Gartner tells firms to be cautious about Firefox

ANALYST OUTFIT Gartner has warned organisations not to switch to Firefox too soon.

In a report issued by Gartner researchers growth in Firefox usage is being driven by factors that were not "inherently sustainable."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Gartner said that Firefox did have a lot of features that were liked by users and it was being assisted by outside companies, such as Google, who supported it.

However, the growth in Firefox usage was taking place primarily at the individual rather than the corporate level, the report said.

Microsoft still had the option of countering any lost browser market share, particularly with the release of Longhorn.

Gartner predicted that as Firefox's share of the browser market grew, it would increasingly be targeted by malicious code.

The be-suited ones think that one of three outcomes was possible. The first is that Internet Explorer usage will fall, but would be halted by improvements wrought by Microsoft. The next scenario is that the slide in IE usage would continue unabated due to ongoing well-publicised breaches in IE.

The final, more likely, idea is that there would be an uneasy co-existence and users, fed up with the security problems, would install Firefox alongside IE and use it.

This means, say Gartner, that it would be better to wait and see, perhaps planning mixed browser environments in the long term.

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