Response from competition

Response from competition

Despite Firefox's gains on Internet Explorer, Microsoft's head of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, stated in late 2004 that he did not see Firefox as a threat and that there was not significant demand for the feature set of Firefox among Microsoft's users. However, many features that distinguished Firefox from previous versions of Internet Explorer are now available with Internet Explorer 7. Vamos stated that he had never used Firefox.[74] Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but he has commented "so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?"[75] A Microsoft SEC filing on June 30, 2005 acknowledged that "competitors such as Mozilla offer software that competes with the Internet Explorer Web browsing capabilities of our Windows operating system products."[76]

In August 2006, Microsoft offered to help Mozilla integrate Firefox with the forthcoming Windows Vista,[77] which Mozilla accepted.[78] On the release of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team shipped a cake to Mozilla as a sign of appreciation.[79]