Mozilla unleashes Internet 'fox' Mozilla unleashes Internet 'fox' (December 24, 2004)

MV company gives Web users a choice

By Julie O'Shea

Tucked down a hallway of a Villa Street office complex, 14 self-described "tech geeks" are madly working away on clusters of computers spread throughout a warehouse-sized room.

The room, decorated with a huge chessboard and a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge made out of empty soda cans, looks and feels almost like a large family recreation center. On a recent afternoon last week, someone had even brought his dog to the office, which greeted visitors by the front door.

Looking around, it's hard to believe that within these four walls lies the future of the Web browser.

Welcome to the Mozilla Foundation -- a Mountain View-based nonprofit that is offering a browser free of the annoying pop-up ads and spyware headaches currently plaguing Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Last month, Mozilla, which began in 1998 as an open-source project under Netscape, unleashed Firefox 1.0, a Web browser that is easy to install and boasts a ton of features not found on Internet Explorer. Best of all, this new application is free.

"We are trying to influence continued innovation on the Internet," said Chris Hoffman, Mozilla's director of engineering. "There's a big problem out there and, for a long time, Microsoft has ignored that problem."

Since its release to the public on Nov. 9, Firefox has been downloaded 10 million times. And Microsoft has seen its stronghold on the Internet market fall for the first time ever, according to several firms that track Internet and Web development.

On Tuesday, Microsoft released a statement regarding the fast-spreading Firefox craze: "While we think IE (Internet Explorer) is the choice of hundreds of millions of people and businesses around the world because of the unique value it provides, we certainly respect that some customers will choose alternative browsers.

"We also know that choosing a browser is about more than a handful of features."

During a visit to Mountain View in early October, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates said his company is currently developing software to stop spyware technology and other pesky bugs from infecting computer hard-drives.

"You've got to be able to make security guaranteed," Gates said then. "I think most of these security problems are solvable. ... We need software to work on your behalf."

Apparently Mozilla, which broke away from Netscape last year and became an independent nonprofit, has already discovered a way to do just that. For a while, Linux seemed to be the Internet's leading open-source project, that is, until Mozilla unveiled its secret weapon.

The Mozilla Foundation was given $2 million in seed money from Time Warner and various companies like Sun and IBM are now helping to fund the project. Next year, the foundation plans to open its finance books to the public, said Mozilla's Hoffman.

Open-source projects are essentially about ideas coming together. The code is not owned by any companies, and ordinary computer users are able to add to it and make suggestions.

With an army of more than 1,000 volunteers working around the clock to develop code and catch software bugs, Firefox appears to be on its way to giving Microsoft a run for its money.

"There is a great community behind it," said Chris Messina, a San Francisco resident who helps run www.spreadfirefox.com, a Web site designed to help market the Firefox browser. It was from this global fan base that enough money was raised to take out two full-paged ads in The New York Times last week.

"People need to know that they have a choice," Messina said. "Firefox, in many ways, is a gift to the world."

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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