Microsoft says Firefox is not a threat (13th November 2004)

Good old Microsoft - it's their complacency around security and features which have helped Firefox to gain popularity, and yet in a CNET News interview Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, claims that he doesn't believe that Firefox is any sort of threat to Internet Explorer's dominance. That's rich, coming from someone who then in the same interview freely admitted that he'd never used Firefox.

Internet Explorer Mozilla + Firefox June 87.5% 7.6% July 85.0% 10.6% August 79.7% 14.5% September 79.0% 15.8% October 58.4% 36.5% November 54.1% 40.1%

So, Microsoft reckon they're okay. Strange then that EA Games ran a poll about favourite browsers with Firefox coming out top with 54% of the vote and Internet Explorer trailing with 25%. No threat from the gaming community it would seem.

Update... on Monday morning I found a vote called 'Sunday Smackdown' on reviews.cnet.com pitching Firefox against Internet Explorer. I voted for Firefox (of course) and 87.2% of voters had also done so. I'll leave you to work out what percentage voted for Internet Explorer. Okay, you probably could successfully argue that people visiting this site are the more technically astute population of web users, and therefore are more in tune with what's going on in the browser war. But don't today's technical leaders pave the way for tomorrow's general public? Whatever, Microsoft aren't worried. Maybe it's because even if Firefox does win this battle, it won't really hurt Microsoft's overstuffed bank balance or their desktop dominance.