The Launching of Mozilla Firefox - A Case Study in Community-Led Marketing

Mozilla Firefox is a Free/Libre/Open Source (FLOSS) browser supported by the Mozilla Foundation. This browser was recently released and has met with considerable success- it has been downloaded more than 20 million times and has already taken considerable market share from its prime competitor- Microsoft?s Internet Explorer. In this paper, I chronicle how the efforts of 63000 volunteers led to a community successfully competing with a powerful corporation. I identify four factors as the key facilitators to Firefox? success- complacent competition, product superiority, presence of marketing leader and volunteer support.