Mozilla Firefox – the only way to surf the web

In the spirit of the Afrospear's Freedom Technology Christmas , I wanted to share a free alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  Let me make it clear that his is not a paid advertisement.

Last year, I saw my wife working on her laptop and noticed that her internet browser was different than the all too familiar Microsoft product. When I asked her about the new tool she was using to surf the web, she informed me that it was Firefox .

I was probably the last human on Earth to stop using Netscape to navigate the web. I always support the underdog, and Microsoft was doing everything they could to ensure the success of its inferior browser. When my wife introduced me to Mozilla's Firefox , I was more than happy to give it a try.

Forbes Magazine had an article in its October 29 issue (Web Warrior) about Mozilla and its CEO Winfred Mitchell Baker.  There are a few interesting notes in the article.

• Firefox (is) used by 120 million people in 50 languages. Its 13% share of world browser usage is startlingly high considering that to run Firefox you have to find the Firefox Web site and download the software yourself. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, or IE, has an 85% global share and comes loaded on every PC with Microsoft's Windows operating system.

• Baker sees Mozilla as a democratizing check against the predations of some of the biggest names on the Internet. "We want to keep the Internet open and transparent, with users controlling the experience," she says.

• In August 2005 Google tried to persuade Mitchell Baker to make Google the exclusive search service on the Firefox start page, pushing out Yahoo. Baker said no.

In the year or so that I've used Firefox I have been extremely pleased.  The tabs which IE has now adopted, are really handy and I almost never have pop-up ads.  The spell check feature has really helped to catch misspellings in my posts.  I even turned my mom on to Firefox and now she's hooked just like we are.  

If you are reading this post then you are a candidate for Firefox.  Download it and try it out, you can have both browsers but once you try Firefox I doubt you go back to Explorer.