“Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be.”
So says Bob Sutor, vice president of Open Source and Linux at IBM. The new default browser for half a million IBM employees worldwide is now Firefox. All newly deployed computers at IBM offices will be set with Firefox as its default browser, and IBM has gone so far as to recommend that home and business customers it deals with use Firefox as well. They are also encouraging vendors who may be supplying to IBM to be sure their products are Firefox-friendly.
As a Firefox zealot myself (I’m not just a lover of Firefox, I preach its gospel as well), I am happy to see this. I’ve been using Firefox since almost the beginning, on every Windows or Apple-based machine I have any control over. I have successfully dissuaded the parents, siblings, children, and spouses of same to leave the Internet Explorer foolishness behind and use Firefox exclusively. The only time I use Internet Explorer at all is when I’m using our backwards and stodgy business systems at my job, and we are still on IE 7 with no plans to move forward anytime soon. (We were on IE 6 until about four months ago because newer versions are not compatible with our business systems.)
IBM is a huge player, and to make such a public statement says something about both Microsoft, and Firefox. I am glad to see it, and hope more companies, especially big ones, will make the same move.
Anytime a stogy old company like IBM does something smart like abandon ie for Firefox, its a good thing. IE6 is a disaster and should be banned, IE8 is okay, slow but more secure. IE9 actually is fast, I can’t tell any difference in load times between Chrome, Safari, the new Minefield from Mozilla or the new IE9 preview which has no UI.
So maybe there’s hope for IE, Microsoft seems like their products have improved lately, certainly Win 7 is great, I love the new Office, and Win Phone 7 looks very interesting. If the IE9 team can keep up the speed on the final product I think IE will see there market share begin to rise again.
Firefox is so lat year!
Why go backwards, webkit browsers are the future. I used to use Firefox but now Safari or Chrome – faster better standards and better UI. Why anyone would wait for something as slow as Firefox I don’t get.
Firefox blows IE away in terms of standards compliance and full feature set. It is updated OFTEN, as opposed to “rarely” (like IE).
Safari beats all comers for sheer speed, but I still prefer FF.
Opera and Chrome have no features that jump out to me as “must have”.
The information came from Tech Eye…
360,000 is not a half million.