Linuxphile.org

Browser Wars Begin Anew

I've been reading a lot of posts/articles about web browsers in general. Some are touting the newly (ad)free Opera as a contender. Some articles are reporting on bugs in Firefox. Still others are talking about advancements in other Mozilla based browsers.

All of these talks are lacking one major consideration: IE 7. Firefox has won me over and I recommend it to all of my friends, family and colleagues. Even with the exploits/bugs that have been found the Firefox team patches the critical issues and addresses the others in future releases. Firefox, Opera and other browsers currently have a step up on IE when it comes to functionality which is helping to erode at the IE market share.

This will all change with IE 7. Many of the missing features will be added to IE 7 and other issues addressed with Microsoft's spyware tool. Users who have long used IE, but have started using Firefox or another browsers for pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, or to help rid themselves of Spyware may very well go back to what they are most familiar with when that product has the features they want.

I think in the end it is going to come down to market awareness. Firefox and any others that want to continue to gain in browser market share will need to extensively market their products. Firefox is using its current user base to begin to accomplish this.

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