Comments on: Firefox gains at IE's expense in Europe

Loss of market share could have implications for Microsoft's future in Web services, says Mozilla Europe's president.

[Penguinisto]

First Europe...

...then North America.

I can live with that, judging by the increased FF usage I see here (in the US).

/P

[ralfthedog]

I don't think Microsoft has anything to be worried about.

Microsoft should just keep doing everything the way that it is, and not pay any attention to its competition. That would be best.

[qwerty75]

"We're proud to see Windows remains the platform of choice"

Very few people have actually chosen Microshite junk.

[tasehagi]

Don't forget about....

"While we think IE is 'the choice' of hundreds of millions of people and businesses around the world because of the unique value it provides"

what value?
all the people I know that are using IE never, and I repeat... never heard of FF...
and allmost all of them only know how to double-click on that icon over there.... ;)

[jhoeforth]

"We're proud to see Windows remains the platform of choice"

Umm... No. If you don't believe in the numbers, let me say that there are more than considerable amount of people who actually chose Windows over other OS. That's why the Windows ecosystem is alive, softwares are being develop on top of this OS. Hardware manufacturers make sure their products compliant on Windows.

[robbtuck]

Integration with the OS is the problem

I use Firefox because it is more secure, more stable, faster, and not "integrated" with Windows or any other OS. IE's major flaws stem from it's cobbled-together integration into Windows to avoid anti-monopoly lawsuits like the one Netscape brought against Microsoft, which was made moot by claims that the browser was part of the OS in the next version of Windows (98). A browser is an application, and should not be tied in to the core of any operating system.

[C_G_K]

They did this on purpose

MS wanted to make sure that they could not disentangle IE from the OS. That way, no judge could ever order them to stop shipping it with windows. From a software engineering point of view, heavily integrating an app like IE with the OS is stupid and one of the reasons it took MS so long to get vista out the door. It was only done to try and get an unfair advantage over competitors.

[Stating]

What About That IE Vista Sandbox?

We were told by MS that IE on Vista would run in a "sandbox" to keep the computer safe. If this were true then it wouldn't matter how many security holes were in IE would it? What happened to that mythical sandbox?

[DMassy]

Protected Mode

It is not a sandbox. It is called Potected Mode, see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/ie7protectedmode.mspx although the Microsoft website does a pretty poor job of explaining it.

It has definitely helped improve the security of Vista. It'd be great to see other browsers use protected mode as well so that whatever browser you use access to writing to the OS is restricted.

[rcrusoe]

If MS wants to be successful in web apps

Then their apps better work in all major browsers. Windows isn't going away, but its market share is going to continue to shrink as the os we run locally becomes less and less important.

Why abandon all those non-IE using potential customers to the competition? There's going to be more of them everyday.