Seems like Mozilla’s alienated businesses and IT administrators the world over, and inadvertently left a huge opening for Google to step in with Chrome. This week, Aza Dotzler, one of Mozilla’s executives, made a rather pigheaded remark regarding Mozilla’s opinion of the business community, and their complaints about the Firefox Web Browser. Long story short, he made a complete and utter ass of himself, and of the company he’s supposed to represent.
Mozilla, To Enterprise Users: “You’re Just a drop in the bucket”
This pretty much sums up what Dotzler said.
When reading Dotzler’s comment, quoted below, remember that it’s a response to this blog post. Basically, it’s a rather politely worded article decrying Firefox’s rapid-update schedule and demonstrating that it simply does not work for enterprise users. There’s also a bit in there about Firefox 4 no longer being supported. All in all, a pretty reasonable manifesto, right? With that in mind, you tell me if the sort of response it received was justified:
“Mike, you do realize that we get about 2 million Firefox downloads per day from regular user types, right? Your “big numbers” here are really just a drop in the bucket, fractions of fractions of a percent of our user base.
Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.”
Yeah, something tells me the PR team is going to be having a nice, long chat with this prick.
Not that Google’s complaining, of course. Gives them a chance to capitalize on what Mozilla apparently doesn’t want.
Google, To Enterprise Users: “Let us help you.”
While Mozilla’s off telling enterprise users where to go, Google’s welcoming them with open arms. See, according to Chrome for Business product manager Glenn Wilson; even though Chrome as just as rapid an update process as Firefox, the Chrome team is still dedicated to “a balance between security updates and compatibility. They’re working very, very hard to make the Chrome platform an appealing one for IT professionals. One way they’re doing it is a feature known as Group Policy. What this does is allow administrators to delay updates on their Chrome browser until they can be certain the new version is completely tested and will be compatible with their own software. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, doesn’t it?
That’s not all Google’s doing for businesses either. They’re also offering an MSI installer, allowing IT to roll out Chrome on their own terms, using “standard deployment methods,” along with a plugin known as Google Chrome Frame. Basically, it lets IT use Google Chrome’s Open Web tech and Javascript Engine on their own. Again, this allows them to update and manage Chrome on their own terms. Finally, Google Apps users are all able to get in touch with Google for Chrome support-even if they’re enterprise users. If they get enough enterprise users hooked on the Chrome browser, what do you suppose that will mean for the Chrome OS?
Good things, indeed.
via PC Mag
