… But as Firefox nears its first birthday, its maker, The Mozilla Foundation, faces significant challenges, analysts say. These include quickly discovering and fixing security vulnerabilities, competing against an upcoming IE upgrade and broadening Firefox’s user base beyond its core of technically savvy users.
The stream of Firefox security vulnerabilities uncovered in recent months is par for the course for a young software product. But it may disappoint users who switched to Firefox expecting it would be immune to security holes.
While the myth of Firefox as a totally secure browser evaporates, Microsoft is now upgrading IE to try and close the features gap that has attracted users to Firefox. IE 7 is now in a test, or beta, phase. Mozilla must keep Firefox one step ahead of IE in features and innovation, a bigger challenge now that Microsoft is for the first time in years paying attention to its browser’s development. …
Growth and marketshare certainly bring new challenges. Becoming a “commodity” is maybe not as easy as it seems. It makes the upcoming release of IE 7 even more exciting.
The whole article can be found at : InfoWorld
And here in lies the biggest bennefit of Firefox. It is forcing competition, both, on MS and itself. Long may it continue.
Simon,
I fully agree. Competition is always best for the user.