Firefox zealots offer websites money to switch users from IE (corrected*)

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 26 April 2006 07:19

Your IT - Home IT

*The original title was:  Firefox zealots offer users money to switch from IE. This was clearly incorrect as it is websites not users that are offered money to switch from IE to Firefox, as is correctly stated in the story. We apologise if the headline misled our readers.(Editor)

A group of Firefox advocates from Massachusetts is offering website publishers and bloggers $1 for each Internet Explorer visitor to their sites they can convince to switch to the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Google has recently announced that it will pay websites $1 for each referred download of Firefox it receives via the Google Toolbar. The four anti-Microsoft activists from Massachusetts have developed a series of free scripts that website owners can add to their sites that will detect whether visitors are running Internet Eplorer. Depending on the script, the website will either show a splash page telling them to switch to Firefox or it will put a big switch banner at the top of the page.

The group, which explains its actions in an open letter on their website at http://www.explorerdestroyer.com/open_letter.php, says: "Firefox is one of the most important software applications in the world because it can play a big part in determining the future of the web. It is crucial that an open-source, standards-based web browser becomes the most popular browser, and Firefox has a shot at being that. Google has just set the stage for Firefox to literally "take back the web" and go from 11% of browsers to over 50%. If people can now spread Firefox, stick it to Microsoft, and make money for each user switched, an aggressive strategy just got more appealing."

The activitists have designed three levels of scripts that website owners can use depending on their commitment level to converting Internet Explorer users: one is a banner at the top of the page, another is a splash page with a link to the Mozilla download page and the most extreme is a page that informs visitors that they need to switch to Firefox to view the site.

According to the group, getting users to switch to Firefox has never been more urgent: "There's a big chance right now to switch people to Firefox and it might not last very long-- Microsoft has a new version of Internet Exlporer on the way and lord knows what they'll be doing in Vista to force people to use it. Firefox has to get a big foothold right now."

What the group did not make clear, however, is what its attitude is to other alternative browsers, such as Opera.