Firefox after five years

FIVE years ago last month, Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape’s crushing defeat at the hands of Microsoft in the first browser wars. In that first encounter, Microsoft used its monopoly in operating systems to clobber Netscape by bundling its own browser, Internet Explorer, with every copy of Windows. This strategy made IE the default browser for most Windows users and wiped out the early lead that Netscape enjoyed. As a result, Netscape’s share of the browser market plummeted from more than 80 percent in 1996 to less than 5 percent by 2003.

An unlikely combination of developments, however, broke Microsoft’s monopoly over browsers.

First, Netscape open-sourced its browser code, enabling a wider community of programmers to contribute to what became known as the Mozilla project.

Then, in 2002, programmers Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross created an experimental project within Mozilla that did exactly the opposite of what Netscape was doing at the time, which was to cram more and more applications into its browser.

Their reaction against software bloat eventually led to a stripped-down browser called Phoenix, which was later renamed Firebird because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies, the company that makes the basic input/output system for PCs. The browser was again renamed, this time to Firefox, because a database server already used the Firebird brand.

On Nov. 9, 2004, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released.

With strong support from the open source community, Firefox would steadily improve over the next five years and reclaim market share from Internet Explorer, even though Microsoft continued to bundle its browser with Windows.

Today, with 330 million downloads, Firefox accounts for about 25 percent of the browsers in use. IE has dropped from 90 percent to about 67 percent. This success is significant because it demonstrates how the open source model can deliver high-quality software in a self-sustaining way.

On Firefox’s fifth birthday, Mozilla’s open source evangelist Christopher Blizzard blogged about major themes in the last five years and the future of Web browsers.

One clear trend in the last five years, he said, was the emergence of modern browsers which incorporate technologies such as fast JavaScript that enable them to run Web-based applications.

“One thing that’s become obvious over the last five years is the wide gap that’s emerging between the field of modern browsers —Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome—with the world’s most popular browser—IE,” Blizzard said.

Another important trend is the growing importance of standards in browser development. This adherence to standards enabled Apple to use KHTML, an open source layout engine, to create Safari, and helped Google to create Chrome.

“Standards matter, and they should continue to matter,” Blizzard wrote. “When they do those individual human beings we like to call users benefit with greater choice and fast innovation.”

Led by Firefox’s add-on system, the last five years also saw “an explosion in the number of people who are customizing their experiences —both in browsers and on the Web,” Blizzard said.

“The Web is unique, and was built to be hacked. No other widely deployed system in the world delivers itself as source code like the Web does. And this transparency has made it possible for the distributed innovation that we’re seeing in Firefox and on the Web,” he added.

Looking forward, Blizzard said we can expect improvements in the way video is handled on the Web. As more and more transactions are carried out online, data security, privacy and the safeguards against identity theft will become crucial.

Mobile phones, too, will play an increasing role in the development of browsers and the Web.

“The decisions of users, carriers, governments and the people who build phones will have far-reaching effects on this new extension to the Internet and how people will access information for decades to come,” Blizzard concluded.

So much has happened in the browser market in the last year or two that it is difficult to predict what the next five years will look like. One thing is certain, however. By what it has achieved so far, Firefox has already shaped that future.