The Launch of the Mozilla Firefox Browser☆
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ARTICLE IN PRESS INTMAR-00028; No. of pages: 13; 4C: Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Interactive Marketing xx (2009) xxx–xxx www.elsevier.com/locate/intmar CASE: Mozilla vs. Godzilla — The Launch of the Mozilla Firefox Browser☆ Sandeep Krishnamurthy E-Commerce and Marketing, Business Administration Program, University of Washington, Bothell, Box 358533, 18115 Campus Way NE, Room UW1-233, Bothell, WA 98011-8246 Abstract The case describes an interactive marketing campaign used to launch the open source, Mozilla Firefox browser. The case highlights key features of the campaign and the facilitating conditions that enabled product success. The sustainability of the community marketing effort in light of product maturation is the central marketing challenge that the organization now faces. © 2009 Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Open source; Online community; Interactive marketing Introduction from 2% in July 2004 to 12% in June 2007. Firefox seems to be especially popular in Europe with a market share as high as On November 10, 2004, the second round of the “browser 24.1% in March 2007. wars” (Cusumano and Yoffie 1998, pg. 16) commenced with the An online community (Hagel 1999) of users and developers launch of a new open source; free web browser — Mozilla who gathered at the Spread Firefox site (http://www.spreadfirefox. Firefox (Boutin 2004). Observers who had long assumed that com) facilitated the success of Firefox through an innovative Netscape lost and Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) won the interactive marketing campaign — see Table 3 for a detailed original browser wars now had a new choice. A Forrester timeline of relevant events. The time had come to evaluate if Research report said that Firefox had style and offered, “some community-led interactive marketing was sufficient to take tangible benefits over Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE)” (Root Firefox to a dominant position in the marketplace. et al. 2005). Mozilla Firefox had an immediate and dramatic impact. As The web browser shown in Table 1, users downloaded Firefox 25 million times in 99 days and 200 million times in 629 days. The European A web browser is the software program that retrieves a web marketshare picture is shown in Table 1. In comparison, at its page from a web server and displays it on the consumer's launch, users downloaded Netscape Navigator nine million times computer. The browser occupies a central position in the online by September 1995, 27 million times by March 1996 and about environment due to its control over user experience, advertising 95 million times by March 1998 (Yoffie and Cusumano 1999). display, applications and security. First, a browser controls the Even keeping in mind the caveat that downloads do not equal online experience of users by providing an information users, this is an indication of a highly successful product launch. architecture through a graphical user interface. The design of A survey released by WebSideStory on Jan 12, 2005 the browser affects how millions of users worldwide interact reported that Microsoft's Internet Explorer's share was down with all online content and applications of all sorts. Due to to 90.6%, the lowest in three years (Hamm 2005). Table 2 differences in the design of the browser, the same page might summarizes the market share of various browsers from 2003 to appear different in various browsers. Optimizing web pages for June 2007 and demonstrates that the usage of Firefox has risen multiple browsers is a major task when designing a web page. Second, browsers can affect how advertising is displayed and — ☆ The title was inspired by Hamm (2005). presented to the user e.g. a browser can automatically disable E-mail address: [email protected]. pop-up ads limiting the ad revenue of publishers and the reach of URL: http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep. advertisers. Third, the browser is a platform that enables appli- 1094-9968/$ - see front matter © 2009 Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2009.04.008 Please cite this article as: Sandeep Krishnamurthy, CASE: Mozilla vs. Godzilla — The Launch of the Mozilla Firefox Browser, Journal of Interactive Marketing (2009), doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2009.04.008 ARTICLE IN PRESS 2 S. Krishnamurthy / Journal of Interactive Marketing xx (2009) xxx–xxx Table 1 Table 3 European browser usage data, March 2007 (Source: Xiti Monitor). Detailed timeline of relevant events. FF2 and IE7 Use rate by European country Firefox 2 IE 7 Event Date Finland 27.0% 23.8% Creation of SpreadFirefox.com Website September 12, 2004 Slovenia 26.8% 8.1% Official Release of Firefox 1.0 November 9, 2004 Germany 25.9% 19.5% New York Times, Full-page ad December 16, 2004 Croatia 23.4% 11.6% 25 millionth download February 16, 2005 Poland 22.1% 8.3% PC Magazine Editor's Choice Award May 2005 Slovakia 21.9% 6.4% Mozilla Corporation Created August 3, 2005 Austria 19.3% 22.7% 100 millionth download October 19, 2005 Czech Republic 18.7% 8.0% CNET Editor's Choice November 2005 Greece 18.6% 14.5% Official Release of Firefox 1.5 November 29, 2005 Estonia 18.4% 17.5% Firefox Flicks Campaign Initiated December 2, 2005 Hungary 16.8% 7.4% 200 millionth download July 31, 2006 Bulgaria 16.8% 9.9% Internet Explorer Version 7.0 Released October 18, 2006 Latvia 16.7% 12.6% Windows Vista Released January 17, 2007 Ireland 15.7% 29.7% Romania 15.1% 9.6% Sweden 13.8% 29.0% designed browser might not be able to detect malignant soft- France 13.6% 33.2% Switzerland 13.1% 31.5% ware applications compromising the data stored on the com- Portugal 11.8% 13.4% puter. Due to these factors, the browser is a software program Lithuania 11.8% 13.6% that occupies a strategic position in the online environment. Luxembourg 11.7% 20.5% Despite this strategic importance, directly earning revenue The UK 11.3% 32.3% from the browser has proved to be a challenge. First, the Belgium 11.3% 29.2% Norway 10.6% 20.4% browser is a way of locking in a user base enabling future Italy 10.3% 23.6% revenue opportunities. As mentioned above, the browser allows Ukraine 10.2% 8.0% possibilities for significant advertising revenue. Second, Spain 9.5% 22.7% browser providers must make considerable investments to Denmark 8.7% 24.5% protect the security of users from viruses and malignant web Andorra 8.2% 28.8% The Netherlands 8.1% 29.5% sites. Firms cannot easily recoup this investment. Online users expect security from browsers and do not necessarily wish to pay for it. It is, perhaps, because of these reasons that there have cations. Application providers work with standards set by the been very few corporate efforts at developing a browser leading browsers when building their programs. For instance, media to limited choice for users. players such as Real Player and Windows Media Player work with the software of the browser in order to be successful. A Mozilla philosophy corporation controlling the browser can use it to leverage its own applications to the exclusion of others. For example, Microsoft The Mozilla Foundation is at the center of a portfolio of uses MSN as the default search engine on its browser enabling products built using the open source philosophy (see Appendix significant advertising revenue. Finally, the web browser is 1 for a discussion of the open source concept). The Mozilla central to the security of the online experience. A poorly Foundation has articulated its philosophy in a manifesto shown Table 2 Browser market share. 2 Browser 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 June May April March Feb. Jan. Dec. Nov. Oct. Sep. Aug. July Dec. July Feb. Dec. July Dec. 1 FireFox 12% 12% 12% 12% 11% 11% 11% 11% 8% 10% 10% 10% 8% 8% 5% 3% 2% N/A 2 MSIE 3.x b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% 3 MSIE 4.x b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% b1% 1% 4 MSIE 5.x 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 4% 2% 2% 2% 3% 5% 10% 9% 16% 34% 5 MSIE 6.x 54% 56% 56% 58% 58% 63% 70% 76% 83% 81% 82% 82% 83% 83% 81% 80% 77% 59% 6 MSIE 7.x 13% 15% 14% 25% 24% 20% 12% 7% N/A 2% 1% b1% N/A N/A 1% b1% b1% N/A 7 All Netscape b21% b18% b18% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% b8% browsers 8 Opera x.x 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 9 Safari 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 1% 1% 1% 1% N/A 10 Other b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% b2% 2 Also, see detailed browser release history at- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#endnote_PlatformIE. (Source: http://www.thecounter. com/stats/). Please cite this article as: Sandeep Krishnamurthy, CASE: Mozilla vs. Godzilla — The Launch of the Mozilla Firefox Browser, Journal of Interactive Marketing (2009), doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2009.04.008 ARTICLE IN PRESS S. Krishnamurthy / Journal of Interactive Marketing xx (2009) xxx–xxx 3 in Appendix 2. The manifesto states, “The Mozilla project is a pricing of Internet Explorer; 3) Microsoft's exclusive distribu- global community of people who believe that openness, tion contracts with Internet access providers; and 4) Microsoft's innovation and opportunity are key to the continued health of tying of Internet Explorer to windows” (Klein 2001, pg.