Note to Mozilla: We don't get the Firefox billboards

Ok, but you forgot something....

Your comparison of business models forgot one item -- Firefox is free to use just like IE, Opera and Chrome. Unlike MS and Oracle going head to head on db product, with price a determining factor that part of the equation is not evident in the browser mix. So when price is off the table and support might only be a minimal factor, what is left but brand awareness?

You might call it guilt. But the browser space is one of those few components of the IT landscape where marketing/brand is probably an equal a factor in browser selection by the average end user as features might. Especially where the differences in feature sets has become minuscule.

Your line of reasoning applies to costed product but I don't think it applies in the browser space.

Exactly right

To realize the truth of this all you need to do is drive down I-5, that's "the" 5 to all you SoCal monkeys in the 'hood. Every single person is looking to get one space ahead especially when entering the freeway. It doesn't matter that it causes congestion behind them because they are getting it "for free". Want more proof, look over a few income tax forms, especially mine... to badly paraphrase, GE I think, "money or nothing and your tax is free."

Except when it isn't.

"News is business."

Except in countries that have nationalised media, of course.

" ... and hope to get it at the lowest possible cost."

Cost to your pocket? Or cost to something larger and more important? The word you're looking for in this context is "ethics" not "morality". And some (many?) people can see the value of that good. Can you really not?

"I doubt if many people will be convinced to use Firefox because it somehow makes the world a better place."

Oh ... I dunno. I seem to recall a big, long argument about standards. I don't recall Firefox losing that argument.

"It's often those industries that find their comfortable business models challenged who turn to morality-based arguments."

Or in the case of the finance industry, anti-morality arguments. But I digress.

I dunno

Kiva is making a go of it and "investors" are guaranteed to not have a positive return.

Does Good

Depends on how you interpret the statement "not every browser does good" in your own mind. When I read that statement I think of "good" as a metaphor for "stable" and "Secure" which I wouldn't personally attribute to internet Explorer, and "Compatible" which I wouldn't attribute to either Chrome or Opera.

I do like the business model statements you quoted above. I think more companies than just open source software providers have forgotten these basic truths. Value means everything to the customer. Value is what customers pay for. Video game companies packing their products with ridiculously limiting DRM is what specifically comes to my own mind.

Since Mozilla doesn't sell their software and their business model is based largely on user install base I think this is probably a fairly effective marketing campaign. Consider the alternatives. Should they claim their browser is faster? More secure? When was the last time you actually believed anything at all that came out of the PR department of any corporation? When any company claims their product is better than their competitors I instantly distrust it and I wouldn't be surprised if that were representative of most people's perception of marketing these days.

I kinda like it when a company markets from philosophical or emotional position. "Who wants to pretend their hand is a gun?" - Sony's Move marketing campaign was awesome.

Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla

Hi Matt,

I didn't work on producing this brand campaign, but I am aware of some of the thinking behind it and I would challenge your assertion, "The claim that it also "does good" is irrelevant".

I believe that users have a lot more trust in and affinity for the software they are using if they understand that it is being produced by a mission-oriented non-profit organisation, certainly I think that's the case in the Bay Area, where this campaign ran.

Mozilla's organisational model and mission were not things we had made many specific efforts to communicate on a large scale to users previously, and we could hardly be upset therefore when many of our users (indeed, many people who work in the industry) were not aware of them.

But if Mozilla is going to differentiate its own brand, communicating that identity seems rather important. We do not expect users to make a choice based entirely upon that factor (something I'd hope Firefox 4 demonstrates), but we do want them to understand a bit better who they have a relationship with when they use Firefox. I wouldn't characterise this as an attempt to induce guilt.

I don't know about the USA but in the UK

Many people do care about ethics and, for want of a better descriptor "goodness".

Look at the fairtrade movement, the rise of the CoOp (both supermarkets and their ethical banking), the need for companies to demonstrate their green credentials, the increase in popularity of organic products, the huge increase in availability of free-range chickenry and assorted products, and so on if you want some examples.

Similarly there is the on-shoring of call centres and customer services - we are prepared to pay a little extra to be fobbed off by a miserable Scouser or Geordie rather than paying less and getting fobbed off by a cheerful Indian.

Now, I am not saying that we would blindly chose products or companies based on ethical bounds - but we have certainly showed that we do attach a "value" to our purchasing decisions - the trick I think is to set the funding at a level that we are happy with / don't care about (people are happy to pay 59p / 99c for a crap fart app on their phone) and make the means of revenue collection simple and pain-free.

whhy

Canonical, why did you let this man go? What a gem, a huge asset for any linux company. Wonder why RH never snatched him.

LOL.

Why people use Firefox

"I doubt if many people will be convinced to use Firefox because it somehow makes the world a better place."

Au contraire, I suspect that in Firefox's case that is the *main* reason why anyone starts using it. It has a nice add-on model, and if you've already bought into the Linux mindset (probably for the same reason) then it frequently comes as the default browser, but FF's "brand identity" is largely built around the idea that it isn't IE and everyone knows that IE is evil, so FF must be good.

There's standards compliance, but even its most sympathetic users would have to concede that for the first half of the last decade (at least) being "more compliant" than IE frequently counted against it in the real world of "designed for IE" webshites.

Of course, FF isn't a business, so we shouldn't be surprised if it gets to play by different rules.

Hmm

Someone has misinterpreted the "good" in the Firefox ad campaign, methinks. Mozilla makes no charitable claims whatsoever.

Clerk

Who cares about the "market"? Mozilla and Firefox were created out of the destruction (by "market" forces) of Netscape by the thieving rotten [illegitimately born persons] at Microsoft. As survivors, and leaders of a new era, they deserve to be supported, financially and morally.

I will continue to use Firefox, no matter what the "market" says. We have learned in the past three years,how wrong we have been to glorify "the market". At least, most of us have, with a few Neanderthals hanging on desperately to a failed ideology. Life is not a "market". Reality is not a "market". Good software does not come from "the market". Good software is produced in opposition to the "market". Fight "the market"!

Billboards Aside...

Mozilla has lost the college-dropout sex appeal. At some point the community-driven project has been replaced with a number-crunching organization that moves ponderously and doesn't pay much heed to the end user. They've lost friends in the open-source community by jealously guarding the Firefox trunk against experimentation, which caused a number of groups to adopt Chromium and push Firefox into the options tree. It's just bad for business.