# Google star of Firefox's new browser



## mimo2005 (Oct 2, 2004)

*Google star of Firefox's new browser*
November 11, 2004, 4:18 PM PST
By Stefanie Olsen 



Google and Mozilla may or may not be working on a Web browser together, but the two are cozier than ever with Firefox's latest release. 

The search company is newly featured, center-stage, on the default home page of Firefox 1.0, a Web browser based on the Mozilla Foundation's open-source development work and which was made available for free download Tuesday morning. In only two days, an estimated 2.5 million people have downloaded the Web browser, according to Mitchell Baker, president of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

Google's prominence on the browser underscores the foundation's desire to grow Firefox from its early roots in the Web developer community to an audience of Joe and Jane Surfers, who are likely to use search.

"Our entire start page is new, and that reflects our ongoing goal of appealing to the general consumer market," Baker said.

In addition, Google is hosting the Firefox start page because, according to Baker, the company's technical infrastructure is more capable of supporting high volumes of traffic.

Rumors have circulated for months that Google is developing a Web browser, potentially in partnership with Mozilla. And while both sides have denied it, ties still seem to be cinching between the two outfits. In another symbiosis, Mozilla outlined plans this week to work closer with desktop search providers to develop similar capabilities for upcoming versions of Firefox. That could play nicely into Google's recent push into desktop search.

More imminently, their relationship could greatly benefit Google if the Firefox browser were to take off with consumers like some people expect, given the growing discontent with Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer browser. Google makes the lion's share of its revenue from advertising placements next to search results, and Firefox could help fuel demand for its search engine and advertising.

Still, people can easily change their default home page.

In earlier versions of Firefox, Google has been a resident on the upper right-hand box of the browser--and it is the same in version 1.0. Firefox users can use a pull-down menu from the search box to navigate the Web with Yahoo, Amazon.com and others. And they can change the default from Google to other search engines such as Ask Jeeves.

Baker said Mozilla has assembled a "set of different search partners" including Yahoo. She would not say whether there is a financial relationship between Mozilla and Google. But typically, Google pays its partners a share of revenue from search-related advertising.



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*Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE*
November 11, 2004, 10:54 AM PST
By Munir Kotadia 



Just days after the launch of open-source browser Firefox 1.0, Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features. 

At a security roundtable discussion in Sydney on Thursday, Ben English, Microsoft's security and management product manager, told attendees that IE undergoes "rigorous code reviews" and is no less secure than any other browser. 

"Because IE is ubiquitous, you hear a lot more about it, but I don't think that Internet Explorer is any less secure than any other browser out there," English said. 

Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, agreed, saying he does not believe IE's market share is under attack following the recent high-profile debut of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. 

Vamos said that although he has heard other people mention the competitive threat posed by Firefox, he doesn't see it as a problem. 

"I'm not sure that that is the reality. I have seen comments around that, but there is nothing I can refer to that really supports that," he said. Instead, Vamos said, consumers need to be educated about all the features already offered by Microsoft's browser. 

"We probably need to do a bit of work to communicate the features that are in IE," he said. 

Vamos, who admitted he has never used Firefox, said there is a lot of hype surrounding the open-source movement and that if Microsoft's customers wanted new features, they would have told the company about it. 

"I don't agree that just because a (competing) product has a feature that we don't have, that feature is important," he said. "It is not. It is only important if it is a feature the customer wants. There are plenty of products out there with features we don't have. We have plenty of features that our customers don't use. 

"If there are features in our products that are subpar or need to be added, then I have great confidence that we are an organization that responds pretty quickly and effectively to that." 

English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users. 

"I don't believe it is a true statement that IE doesn't have the features that our customers want," he said. "We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback, then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team." 

Ross Fowler, managing director of Cisco Systems Australia and New Zealand, said the networking giant uses IE internally but only after deploying Cisco's Secure Agent, which is a desktop utility that monitors all activity and alerts the user if it spots something unusual--such as a keystroke-logging program. 

"Internally, we have deployed Cisco Secure Agent to prevent those day-zero attacks, and we have more and more of our customers--particularly in the university sector--deploying the Cisco Secure Agent," Fowler said.


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## Volt-Schwibe (Jan 12, 2003)

apparently, if microsoft thinks that IE is as secure as any other browser out there, they apparently havent used anything but IE, or they would know what was really up.

we all know that internet explorer is totally inter-twined into the rest of the operating system, but what most people don't know is that this _*Connects your internet browser to your core windows components, making it take a single step for an attack to hit the core. anything that can skean through IE's security, can then sneak right into the rest of the system, as the system core has allowed IE to make these contacts. this is why the holes that exist inside IE are such a problem.*_

_(and by attacks, i mean viruses, spyware, ad-ware, hijackers, and all the similar programs that claim they aren't spyware)_

it's alot like someone gaining access to your house because you have a gate keeper that is friends with everyone. all the bad guys have to do is just chill with him for a few, and then just sneak in while he isn't worried about them.


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