Mozilla’s Firefox was perhaps the first browser that gave the ubiquitous Internet Explorer serious competition. As of April 2008, it had an 18% share of the browser market. The Firefox browser in its current avatar, is just 4 years old but has not only gathered respectable market share but forced IE to be a ‘follower’ in many ways. Call it complacency or whatever, but Internet Explorer was (is?) the least innovative browser. Tabbed browsing, RSS feed integration were all improvements brought out by Firefox first. Add to it, the extensions available for Firefox makes it an enjoyable browsing experience. IE on the other hand, by virtue of being the default browser of the world (specially IT departments who seem to have blinkers on) enjoys a forced preference.
And like Avis, when you are No.2, you try harder. In an innovative attempt Mozilla is readying itself to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the maximum software downloads in a day! All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours. In its website, Firefox asks you to pledge to get Firefox 3 on Download Day. The US has the maximum number of pledgers (68,000) out of the total 401,943 thus far. India is at 5000-odd.
Wonder what will happen to their servers on Download Day; but overall a nice concept to create anticipation for product launch and get consumers to ‘pledge’ a buy-in. In Firefox’s case, its a free download. But in cases where consumers have to pay, it will be interesting to see if this concept works. For example, for a retail store launch, one can take a leaf from this book.
