RSSYahoo Changes Tune on Firefox Support
By Ed Oswald | Published March 18, 2005, 1:04 PM
Yahoo took a step back Friday and told ZDNet Australia a pledge by a representative in its Australian division for full support of Firefox was "factually inaccurate." According to a representative from the American arm of the company, there are "so many different products" on its network that it is likely there are some products which would not work with the open source browser.
Yahoo was the first of the major services to officially announce a plugin for the browser, releasing the Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox last month. However, users of the toolbar had to switch to Internet Explorer to use some of the services that the toolbar provides. Yahoo however did say a Firefox-compatible version of its Avatar Customization Service for its messaging client is on the way, although no launch date has been set.
Sounds like Microsoft pimp slapped someone at Yahoo and asked them who their daddy was.
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|...sounds more to me like they are clarifying the stance they have always had...news sources just presented the FF support on the yahoo! toolbar as a pledge to support FF in the future. OMG! Microsoft made an IE version specifically for MacOS, does that mean MS endorses Apple? Some of you Firefox guys are just living in a dream world it seems. It ruins the experience for those of you who use FireFox for good reasons, as it is a good browser I'm just tired of the small group of people who want FireFox to dominate the universe by de-throning IE. How about both? FF will be better if it has competition, no?
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|No, because they're both free anyhow. The only thing they would be competing for is status. Besides there won't be any real competition until IE7 is completed.
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|competing for status, is competition, u fool =)
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|Yeah but my point is the only time competition is good for the consumer (you and me) is when there is money involved. Which keeps them from having a monopoly and forces them to drive down the cost of the product.
I guess I can see how competition for status could help the consumer too, but not as much as competition for cash money. Personally I don't think they're all that concerned with IE anyhow. I'd be more worried about competition from other gecko based browsers.
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|I don't think I agree with your idea here if I am understanding it correctly. You're saying the only real competition is when it is competition for cash? IE and FF are both free. The consumer is getting amazing products at no charge. What does MS gain by keeping a hold on the browser market? Nothing really except brand name recognition. How about the community working on FF? Same, nothing but brand recognition. Of course brand recognition can be used to generate cash indirectly, but the operative word there is indirectly. The FF and IE camps have different motives of course, but neither are generating immediate cash (i.e. being charged for).
So unless I misunderstood you I think you're putting too much emphasis on product quality and direct cash relationship.
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|precisely...
competition:
i sell product for $10
you sell yours for $5
i drop mine to $3
you drop yours to $0
i drop mine to $0, but improve it past yours
you make yours more functional and prettier than mine, still charging $0
is that not competition?
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|You're missing the point.
If they're not making money, there really isn't much of a reason to make the product. Firefox has a "donate" button while IE does generate market recognition for other MS products (office for instance). If either generate any revinue it's from those ways.
IE is free, right... for Microsoft operating systems. Sure they have an IE for mac (I think, at the moment) but I don't believe a version exists for the *NIX flavor of operating systems. But I'm getting sidetracked with that...
Alright, so I was wrong, they do care about eachother. [sarcasim]The IE team cares because they're paid to. The Mozilla team cares because they want to stop the tyrany of evil Microsoft and spread the gosple of open source across the land. KMFMS all the way, woo hoo.[/sarcasim]
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|"If they're not making money, there really isn't much of a reason to make the product. Firefox has a "donate" button while IE does generate market recognition for other MS products (office for instance). If either generate any revinue it's from those ways."
But if this is true, why is Linux still around? Why is Linux a threat to Microsoft?
I think you're missing the point that different developers have different motives. Money is a common motive, but you can't just use that as a blanket explanation and motive for development. Anyone developing products that solve similar problems must be competing. Competition is not synonomous with money.
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