When Microsoft settled its antitrust battle with the Computer & Communications Industry Association earlier this month, the CCIA's top executive--an outspoken critic of Microsoft--was paid nearly $10 million, the Financial Times has reported.
According to the documents seen by the London-based Financial Times, Ed Black, chief executive officer of the CCIA, took half of the $19.75 million payment Microsoft made to the association. The payment was approved by the board of the CCIA, the newspaper said. A Microsoft spokeswoman told Silicon.com that while the company made the payment to the association, it did not have any part in saying how the money was distributed after it was paid.
"It was, of course, up to the CCIA board to decide how to use the money it received from us, and we had no involvement at all in that process," she said. The CCIA declined to comment. However, when Microsoft and the CCIA announced the settlement on Nov. 8, the software giant may have intended the cash for lawyers' pockets, not Black's. The spokeswoman said: "Microsoft agreed to make a payment to CCIA as an organization as reimbursement for certain legal and related expenditures that it had incurred."
News source: C|Net News.com
According to the documents seen by the London-based Financial Times, Ed Black, chief executive officer of the CCIA, took half of the $19.75 million payment Microsoft made to the association. The payment was approved by the board of the CCIA, the newspaper said. A Microsoft spokeswoman told Silicon.com that while the company made the payment to the association, it did not have any part in saying how the money was distributed after it was paid.
"It was, of course, up to the CCIA board to decide how to use the money it received from us, and we had no involvement at all in that process," she said. The CCIA declined to comment. However, when Microsoft and the CCIA announced the settlement on Nov. 8, the software giant may have intended the cash for lawyers' pockets, not Black's. The spokeswoman said: "Microsoft agreed to make a payment to CCIA as an organization as reimbursement for certain legal and related expenditures that it had incurred."
News source: C|Net News.com
I feel I should point out that even if computer manufacturers start installing Firefox at their end, it won't make a jot of difference. The techies will be annoyed as it most likely won't be the absolute latest version when it gets to them, and they'll just have to update it anyway. The don't-cares, meantime, will still see their traditional big "e" and instinctively click on that. You could label Firefox "better internet" and it still wouldn't change the fact that people are creatures of habit.
The wonderful people over at spreadfirefox.com have managed to raise enough money for a full-page ad in the New York Times telling everyone of the joys of the browser. Unfortunately, as great as that is, I quite simply can't see it having that much of an effect. Remember the marketing push when Windows 95 came out? There was a massive TV campaign; billboards everywhere; Microsoft even subsidised The Times newspaper for a day, making it free for everyone - on the condition that it came with a special supplement telling of the wonders of this new operating system in terms ordinary people could understand. Firefox, unfortunately, isn't going to get anything like that amount of publicity. Sure, it's attracted a lot more attention than probably any other browser release in history. But think of where this attention has been focused - most, if not all, has been in tech magazines and on tech websites aimed at people who will already have heard of, and for the most part be using - or at least have tried out - Firefox.
So I've come to the conclusion that the only way to get Firefox used by the internet population at large, and to stop all these stupid spyware exploits and viruses clogging up our precious bandwidth every two days, is guerilla tactics. We need to employ our own version of Microsoft's campaign of the '90s, and simply remove any sign of Internet Explorer from their computers. I don't go in for the customising of Firefox to look exactly like Internet Explorer, partly because Firefox with Qute looks 100 times nicer than IE ever could. But this campaign could be very effective. It's simple: go onto your friend/flatmate/work colleague's computer and get rid of the desktop IE icon and any links from the start menu, quick-launch bar and so on. Install Firefox and make icons in exactly the same place as they'll simply go there to launch it anyway. But make sure you rename them to "Internet" - we don't want our dear friends getting confused, after all. This is something I've already tried out a couple of times and it seems pretty effective. If they're tech-savvy enough to notice that something is different, simply say: "Oh, it's a new version" - then show them some of the new features included. Hey, we're not saying they've been included by Microsoft!
This, I am convinced, is the only possible method for getting Firefox usage to account for even 20% of internet surfing. 50%? It's unrealistic, to be honest. But if it even gets to a fifth, that's enough users for web "developers" to stop simply building sites which will only operate in Internet Explorer. Losing around one in 20 customers, as at the moment, is bad enough; losing one in five would, quite simply, be unforgivable.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.