14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox has survived April 24, the date initially announced as the end of the line of support for the 1.5 version of the open source browser. But with a large share of users still running Firefox 1.5, Mozilla has breathed new life into the browser announcing that support has been prolonged until mid May 2007.
"Wanted to notify the community that Mozilla will only supply security and stability upgrades for Firefox 1.5 until mid-May of this year. We encourage all Firefox 1.5 users to (...) download the latest version of Firefox today. We will provide updates as we get closer to the date. We are focused on delivering a faster and more secure online experience. We want all of our users to benefit from the new features in Firefox 2.0," reads an announcement posted on the Mozilla Developer Center under the title "What's happening with Mozilla Firefox 1.5?"
Although Firefox 1.5 was supposed to expire already, the life-line extension provided yesterday by Mozilla only means that the 1.5 version is walking the green mile. According to data made available by Market Share by Net Applications Firefox accounts for a total of 15.10% of the browser market, 9.38% of which is Firefox 2.0 and with 4.83% going to Firefox 1.5 as of March 2007.
Mozilla has explained that home-users have already made the jump to Firefox 2.0 as the company automatically distributed the latest version as an upgrade. Still, the corporate environment has proven slow in adopting Firefox 2.0. If Mozilla had cut support on April 24, 2007, as initially planned, it would have left hanging in excess of 40% of its users.
The real problem is that since the corporate customers have failed to upgrade to Firefox 2.0 since the open source browser was launched at the end of October 2006, how can Mozilla expect them to make the jump in a single month?