for the first time in several years, my wife is actually excited about her Linux desktop again. For the first time since Internet Explorer 3.0 was released, I am seeing people switching browsers in droves.

Definitely evidence that the browser wars indeed are NOT over. Mozilla is now clearly better technology than IE. However, inertia is on Microsoft's side. We'll see what happens....

posted by JWL at 1:21 PM |