Campaign for Web browser raises $250,000 online in 10 days
Howard Lake | 5 November 2004 | News
The Mozilla Foundation has raised $250,000 in 10 days from 10,000 individuals to help promote the final version of its open source Web browser Firefox 1.0 when it is released on 9 November 2004.
The appeal was launched to pay for a full page advert in The New York Times promoting Firefox, an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Its original target was beaten quickly when it passed the $100,000 mark within three days. The spare cash will be used for further promotional activity for the browser which aims to take some of the market dominated by Microsoft’s browser.
Fundraising UK Ltd switched two months ago away from Internet Explorer to Firefox as its machines’ standard Web browser, after experiencing a two-day interruption to our work from a spyware intrusion. This occurred despite our regularly-updated use of a firewall, anti-virus, and anti-malware products, together with the latest patched versions of Windows and Internet Explorer.
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Critics of Internet Explorer argue that it has not been significantly developed for five years and is prone to security lapses. Microsoft does however offer regular security patch updates for the product.
The US campaign has inspired a fundraising campaign in Germany to pay for a similar newspaper advert, and a UK campaign is under consideration.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.