Gartner urges caution before downloading Firefox

The Web browser may not be an unstoppable juggernaut

By Matthew Broersma

February 10, 2005 12:00 PM ET

TechWorld.com - Companies should think twice before jumping on the Firefox bandwagon, according to research firm Gartner Inc.
The open-source browser has been gaining market share steadily over the past few months, helped by industry support and user enthusiasm, but Firefox isn't the unstoppable juggernaut it might seem.
Browser switching is taking place at the level of individual users, rather than organizations, and some of the factors that make Firefox more appealing than Internet Explorer are likely to go away as the browser gets to be more popular, according to Gartner analysts Ray Valdes, David Mitchell Smith and Whit Andrews.
"The growth in usage of Firefox is driven by factors that are not inherently sustainable," they warned in a study released last week.

In addition to Gartner, Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research had this opinion: Business Must Be Cautious With Firefox.

This topic generated the most reader mail that we've seen in a while. Here's some of what readers had to say.

Also, we've gathered all of the best Firefox articles into one useful resource: Read Firefox special coverage.

Gartner also noted that Microsoft Corp. could regain market share simply by updating Explorer, although it's unclear whether the company will choose to make a significant upgrade before the arrival of its next-generation Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn.
"Microsoft's response to Firefox growth is limited by how much it ties a revamped Internet Explorer to the release of Longhorn," the researchers said in the study.
Gartner said a more likely outcome is coexistence -- users will continue to run Explorer but also use Firefox alongside it in order to avoid problems. Companies should look at ways of managing this coexistence, the analysts recommended.
In the meantime, Firefox's growth may prove to be limited. Individuals are switching to the browser because of the appeal of features such as tabbed browsing, integrated search, better standards support, and easy installation and removal, Gartner said. The browser's design -- without ActiveX or deep hooks into the operating system -- also makes security flaws less serious and patches easier to test and apply.
But Firefox is sure to be targeted by more malicious code as its market share grows, Gartner said. Security experts agree, saying more and more malicious code, including spyware, is turning up that targets Mozilla-based browsers, although so far most of it doesn't work properly. Last year, for example, some sites began using XPI extensions to automatically install malicious applications in Mozilla and Firefox, which prompted a patch that stops XPIs from installing when a page loads.

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