Ron Schenone

IBM Selects Mozilla Firefox As Their Default Browser – Are You Surprised?

Posted by on Jul 1, 2010 | 4 Comments

IBM, aka Big Blue, has decided to make Firefox the browser of choice for their 400,000 employees. Considering that IBM and Microsoft have been at odds for many years [does OS2 ring a bell], this should be no surprise. What is surprising is that it took IBM this long to dump Internet Explorer considering the companies animosity towards Microsoft.

Over at ReadWriteWeb, they state the following information:

According to Web analytics site StatCounter, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still leads the pack worldwide, with 55%, while Firefox follows with just under 30% and Google’s Chrome rounds out the top three with 8%. While 400,000 users doesn’t mean a big percentage jump in the worldwide browser market, it is a backing by one of the world’s leading hardware and software developers.

IBM’s Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and Linux stated:

Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM’s strategy. Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity. Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it. Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM. Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.

What is surprising is that Mozilla Firefox now commands 30% of the world market. I know I would never have guessed that Firefox would do so well and actually find a large following. This does go to show that you can build a better mouse trap.

Comments as always are welcome.

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  • Ryan

    Well, it’s hardly surprising.

    IE 8 is not much better than IE 6.

    There’s a page I was looking at the other day that went down HTML 5 and CSS 3 functionality by browser, and the only thing preventing the use of over 80% of that stuff is the fact that IE doesn’t support it in any version. :)

    You can really go down those lists and wonder if Microsoft did anything new in IE 7 or 8. I never test anything I do in IE because I don’t _care_ if it works or not, pick anything else and tell me if there are still problems.

    • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

      I hear you. MS is going to continue to slide in market share while Firefox, Chrome, Opera and others slowly pick up new converts.

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  • http://www.gavinstipsandtricks.co.nr/ Gavin Roskamp

    Wow. 30%. That’s pretty amazing! To think… Firefox was born only 6 years ago.

    What surprises me more is that Safari isn’t ahead of Chrome. It comes pre-installed on OS X and can be downloaded for Windows too, and it isn’t a half-bad browser on Mac. I know, it’s worthless on Windows, but it’s my personal choice on my Mac. Firefox just looks… Meh. And Chrome for Mac pretty much is a failure.

    But then again, I guess Chrome is available on Linux. Isn’t it? It’s been forever since I wiped my Ubuntu to put XP on… Man, I would totally go back, but ATi ruined my experience by not providing any graphics drivers for my card and the Linux community pretty much said too bad so sad. Kinda sucks. I loved Ubuntu :(

    But back on topic, congratulations Firefox. IE should just fall over and die now, because nobody likes it except little 13 year old girls who spend hours doing stuff on their Myspaces.