Hey, it’s always interesting to see what the competition thinks of your product, right? Well, that was my thinking, anyway…

In its annual report, Microsoft has for the first time taken note of the competitive threat posed by the open source Firefox browser.

The mention came in a section on competition for the Client unit. In that section, Microsoft noted not only its traditional operating system rivals such as Unix and Linux, but also rivals for various components that are a part of Windows, such as its media player.

“Competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products,” Microsoft said in the report, which was filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company sounded an upbeat note nonetheless, saying that it believes both current and future versions of Windows will “continue to compete effectively with non-Microsoft browsers, media players, and other non-Microsoft programs.” [Read the rest]