There's a great story in the latest edition of Wired, entitled The Firefox Explosion, about the spread of Firefox. It discusses the role of the 2 main men behind Firefox, Blake Ross, "an angular, hyperkinetic 19-year-old Stanford sophomore with spiky black hair" and Ben Goodger, "a stout, soft-spoken 24-year-old New Zealander." Ross, it appears, was fixing bugs for Netscape at the age of 14 and then decided to start a splinter group. When Ross went to college Goodger took over and Firefox ended up being released in late 2004.
To date there have been 25,241,830 Downloads. In 99 days!!
The article also talks about how one user, Rob Davis, fed up with Internet Explorer and enamoured with Firefox instigated a campaign to raise enough money to post an ad in the New York Times; he did, by getting 10,000 fans to donate $25. A large portion of the article is obviously taken up by the effect that Firefox's success has had on Microsoft's Internet Explorer. And boy, is it having an effect.
Related Article
Firefox - a viral marketing phenomena
Popularity: 1% [?]
