Google to Actively Advocate Firefox

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Starting today, Google's homepage is running an ad for Firefox with Google Toolbar that is only displayed to Internet Explorer users (currently only in the US).

And the folks at SpreadFireFox have a screenshot of what this'll look like (edit : The Screenshot isn't available on SpreadFireFox anymore, but you can look at it right here). The add will only be shown to IE users (so those of you who're cool enough to be using a modern browser won't see it), and only in the US...for now.

The web developer in me is Very Happy about this news. IE7 is supposedly "layout-complete" in the latest beta. This means that although the application isn't yet "feature-complete," development on the rendering engine is frozen and locked down for this particular version of the software. While the new rendering engine is a BIG improvement over the stagnated IE6 muckery, there're still several CSS rendering issues don't look like they'll be addressed. So the more people who switch to a Gecko-based app, the better.

Plus, the little orange fox is so much cooler than the Big Blue E.

6 Comments:

Yeah, I'm in Canada, so it doesn't show for me.

I guess that google will start displaying their firefox ads to other country soon enough.

By Kiltak, at 10:01 PM
I've been taking a peek at google using IE every now and then throughout today, and I haven't seen the Firefox ad appear yet.

I poked around a little further, and it seems like some people are seeing it and some people aren't. Regardless, there's some good Digg commentary on this, including a web-based proxy link that'll let people outside the US see the goodness as well.

By theMatt, at 1:13 AM
I wonder how this will affect firefox usage through the population after a few months.. I heard that there were around 10% of people using it now..It will be interesting to look at this percentage in a few months.

By Anonymous, at 6:37 AM
There has been a lot of press on this over the past couple of days. I didn't see it myself but I think it was an awesome gesture from Google. Google has publicly shown their support for Firefox and they even used it during the Keynote at the 2006 CES.

Great stuff.

By wom, at 1:47 PM
That's strange. I'm not in the US and I saw the ad earlier today on google. I was pleasantly surprised by it.

I think the 3 computers I have access to are the only ones in this entire country (Peru) that don't use IE... ok, I'm probably exagerating, but the lack of e-knowledge and common sense down here is astounding (they believe every pop-up ad that shows up on their screens...). I educate as much as I can, but it's no surprise how fast viruses spread down here.

By RodoBG, at 12:21 AM
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html

By Anonymous, at 4:53 AM