Firefox 3 gains 19% browser's market share

Firefox 3 has experienced rapid market share gains since its release in mid-June, helping to push the Mozilla browser's overall share to more than 19%, a Web metrics firm said Wednesday.

Since its release June 17, Firefox 3's worldwide usage share has soared to more than 4%, Net Applications reported. In the first hour of its release, the latest version of the open source browser grabbed 1% of the global market.

Firefox 3's gains came mostly from users upgrading from Firefox 2, the firm said. However, a small portion of the gains, 0.4%, came at the expense ofMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Internet Explorer.

IE's market share fell to 73.01% in May to 73.75% at the end of June, Net Applications' numbers showed. Firefox overall increased its share during the same timeframe to 19.03% from 18.41%.

Since August 2007, IE's share has declined from 79%, while Firefox has risen over the last 10 months from 14.65%, according to Net Applications. During the same timeframe, Apple's Safari browser has increased its share to 6.31% from 4.71%. Much of that increase in usage is apparently due to soaring sales of Apple Mac computers, which ship with the browser.

In an InformationWeek review, Firefox 3 was found to be much faster than the previous version, primarily due to fixed memory leaks and bugs. In addition, developers had added timesaving features to streamline usage, and paid particular attention to tools that make it easier to identify favorite Web sites and return to them.

The new version, however, isn't perfect. New security features were found to be unreliable and likely to lull naive users into a false sense of security. While moderately expert users were unlikely to have a problem, from a security standpoint, InformationWeek found Firefox 3 a step backward.

Windows 7

Formerly known as Blackcomb and Vienna) is the working name for the next major version of Microsoft Windows as the successor to Windows Vista.Microsoft has announced that it is "scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year timeframe", and that "the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar." Windows 7 is expected to be released by 2009 or near January 2010.The client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.A server variant, codenamed Windows Server 7, is also under development.

Microsoft is maintaining a policy of silence concerning discussion of plans and aspirations for Windows 7 as they focus on the release and marketing of Windows Vista,though some early details of various core operating system features have emerged. As a result, little is known about the feature set, though public presentations from company officials have disseminated information about some features. Leaked information from people to whom Milestone 1 (M1) of Windows 7 was shipped also provides some insight into the feature set.

Microsoft stops selling Windows XP

Windows XP will start to fade away this week, when Microsoft stops selling the seven-year-old operating system to retailers and major PC makers.

It's the moment Galen Gruman hoped wouldn't arrive.

Gruman, an executive editor at the InfoWorld online tech site in San Francisco, is one of the leaders of a movement seeking to save Windows XP from extinction. Under different circumstances, a company might welcome such an expression of devotion.

But in this case, the initiative isn't as much an endorsement of Windows XP as it is a comment on XP's successor. Windows Vista, released last year, has been negatively received by some PC users because of its early technical problems and steeper hardware requirements.

"I think the issue is that it's not meaningfully better than XP," Gruman said last week. Improvements in areas such as security aren't enough to justify the inconveniences, he said. InfoWorld's "Save XP" online petition has collected more than 200,000 virtual signatures.

Microsoft previously gave XP a five-month reprieve, but it has made it clear that it's sticking to the Monday cutoff. The company says it wants to keep moving PC users and businesses to Windows Vista as the new standard, in part so that the industry can focus on making software and devices more compatible with Vista and its new security approach.

The cutoff means it will become tougher to get a new computer with Windows XP -- but not impossible, by any means. Although Microsoft will stop selling XP to retailers and major PC makers, it plans to continue selling the operating system through some channels.

For example, smaller companies that make custom PCs from scratch, commonly known as system builders, will be able to continue buying Windows XP through Jan. 31. And for two years, at least, the company also will continue to offer selected versions of Windows XP for "ultra low-cost" computers, such as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC, that lack the advanced hardware needed to run Windows Vista.

In addition, buyers of Windows Vista Business or Ultimate editions will be able to take advantage of what are known as "downgrade rights." In some cases, for example, people will be able buy Windows Vista but get it on a disc for later use, and have Windows XP Professional pre-installed on the PC instead.

Downgrade rights are offered through Microsoft's volume licensing program for businesses. Some PC makers, such as Dell, also are giving customers that option.

Microsoft says it plans to offer various levels of product support for Windows XP, including security updates, through April 2014.

Bill Veghte, a Microsoft senior vice president, outlined those continuing options for Windows XP but also defended Windows Vista in a letter to customers last week.

"The architectural changes that improved security and resilience in Windows Vista led to compatibility issues with existing hardware and applications," Veghte acknowledged in the letter. "Many hardware drivers and applications needed to be updated, and while the majority worked well when we launched Windows Vista, some key applications and drivers were not yet available."

However, he added, "Since then, Microsoft and its industry partners have been hard at work to address compatibility issues, and now the situation is fundamentally different."

All things considered, Windows Vista is "actually a pretty good operating system," said Michael Gartenberg, a Jupiter Research analyst. Microsoft has cited significant sales volume. However, Vista isn't good enough to make people and businesses feel strongly compelled to upgrade.

"It certainly hasn't captured anyone's hearts and imaginations," Gartenberg said.

Given the complications of moving to Windows Vista, more companies may start considering it a reasonable option to move to Apple computers, particularly if Apple adds more features to its Mac OS X operating system tailored to businesses, Gartenberg said.

The end of mainstream Windows XP sales happens to coincide with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' departure from day-to-day duties at the company. In that way, Gates might be leaving "on the expiration of the last real major desktop operating success for Microsoft," Gartenberg said, adding that one of the major challenges for CEO Steve Ballmer will be to restore the luster to the Windows brand.

First, Ballmer will be getting a little something in the mail. As of last week, InfoWorld's Gruman was planning to print out the Save XP petition and signatures for delivery to Ballmer's office Monday.

Gates to step down from Microsoft

The chairman of Microsoft and one of the world's richest men, Bill Gates, is stepping down from his job running the world's largest software company.

Mr Gates, who made his fortune through developing software for the personal computer, plans to devote his time to charity work.

As a teenager Bill Gates had a vision of a personal computer on every desk in every home.

He says he caught sight of the future and based his career on what he saw.

Great responsibility

The son of a successful lawyer from Seattle, Mr Gates programmed his first computer at the age of 13.

During his two years at Harvard University, he spent much of his time finessing his programming skills as well as enjoying the occasional all-night poker session.

He eventually dropped out of college and moved to Albuquerque, in New Mexico, where he set up Microsoft with his childhood friend, Paul Allen.

Their big break came in 1980 when Microsoft signed an agreement with IBM to build the operating system that became known as MS-DOS.

Microsoft went public in 1986 and within a year Bill Gates, at 31, had become the youngest self-made billionaire.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Gates explained that Microsoft benefitted because "most of our competitors were very poorly run".

"They did not understand how to bring in people with business experience and people with engineering experience and put them together. They did not understand how to go around the world."

New horizons

Now 52, he still has boyish looks, but he is no longer the world's richest man. He has been overtaken by the investor Warren Buffett and the Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim.

But Mr Gates' fortune is at the root of his decision to leave his day job and concentrate on his charitable organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

He will remain as Microsoft's chairman and work on special technology projects, but according to Mr Gates, great wealth brings great responsibility and his future work will include finding new vaccines and financing projects in the developing world.

Google Trends had unveiled a new service

Google is expected to unveil a tool Tuesday that measures Internet use to help advertisers identify the best places to buy ads that will reach its target audience, according to a report Monday on the Wall Street Journal Web site.

The measurement tools, which will be offered to advertisers and their agencies for free, will compete with services offered by established leaders Nielsen and ComScore. While those services base their estimations on selective surveys or customer panels, Google's results would be based on data collected from Web servers, providing a deeper and broader picture of Internet behavior, the newspaper reported. By giving away the new tool, Google could attract more advertising business.

The news follows Google's announcement last week that Google Trends had unveiled a new service that lets users type in specific domains and compare basic traffic information about any .com site using nothing more than organic user searches. Included are daily traffic numbers in users (sent from Google search), where in the world the users are coming from, and related sites that were either searched for or visited in that same session.

Yahoo Adds Two E-Mail Domains To Saturated Yahoo.com

For the first time, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) on Thursday added new e-mail domains to its long-standing Yahoo.com, which with more than 260 million subscribers worldwide has forced people to use hard-to-remember pseudonyms when signing up for an account.

The addition of ymail.com and rocketmail.com will add millions of new addresses to Yahoo Mail, and let subscribers avoid the use of such convoluted addresses as CutiePie4Ever80 or mattclark1977, the portal said.

"We recognize that people want an e-mail address that reflects who they are, whether they are signing up for an e-mail address for the first time, or simply updating their e-mail pseudonym to reflect the stage they are at in life," John Kremer, VP of Yahoo Mail, said in a statement.

The new addresses will open up many more options for subscribers in the United States, as well as for localized versions of the namespace in other countries, Yahoo said. People who sign up under the new domains will have access to the same features as the older domain, such as unlimited storage, integrated instant messaging, and spam and virus protection. In many markets, Yahoo will help users transfer e-mail and contacts to their new address and notify friends of the change.

The ymail.com domain is brand new for Yahoo. Rocketmail, however, stems from the 1997 acquisition of the RocketMail Web mail service. It was one of the first major free services, and it became the engine for Yahoo Mail.

E-mail is one of the legs of Yahoo's multiservice approach to communications, particularly on mobile phones. The portal this year introduced a news service called oneConnect that combines e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and social networking in one mobile platform.

Behind the scenes of Firefox 3.0

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