IBM Makes Firefox its Default Browser | Hacker News Reader

IBM Makes Firefox its Default Browser

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41 pointsckcin14 comments

I was an employee of IBM up until about 6 months ago, where upon I switched to a start up. But that is not what this is about.

Hopefully, things at IBM have changed internally because a vast majority of their internal applications require Internet Explorer to function at all. Pretty much everyone I knew used Firefox, but groaned loudly when they had to open IE6 to use some of their internal tools on W3.

This is a good strategic move against Microsoft. If IBM lends its credibility to the Firefox cause, other companies will be more willing to get rid of IE, especially IE6.

Does anyone know if IBM contributes code to either Firefox/Gecko or Webkit?

The IBM/Firefox tie-up started a long time ago with them contributing some accessibility features. http://www-03.ibm.com/able/resources/firefox.html

Glad they made it official, though, but Firefox had been an IBMer favorite for a while: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/05/4902.ars

This is excellent. If Google decides to stop sponsoring Mozilla, IBM now has an incentive to do so in their place.

Google pays for search placement, as do at least a couple of other search providers I believe. They used to pay people one dollar for getting Firefox plus Google Search installed on a machine so they clearly view it as a money maker rather than a charity.

How corporate to switch official browsers away from IE… to a browser that is no longer the leading engine anymore. I wonder why they did not pick a WebKit flavor, like Chrome?

Edit: Mozilla Corp. is a commercial entity, just like Google and Apple are. Gecko and WebKit are both open source, and Chromium builds show just how easy it would be to build an IBM-branded Chrome, if you will. I don’t see IP as a serious factor here.

Chrome probably didn't even exist yet when IBM started migrating to Firefox.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what sort of browser-specific investments have been made? Isn’t the idea of a standards-based web that it hardly matters which browser is chosen, as long as it supports the standards in question?

Probably testing.

I wonder why they did not pick a WebKit flavor, like Chrome?

One of their requirements was that the browser not be "beholden to one commercial entity".

Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation (whose stated mission is to work towards an open web) and was mainly set for tax reasons. This makes it very unlike Google or Apple.

As someone who is currently an IBM employee, this is news to me.

How very corporate ;-)

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