Salon: CNET wrong on Firefox
Scott Rosenberg says the open-source challenge to Microsoft's Internet browser is not close to getting crushed.
Nothing like a little cross-town sniping to liven up a slow afternoon. Salon’s Scott Rosenberg takes my CNET colleague Molly Wood to task for a recent column she wrote about Firefox. Molly argues that the upcoming update of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser will prove too much to handle, at one point declaring that “the Firefox rebellion is finished.”
Au contraire, argues Rosenberg, who IÂ’ve longed admired for his insight into the tech industryÂ’s mishugas.
“This is a prime example of one of journalism's worst habits -- a knee-jerk application of "who wins, who loses?" logic to situations where it doesn't really apply. "Finished." "Destroyed." "Crushed." "Squashed flat." This is the language of pro wrestling, sometimes adopted by business writers who are desperate to paint the typically colorless corporate world in the bright colors and action-packed imagery of sports.”
IÂ’m not going to referee this bout (he said, not trying to be too much of a weasel) but don't underestimate the depth of user frustration with MicrosoftÂ’s benign neglect of IE. I know what Microsoft can do to rivals once it gets its act together. But past is not necessarily prologue. From this vantage point, the vitality of the open-source Mozilla development effort behind Firefox is far from spent.