Firefox is catching fire -- pardon the pun -- and for good reason. Web surfers looking for a reliable alternative to Microsoft's
The vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer have opened the door for competitors. Mozilla inherited much of the underlying software code from Netscape, which was purchased by Time Warner's
One estimate, by WebSideStory
Soon Firefox won't just be available for download off the Net. The program will start showing up in retail stores as a preinstalled browser on PCs from Linspire. It is being bundled alongside the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, which is considered an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. Retailers such as Wal-Mart
The competition isn't with only Mozilla. Rumor has it that Google
The Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit corporation; users can make donations to help fund continued software development. In this way users become investors -- not in the traditional sense of a publicly traded company but instead investing directly into new technologies that given rise to something other than a security-plagued program. The returns from these investments don't show up yet as earnings but in the final product more and more people are using every day. I can't wait to see what comes next.
For more Foolish talk and browsing ideas, check out Crazy Like a Firefox.
Fool contributor Kelvin Taylor has a few bright ideas but does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned.