Microsoft Exploits Firefox 4 Furor
The retirement of Firefox 4 isn’t sitting well with corporate IT and a Microsoft executive made sure to capitalize upon the situation by pleading the case for Internet Explorer in the enterprise yesterday.
I think I speak for everyone on the IE team when I say we’d like the opportunity to win back your business. We’ve got a great solution for corporate customers with both IE8 and IE9, and believe we could help you address the challenges you’re currently facing. – Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft
The comment was addressed to John Walicki, the manager of workplace and mobility in the office of IBM’s CIO. Earlier on Thursday, Walicki and others had voiced their displeasure with Mozilla’s decision to retire Firefox 4 from security support when it launched the new Firefox 5 this week.
Although I’m in no position to question a competitor’s approach to customer engagement and support, I did want to take the opportunity to clarify the Internet Explorer team’s commitment to, and support for, our corporate customers. Enterprises have always been, and will always be, an important focus of ours. – Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft
Microsoft was quick to confront IBM with their support, especially in the light of Mozilla seemingly not caring much for enterprises.
Years ago, we didn’t have the resources to solve the enterprise support problem. Today, I argue, we shouldn’t care even if we do have the resources because of the cost benefit trade. A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them. – Asa Dotzler, director of Firefox
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Being passionate about software, Armin joined FavBrowser.com in early 2011 and has been actively writing ever since. Having accepted the challenge, he also enjoys watching anime, indulging in good books, staying fit and healthy, and trying new things.
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I’m with Asa.
Let IE take the IT department and hold back development/progress even more.
Let Fx give us even faster development/progress.
The IT environment, as I see it, what benefits can actually give, with all those restrictions they have? Only troubles…
IE9 is a a disaster just spent 30 minutes trying to make Google search the default & had give up in disgust.
Wonder how many new users Firefox will win over from Windows XP users now Microsoft no longer supports it.
Face it, Internet explorer 9 is better than Firefox.
Yeah and iPad is the best smartphone on the market XD
I do it in seconds.
Not if you are from the UK there isn’t a Google search provider in the Internet Explorer Gallery add-ons. I had to use the USA version of the site.
Forgot to add the UK link http://www.iegallery.com/gb/addons/?feature=searchproviders
I was talking about this page, it comes up after you set to choose the search engine of the list (on the welcome wizard): http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-uk/default.mspx
Thanks handy page to bookmark never seen it before much more useful than the bunch of pathetic searches they have in the default add-ons.
I managed to change it by going to the US site.
When u are on the Internet Explorer Gallery Add-ons page you can change the country code in the address it’s the two letters after the .com/ Pity the Aussies they only have 3 search providers listed lol
Wait… Aussies??
What would be the page?
Does firefox assures 100% backward compatibility with all previous version ?? If so IT department doesn’t need to worry much. Other wise it is true, this quick & fast retirement of support would hurt & cost them a lot.