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IE has the backing of Microsoft. Firefox, until Chrome came out, had the backing of Google. Safari has the backing of Apple. Marketing and marketing budgets ha

• Nekojoe 17y ago
  I think Firefox also has the advantage of being Netscape Navigator's spiritual heir. Lot of people who used NN (when it was good), got used to it and were keen to keep on using it over alternatives. Firefox's mantra of being lightweight also helped them as you could just install the plugins you wanted, not a load of stuff people thought you wanted or should have that could have got rolled in as standard.
  • philwelch 17y ago
    "I think Firefox also has the advantage of being Netscape Navigator's spiritual heir. Lot of people who used NN (when it was good), got used to it and were keen to keep on using it over alternatives." There were years between the last good Netscape Navigator and the first usable Mozilla, let alone Firefox 1. I really doubt there was that much loyalty during that long dark spell, especially since during much of that period, Internet Explorer was pretty good.