All Things Digital

Enterprise is finally realizing that Mozilla’s Firefox doesn’t bite. Behaves well in the office, too.

On the 10-year anniversary of the Mozilla source code release comes word that Firefox is catching on in enterprise space. According to a Forrester Research study, use of the open source browser among enterprise users has almost doubled in the past year alone. “Mozilla’s share of the browser market rose steadily throughout 2007, only slowing for the quarter directly following the release of Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) in late 2006,” the research outfit explains. “Adoption in the enterprise nearly doubled to 18% by the end of 2007.”

Impressive. That said, large-scale, companywide Firefox deployments are still the exception, not the rule. But then, according to Forrester, the same can be said of Internet Explorer 7 deployments as well. Says Forrester:

Not only has IE 7 — Microsoft’s five-year IE revision with tabs and candy — done little to squash Mozilla’s uprising, but the vendor is having trouble retiring IE 6. By the end of 2007 — 15 months after IE 7’s public release and three months before the IE 8 Beta — only 30% of enterprise IE users had switched to the new browser. Even with Microsoft (MSFT) spoon-feeding users high-priority automatic updates, enterprise apathy is proving extremely difficult to overcome.

Back in 2005, word on the street had it that the Mozilla Foundation was making as much as $30 million annually from the Google search box in its open-source Firefox Web browser.

Turns out, that number probably wasn’t too far off. According to an independent auditor’s report, Mozilla made $66.8 million in revenue in 2006, quite a bit of it from Google (GOOG). As former Mozilla Corp. CEO Mitchell Baker explained in a post to MozillaZine:

As in 2005 the vast majority of this revenue is associated with the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox, and the majority of that is from Google. The Firefox user base and search revenue have both increased from 2005. Search revenue increased at a lesser rate than Firefox usage growth as the rate of payment declines with volume. Other revenue sources were the Mozilla Store, public support and interest and other income on our assets.”

But those “other revenue sources” are piddling in comparison to Google’s contribution, which apparently accounts for a full 85% ($56 million or so) of Mozilla’s revenues.

So it’s supremely ironic then to hear Mozilla CEO John Lilly criticize Apple (AAPL) for distributing its Safari browser for Windows and OS X through its Software Update utility. “What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong,” Lilly said in a blog post on Friday. “It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad–not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web. … Apple has made it incredibly easy– he default, even–for users to install ride-along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices. It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the Web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop.”

Now, Lilly may have a point. But he’s hardly the best guy to be making it. As ZDnet’s Larry Dignan notes, Safari–like Firefox–features a Google search box, for which the search giant also presumably pays a placement fee. A sudden gain in market share for Safari at Firefox’s expense could have financial implications for Mozilla. “Let’s say Safari grabs 10% market share and Firefox falls to about 25%,” Dignan writes. “That’s fewer searches and less revenue for Mozilla. Sure, you can argue about whether Apple’s Safari move is above the board. You can also question the security implications and a bevy of other issues. But in the end, Apple’s Safari update and Mozilla’s reaction is like any other story. To truly understand it you have to follow the money.”

UPDATE: John Lilly wrote to me earlier today with a few comments about this post. Here’s what he had to say:

Hi John –

Wanted to follow up on your post just now about us and Apple and Google.

Take this for whatever it’s worth, but revenue and market share didn’t enter my mind when I posted. At Mozilla we obviously care about having enough resources to keep the lights on and pay people, and we care about having enough market share–because it means that we’ve built products that people really care about.

But competition is good and healthy, and essential. Without competition we’d all be in a pretty bad world–sort of like AT&T in the bad old days.

I’ve got zero issues with Apple using their channel to distribute other products–I think that’s a perfectly fine thing for them to do. What I worry about is that users need to trust the security updates they get from their vendors–because if they don’t–if they think there’s an ulterior motive other than keeping software up-to-date–that’s a problem for everyone.

Anyway, I respect your right to write what you think and to be skeptical of the motives of folks like me, but I do say sincerely that in this case, revenue has nothing to do with it.”

Netscape’s long day’s journey into irrelevance is nearly over. Come March, the storied browser–born in 1994 out of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ groundbreaking Mosaic–will be officially pensioned off, a paltry 0.61% share the only testament to its long-faded market dominance.

After extending support for Netscape for an additional month after first declaring it EOL last December, AOL is finally pulling the plug and recommending that users migrate to Firefox or Flock. “AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported Web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be,” the Netscape team explained. “Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape-branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.”

Netscape users who can’t bear the thought of surfing the Web without that inconic “N” in the upper right hand corner of their browser window can reskin Firefox with a retro Netscape look if they’re of a mind to.