Download Firefox, Feed a Red Panda 90
KenW writes "Mozilla has launched a new marketing campaign to promote Firefox: adopting red pandas and putting them on live webcams. The company wants to underline the fact that the red panda is the mascot for its open source browser via a new section on its site called Firefox Live. It's clear that Mozilla is trying to think of new ways to promote its browser ahead of the launch of Firefox 4. The company has been struggling recently as Firefox steadily loses share to Google Chrome."
The panda is a lie (Score:4, Informative)
No, it isn't. The first literal translation of the Chinese glyphs for red panda (in a dialect that doesn't distinguish the red fox from the red panda) to "fire fox" was done long after Firefox came about.
It was called Firefox because the earlier name, Firebird, had too many well-defended trademarks. From Ben Goodger's log in 2004, courtesy of the wayback machine:
"The process began in late November. Mozilla's Chief Architect Brendan Eich had made a commitment to resolve the dispute over Firebird's code name (which was being widely adopted as the browser's actual name) by the 0.8 milestone. Over the span of about 2 weeks a small group at The Mozilla Foundation including Catherine Corre, Bart Decrem, Brendan Eich, Chris Hofmann and myself pored over lists of over two hundred names, many gleaned from the Phoenix to Firebird transition. We reached a point where we had a handful that were the best of that lot, but none of us was entirely satisfied. Searches of the United States Patent and Trademark Office website showed that all of the options we had picked up were potential minefields from a trademark point of view. We refocused our energy on names beginning with "Fire-" in an attempt to preserve the link with the past, and so that we could retain some of our evocative flame imagery.
Ultimately it was Jason Kersey of MozillaZine that came up with the winner. I don't think he was serious with his suggestion, but the naming group liked it well enough. A scan of the USPTO database was positive. We filed for a trademark registration in the United States in December 2003."
Note that from the start of using the name Firefox, the logo has always been of a fox, not a panda. The panda is a backport, possibly to distance themselves from the foxfire culture.
Re:When I hear Firefox (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Struggling? (Score:4, Informative)
FF4 will be released in Q1, it solves all these issues.