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by bobajeff 4021 days ago
The fundamental truth about Firefox's success is that it was in the right place at the right time. Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross started a side project to help get rid of the stink that was Netscape 6. The Internet Explorer team was to be disbanded for about 4 years. Opera was still charging money for their browser. Brendan Eich and Mitchell Baker were about to start the Mozilla foundation.

The events collimated in what became the launch and initial growth of Firefox.
2 comments
Drdrdrq 4021 days ago
That's a bit dismissive. Firefox was / is a browser that provides an alternative to IE / Chrome / NameYourFavoriteProprietaryBrowser. It is worrying that Mozilla seem to be forgetting why they are strong... But in my view thay still represent the better side. I would love if they didn't include Hello and similar, but I hope thay come around and make the right thing.
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bobajeff 4021 days ago
It may sound that way because I summed up alot of history in a few sentences. In truth there was more going on (AOL and Google had some hand in it too) but the bullets points still tell the cusp of what happened without the delusions that have been projected on top by it's fans or journalists.

That's not to say there is no value in the manifesto, in openness, in innovation or whatever. It's just not likely what gave it all of it's downloads.

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yuhong 4021 days ago
I think during that period Opera had ads more invasive than the new tab ads Firefox has now.
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