I was looking at The Gmail Give Away over at Spread Firefox the other night and it got me to thinking about Google's recent courting of the Mozilla folk with the Campus Day. Here are 2,000 Gmail accounts being made available for anyone helping in spreading the word about Firefox.
I was not thinking about whether or not Google gave them the accounts to disperse, these could have been donated by many avid Bloggers quite easily. I had to ask myself, why Gmail Accounts? Mozilla would probably had to clear this give away with Google most probably, or at least discussed it with them in some fashion.
This is another piece to the Mozilla-based Google Browser puzzle. But a key one I think. It is classic Google promotion in fact -- think Gmail buzz here and I think you can see where I am coming from.
Bringing Down Internet Explorer
Google needs to crack the top dog in the browser market, Internet Explorer. For six months of solid security risks, a delay in SP2 and a constant barrage of warnings from the experts -- nobody really gave up their IE. Zeitgeist Browser Stats shows a little decline during this time period, but no marked rise in Mozilla.
It was not until PR was frozen in time 3 months ago when you started noticing the mass exodus by website owners to Firefox. Since the Googlebar and the PR meter was one of main reasons for sticking with IE, it would behoove Google to wean the owners off of it and migrate over to Firefox -- wouldn't it? Looking at the unmoving, seemingly broken, PR meter got boring. Why not try Firefox now?
Webmasters will carry the torch for the new browser, when and if Google decides to go thru with it. The SpreadFirefox site is geared for the promotion of Firefox. It is a concerted promotional effort and they have cranked out 2 million downloads in 10 days time. It will be a slow rolling snowball ala Gmail hype-style from here on out.
To put those 2 million downloads into context, there are now over 800 million Internet users world-wide according to Internet World Stats. That is to say that one out of 400 of these users have downloaded Firefox.
Interesting sidenote, the current Zeitgeist report at Google are not showing the Browser Stats. Curious that!
The Trump Card - Longhorn
The timeline to the Longhorn rollout is a couple of years away and longer for it to become mainstream. Longhorn is reported to be a browserless system though. Internet Explorer, for all intents and purposes, is dead. The time is ripe for the picking to grab a large share of that dominant browser market with no expected updates or newer versions on the horizon.
The Firefox downloads are a notable start based on viral marketing. Browser market share is Microsoft's to lose now. They have got to be a little nervous about this I would think. It is reverse-Netscape deja vu coming back to bite them in some respects.
This is about as far as I got with my line of thinking however. From here we get into the whole Google OS speculation which may or may not be a long-range goal at Google. One thing is certain, whatever Google has up their sleeve will be fun to watch unfold over the ensuing months. At least more fun than watching boring IPO blog posts for several months was.
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