11/9/2004 07:54:58 PM|||paul|||How to hamstring a product release|||Mozilla's new flagship favourite product - the web browser Firefox - was set to be released today. Only problem is, hosting problems seem to be stabbing them in the proverbial back.
The Mozilla foundation has been building increadible impetus for the release, hoping the running start will see their darling child well on its way to challenging the Goliath of the browser market; Internet Explorer. When last I checked IE sat at around 95% market share, a position Microsoft is so comfortable with they haven't provided any significant updates to the product since Netscape was killed (before it was resurrected.) The Mozilla foundation will be hoping to take a fair chunk of that cake for themselves in the coming years, but everyone expects going to be slow. Microsoft certainly didn't get where they were without ensuring they had an illegal advantage over the rest of the market.
The strategy has been straight forward - gather as much support as possible to spread the word. The first incarnation of this came in the form of the 'Spread Firefox' campaign; an appeal for bloggers, admins and all other miscellany of geekdom to unite in evangelising the browser. Hopefully many are now familiar with the Firefox logo (pictured left) from the little ad that's become so popular.
The second element of the campaign has been a new direction for open source projects in general - get some commercial exposure in the form of actual advertising. The fund-raising drive to raise enough for a few full-paged ads in the New York Times was wildly successful, completing its objectives in just a few weeks.
But when I logged on to mozilla.org this evening, the server was down. I can only imagine the number of people reading the various news articles heralding its release, who don't really care what browser they are using but are willing to try while theres a link in front of them, who never click again after the HTTP error turns them back.
Hopefully this is actually a good thing. Perhaps the server's hosed because demand for the new browser far outstripped the Mozilla foundation's wildest expectations. On the other hand, perhaps it's just bad systems administration or management.
Update: a few minutes after composing this post mozilla.org came back online, and downloading was quite fast. Sometimes I let my language carry me away on a tide of enthusiasm. Get the browser - you know you want it.
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