Ages ago, the great antitrust struggle in software was over Microsoft’s practice of tying its browser to its operation system. Also, there was an outcry among competitors (not consumers) over the zero price that MS was charging for IE. The great fear was that IE would have a complete monopoly on browsers and then...do something really terrible. (Some ancient commentary on this: 1, 2, 3)
All of which is to say: Firefox, the browser beloved by geeks the world over—faster, safer, better, as they say—just made it to 100,000,000 downloads. It does appear that here again the market—and that includes Mozilla’s nonprofit arm—has outwitted the fears of the planners.
