Firefox, a product that once broke the dark (1)

Firefox, a product that once broke the dark (1)

 

Firefox has no chance of losing its biggest customer or mobile phone. However, this cannot erase the contributions it has made. "We have no business relationship with Google Now ." Mozilla business and Legal Officer Dixon Thaye said. This means that the company behind the Firefox browser has completely lost its main funding source for ten years-the default Google search license fee.

However, Mozilla says it can survive. While losing Google's $0.3 billion a year, Yahoo and Baidu have already completed Google's position. Meanwhile, the Firefox browser was launched on the iPhone last month.

However, Mozilla seems not optimistic at all. The iPhone version of Firefox was launched too late. This is already the eighth year of the iPhone. The market share of Firefox on mobile phones is less than 0.5%, and has long been attributed to other statistics institutions.

The once brilliant desktop market is also occupied by Google Chrome today. Windows 10 launched this summer directly converts the browser started by default into an Edge browser built by Microsoft.

The Firefox OS Operating System announced in 2012 has not been heard for a long time.

Regardless of laptops or smartphones, there is no Firefox entry to the Internet today. Mozilla has to make some miracles to save the project.

However, this does not prevent us from paying tribute to a company that has changed the development of browsers and the Internet. No matter whether you use Chrome, IE, or browsers transformed by various Chinese Internet companies today, Firefox is indispensable to popularize the functions.

In the dark age where Microsoft ruled everything, Firefox first ignited the fire that finally burned Internet Explorer.

Internet world before Firefox

In 1994, a company named Netscape was founded in Silicon Valley. In that era when the Internet was still in its infancy, the browsers with the same name soon became the entry point for people to access the Internet. It is still a paid software.

However, after only one year, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) was born. Later, the first browser war started from here.

In less than two years, IE has become a product equivalent to Netscape. In addition, Microsoft bound it with the successful Windows 95 system, and IE eventually won.

Netscape was acquired by US online in 1998 and then declined. Since then, IE has ushered in its dominant age, with a 95% market share at its peak.

Microsoft, which has full control over the Internet portal, has begun to stop. The version number of the IE 6 browser launched in 2001 was fixed for five years and was not updated to version 2006 until 7.0. But this is not the end of IE 6. In 2010, Microsoft started the countdown, and the old browser announced its withdrawal from the historical stage.

Over the past five years, monopoly and hard-to-use have become synonymous with IE. Forbes wrote: "IE6 is a negative example in the history of product engineering ."

In the past five years, Steve Jobs made iPod, a company on the verge of bankruptcy, popular and ready for the birth of the iPhone. Google has changed from a small entrepreneurial company with no revenue to the largest technology company listed at that time. Amazon started from a struggling retail website, bringing AWS, the originator of cloud computing services, and secretly developed the Kindle that changes reading.

How does Firefox come from?

The departure of Netscape is not that thorough. Before its announcement of its acquisition in 1998, it had laid the seeds for the second browser war. In January of that year, the desperate company announced that all future versions would be free of charge and open source code.

At the same time, it also established a non-profit organization Mozilla Org, the predecessor of the Mozilla Foundation that later created Firefox.

In 2003, Netscape was dissolved in Microsoft and online America legal proceedings. In the same year, the Mozilla Foundation, which was renamed, became the only organization responsible for ensuring the continued development of the open-source project of Netscape, and Firefox started its development at that time.

What does Firefox bring?

In 2004, after the first browser version of Firefox was released, its 6-day download volume broke through the millions. Four years later, on the date of release of version 3.0, the download volume even exceeded 8 million, setting a world record for Guinness. At that time, IE's share had dropped to 63%, while Firefox's share was 30%.

Firefox's quick success comes from its normal browsing experience. At that time, IE6, which had been fixed for many years, was plagued by viruses and vulnerabilities, and its webpage loading speed was still slow. In addition, it does not support translucent PNG images or the latest standard webpage syntax. Misplacement of web page layout becomes a common problem.

To put it bluntly, when you open the same website, Firefox shows a completely different world-a more beautiful world.

On the other hand, Firefox has made many innovations and has been used by mainstream browsers such as Google, apple, and Microsoft.

Plug-ins

Mouse gestures, automatic page turning, and screen-based word translation are only part of Firefox's tens of thousands of plug-ins. Today, almost all browsers have started to support third-party developer upload plug-ins.

Privacy Mode

This allows you to access the Internet without leaving browsing records and cookies. It was added to Firefox in 2008. Chrome launched it only in 2010.

Ad shielding

Safari recently added the content blocking function in iOS9, which can intercept advertisements in the browser. However, this is only a feature that was implemented by the Adblock Plus Plug-in on Firefox in 2004.

Synchronize bookmarks and browsing records on different computers

Cloud synchronization is now a feature advertised by various browsers. This was available on Firefox in 2007.

 

2007-2015 browser market share changes

Therefore, Firefox is not only welcomed by technical enthusiasts, but also the first choice for anyone who cares about the Internet experience. In 2010, Firefox had a 34% share of the browser market, reaching its most brilliant time over the years.