Mozilla announces massive losses due to Microsoft "technical error"

[Jack]

Mozilla allegedly lost out on several million Firefox browser downloads because of Microsoft's failure to display a court-mandated browser choice screen to Windows 7 Service Pack 1 customers.

According to a blog post by Harvey Anderson, Mozilla's general counsel and VP of business affairs, between six and nine million downloads were lost during the period in question.

The European Commission in December 2009 declared that Microsoft must present European Windows users with a screen displaying the most popular alternatives to Internet Explorer, but it has recently emerged that Microsoft failed to act in accordance with the obligation for approximately 15 months.

Anderson states that, immediately prior to the fix, Firefox downloads had decreased by 63 per cent, to a low of 20,000 per day. Daily downloads then climbed to 50,000 after the fix was issued, growing by a massive 150 per cent.

Anderson's blog post concludes, "After accounting for the aggregate impact on all the browser vendors, it seems like this technical glitch decreased downloads and diminished the effectiveness of the remedy ordered in the 2009 Commitments.

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/10/31/mozilla-announces-massive-losses-due-to-microsoft-technical-error/

 

[samit]

what's wrong with Microsoft providing Internet Explorer as default browser in their OS....if people doesn't like it they can simply download any other browsers and use that as their default browser or simply uninstall internet explorer....

 

[tapoo]

^^^ the problem is most people from offices and house use internet explorer because it comes with Windows, and they have no idea that other browser software exists, they learned to click internet explorer and browse, and they do that..... firefox may be trying to grab some of those markets.....

my personal experience is that, in my area, local office and specially banks, all they using IE.... they have very basic idea how to do their job, learned in training, and they completely follow it step by step, they have no wish to change one step to promote other browser software ....

even branded companies, supplying them hardware and software, they doesn't provide other browser softwares..... it will be tough for other browsers to take those type of market share....

 

[McLovin]

Well the way that some users look at it they install Windows and they have already got a web browser installed. So why change, still something that Microsoft needs to keep on top of.