14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla's run with Firefox is near its end, as the open source browser is out of breath. In contrast, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 has brought new life to the ubiquitous, but dormant and eroded IE browser. IE7 managed to beat Firefox 2.0 to the market by a few days, but this is a detail, which delivers little relevance on the long run. And Firefox 2.0 has held its own, constantly increasing its market share in the detriment of Internet Explorer as if Microsoft had never revealed version 7 of the browser.
After making IE7 available for download on October 18, 2006, Microsoft introduced the browser as an update on November 13, five days after Windows Vista was released to manufacturing. "Don't be surprised if you see AU distribute new updates for Windows in November, but don't see IE7. The rate of delivery and when IE7 reaches you will be based on several factors including the release of other higher priority updates and support call volume. You may have IE7 delivered by AU at any time over the next few months. Of course you can go to the Windows Update website and get it whenever you wish," stated Tony Chor, IE Group Program Manager at the time as Microsoft debuted IE7 worldwide distribution by Automatic Updates.
Well, Mozilla is a little late, but also ready to catch up with Microsoft. As the final update for Firefox 1.5 was released at the end of May 2007, signaling the end of support for version 1.5, Mozilla is also getting ready to push Firefox 2.0 as an update for 1.5 users. Firefox 1.5.0.12 users will begin receiving major update notifications. Hitting yes will automatically upgrade Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 2.0.
Mozilla's decision comes as Firefox has lost its hold on the browser market dropping almost 1% from April to May. But while Firefox dropped from 15.42% to 14.54%, Internet Explorer increased its market share from 78.03% to 78.67%. In this context it seems that the increasing Windows Vista adoption is doing for IE7 what the Automatic Update process failed to accomplish, converting IE7 users. The 40 million Vista licenses sold in the first month of availability took their toll on Firefox, as new users seem to prefer the default IE7 installation in Microsoft's latest operating system.