What’s Wrong With Firefox? Can You Trust Browsers?

The folks are Microsoft are running an uphill battle. Internet Explorer on Windows is a security risk and losing market share (quickly) to Open Source Firefox.

A Microsoft employee asks, “Can you trust Firefox?” Is that the right question? Can you trust Microsoft? Maybe that’s the right question to ask.

Those of us in the Mac world have it real good these days. Safari is awesome, Firefox is very good (though too much like its Windows counterpart for me), and we have the best web browser ever produced, OmniWeb.

Peter Torr is the Microsoft employee in question and he asks the question, “Can you trust Firefox?”

After all, when you download Safari you know where it’s coming from. Same with OmniWeb. Firefox is Open Source so is mirrored all over the place. How do you know you’re getting what you think you’re getting? Firefox.

Here’s what Peter (the Microsoft employee writing in a web log) says:

“One of the many criticisms of Internet Explorer is that customers are fooled into downloading spyware or adware on to their computers. This is indeed a legitimate problem, and one of the ways you can reduce the risks of getting unwanted software on your machine is to only accept digitally signed software from vendors that you trust.

Every time you download a random piece of software from a random location, you’re taking your chances with your PC and all the information stored on it. You wouldn’t take candy from strangers, would you?”

Hello? Anybody at home in Redmond? 99.9% of sites most of us visit are not secure sites. Internet Explorer’s problem is that it lets other site VISIT YOU! Sorry, a little Windows rage creeped out just then.

Peter goes on to blather that you just don’t know where that version of Firefox is coming from so it could easily get you into trouble with a malicious web site.

To be fair, it’s obvious that Peter doesn’t do much web browsing in anything but Internet Explorer so doesn’t have a clue what millions of us have found-- a better experience than Microsoft.

Firefox on Windows is a very good browsing experience, shifting unsigned security certificates notwithstanding.

See, Internet Explorer’s default install turns off Active-X controls for unsigned certificates (from the sites that cause Windows users so much grief). It doesn’t matter. There are so many Swiss cheese holes in IE that spyware crapola gets through by the bucket.

But not on the Mac. Why? First, not many Mac users bother with Internet Explorer these days (about 4% when we check our web site server logs). 60% of our site’s readers use Safari. Another 10% use Firefox on the Mac. About 2-percent use OmniWeb.

All of them are faster and a better browsing experience than anything on the Windows side of the world. But you already knew that, right?

What you may not have known is that OmniWeb is quickly becoming the best browsing experience ever. On any computer, Mac or Windows. By far (no offense to Safari).

To read Peter’s entry on “How Can I Trust Firefox?” Click Here.

For the best browsing experience you can have (it’s an opinion, of course), Click Here to review the OmniWeb 5 features list.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.