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Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

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Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#41

Post by hutzlibu »

skilled wrote: post #5

They should really start putting out a few more of these, https://stackdiary.com/mozilla-usage-decline-from-2022-to-20... 30% of users lost in the last 4+ years and very little work being done on things like the latest CSS properties. Makes me wonder if Google uses this as a means to pay them less. The last contract was in 2020 to this year I think? https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-extends-its-go...

They rather should rehire some of their engineers:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef...

They still have the funds, but if they continue to get left behind, they will also run out of money eventually with no more market share to profit from.

The only thing firefox has in favour is a) they are not google and slightly more trustworthy b) ad blockers still work (also on mobile)

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#42

Post by simulo »

reidrac wrote: post #31
skilled wrote: post #5

They should really start putting out a few more of these, https://stackdiary.com/mozilla-usage-decline-from-2022-to-20... 30% of users lost in the last 4+ years and very little work being done on things like the latest CSS properties. Makes me wonder if Google uses this as a means to pay them less. The last contract was in 2020 to this year I think? https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-extends-its-go...

I commuted by train between 2010 and 2011 in England, and there were big billboard ads of Google Chrome. Not sure what effect these have, but I wonder how many people don't know about Firefox at all.

I vaguely remember even seeing Chrome distributed as bundleware.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#43

Post by rc00 »

lstamour wrote: post #18
chrisrhee wrote: post #14

Mozilla Foundation places two-page advocacy ad in The New York Times https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl... New York Times runs Firefox ad https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/new-york-tim... > The first page of the two-page ad--which is twice as large as originally planned--features the Firefox symbol superimposed over the names of the 10,000 donors My name is somewhere in that mi…

You mentioned getfirefox.com and while that was and is the official site, I remember a time (maybe?) when that was registered to a third-party fan of Firefox to promote it who handed it over to Mozilla. That said… I cannot find any evidence to back up this claim after a small bit of Google searching, so I might be wrong. I definitely remember a time after the rebranding was announced but before the full 1.0 launch wh…

If I recall correctly, getfirefox.com was the de-facto site because an individual blogger had owned and been using firefox.com. Mozilla was finally able to acquire the firefox.com domain and for a time, offered a free redirect to the original blog. I also tried to find a link to corroborate the history but was unable to do so, just the WHOIS data below. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

WHOIS data for firefox.com says it was created in October 1998, four years before the Firefox project was started in 2002, and six years before the 1.0 release in 2004.

WHOIS data for getfirefox.com says it was created in April 2004, seven months before the 1.0 release.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#44

Post by high_5 »

chrisrhee wrote: post #14

Mozilla Foundation places two-page advocacy ad in The New York Times https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl... New York Times runs Firefox ad https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/new-york-tim... > The first page of the two-page ad--which is twice as large as originally planned--features the Firefox symbol superimposed over the names of the 10,000 donors My name is somewhere in that mi…

> Surprised the getfirefox.com domain from the ad still works!

This domain is still in my muscle-memory from the Windows days. Just used it yesterday for my wifes laptop reinstall, and I was surprised too it still works.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#45

Post by Scoundreller »

chrisrhee wrote: post #14

Mozilla Foundation places two-page advocacy ad in The New York Times https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl... New York Times runs Firefox ad https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/new-york-tim... > The first page of the two-page ad--which is twice as large as originally planned--features the Firefox symbol superimposed over the names of the 10,000 donors My name is somewhere in that mi…

I remember my friend’s IE somehow getting corrupted/screwed up and I was still able to go to windows shell and ?tftp? to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org

Looks like the http equivalent is still up with all releases since 0.1! (Not sure what happened between 0.2 and 0.7)

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#46

Post by johnnyworker »

pmontra wrote: post #36
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #4

Can anyone who was kinda close tell a story about Netscape and Firefox? I was just a kid back then and it would be nice to hear a story from the olden days about the before of Navigator and the after of Firefox

Out of my memory: we were using a number of different browsers in the early 90s, mainly Mosaic. All of them basically shared a little problem: their HTTP call were blocking. So they first downloaded the HTML code, then one image per time (no CSS, no JS back then). And nothing appeared on screen until they finished to download everything. Netscape Navigator started to render the text of the page and add images when th…

> It had tabs

I discovered Opera in 2000 and it always drove me nuts how Firefox was praised for being the first browser with tabs.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#47

Post by not_your_vase »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #26
not_your_vase wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does not want to pay Mozilla less. They don't care about Firefox's market share, it's virtually 0. But in the moment Firefox disappears, Chrome will be undeniably a monopoly. As long as Firefox exists, Google can easily deflect such monopoly claims - they even "encourage and foster" competition on the browser market.

This argument is silly. Google buying the default search is currently being used as evidence in an antitrust case over Google search being a monopoly. Chrome only exists to make more money for Google search, there's no way that Google would risk their (alleged) search monopoly just to prevent a browser monopoly. Google genuinely believes the money they pay Mozilla and Apple is worth it.

If they wouldn't pay Mozilla, Firefox simply wouldn't exist - there would be no other browser where Google would have to buy the default search position. It would be one less problem for Google, if the goal of their payment would be really only to be the default search engine in Firefox. If that would be true, it would be silliest waste of money from them - worse than Google Glass.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#48

Post by layer8 »

matsemann wrote: post #39
gslin wrote: post #2

https://blog.mozilla.org/press/files/2013/11/nytimes-firefox...

Why are some of the names underlined? And why do I only get � when I try to copy names in that PDF? It's like it's not real text, makes it impossible to search for names I think should be there.

PDFs can use any custom character encoding they like. By default, there doesn’t need to be a mapping to Unicode or whatever.

Sometimes it’s done deliberately to prevent easy copying, though in this case it might be more by accident than by design.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#49

Post by xorcist »

pmontra wrote: post #36
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #4

Can anyone who was kinda close tell a story about Netscape and Firefox? I was just a kid back then and it would be nice to hear a story from the olden days about the before of Navigator and the after of Firefox

Out of my memory: we were using a number of different browsers in the early 90s, mainly Mosaic. All of them basically shared a little problem: their HTTP call were blocking. So they first downloaded the HTML code, then one image per time (no CSS, no JS back then). And nothing appeared on screen until they finished to download everything. Netscape Navigator started to render the text of the page and add images when th…

I believe the UI of Chrome is noticeably more snappy, which largely contributes to the feeling of it being speedier. The PR was about how their Javascript engine was faster, but I doubt that was what really made any difference for most people.

The Firefox suite was written in XUL, which is Electron-like but faster and especially tailored for desktop software. It's fast, but not as fast as native UI. Given the choice, almost everyone went with the speedier UI. At least that was my completely unscientific feeling back then. There's probably something to learn about UX here that very few people care about.

Re: Firefox 1.0 New York Times ad (2004)

#50

Post by throwitaway156 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #45
chrisrhee wrote: post #14

Mozilla Foundation places two-page advocacy ad in The New York Times https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl... New York Times runs Firefox ad https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/new-york-tim... > The first page of the two-page ad--which is twice as large as originally planned--features the Firefox symbol superimposed over the names of the 10,000 donors My name is somewhere in that mi…

I remember my friend’s IE somehow getting corrupted/screwed up and I was still able to go to windows shell and ?tftp? to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org Looks like the http equivalent is still up with all releases since 0.1! (Not sure what happened between 0.2 and 0.7) https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Mozilla's FTP was a lifesaver when i was configuring/updating old, barely functioning Windows desktops. Glad to see them keeping it alive.
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