Mozilla and eBay have launched Firefox eBay Edition, an eBay focused version of the popular Firefox browser, along with an official eBay addon for existing Firefox users.
Firefox eBay Edition and the alternative addon works for European eBay sites including the UK, France and Germany.
Functions include
- An eBay sidebar that provides quick access and real-time updates on items users have bid on, are selling or watching
- Status alerts, including outbid notices
- Integrated eBay search
- Built in support for eBay’s Account Guard
Providing branded or customized versions of Firefox is not new; Google already offers its own Firefox download with Google tools installed as standard. Where this offer differs is in the provision; this isn’t a customized version being offered by eBay alone, eBay Firefox Edition and the related addon are offered for download by Mozilla itself. Whilst Mozilla is more than entitled to partner and provide such a service, open source purists may see the deal as Mozilla selling out. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Man if that’s not begging for an integrated sniper addition…
As for the ‘purists’, they should have fled when they heard how much Mozilla makes from their Google deal a long time ago.
Looks to me like FF sold out, plus it’s not a real eBay edition of Firefox in the terms they speak of. It’s just a plugin, an add on.
This is old. I’m using this add on for a couple of months already
Commenter 3
The addon has been in testing for months, this is the official launch + the FF version is new.
Ali
I agree that it’s just a plugin, but can I tell you straight up: it’s being branded this way as per the screenshot and announcement from eBay and Mozilla.
Wow, I had to read that title 3 times before it started to make sense :p
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
As long as the user has the choice of whether or not to use the eBay edition, I don’t see this as any sort of sellout. In my opinion there’s nothing wrong with Mozilla trying to make some money this way.
Synergistic marketing.
httyp://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
Synergistic marketing. Co-Branding works best to the interest of both the companies involved.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
I think the irony lies within the IE7 screenshot…
As an avid user of Ebay, I can say I’m officially dizzy with this add-on crap. I guess I’ll give it a try…Whatever happened simplicity?
Ian
believe it or not it was IE7 on Vista running on a Mac with Parallels (did I mention I love Parallels Confluence)
Viewing it in Firefox redirected to the addon page instead of the stand alone page, hence the need for a IE7 screen shot for the full FF eBay edition image.
Does this mean that each winning bid, perhaps each new ACRU too, will earn money for Mozilla? Is Mozilla an eBay affiliate? From their FAQ it’s not clear:
Is the Firefox Companion for eBay open source?
We plan on open sourcing as much of the source code we developed under the MPL as possible. We still have some work to do in terms of licensing and code review before we do so, and we’ll get to that shortly. However, the graphics, trademarks, certain functionality and the APIs keys used to build this Firefox Companion have been licensed from third-parties will not be released as open source.
Does this mean that other eBay affiliates will be able to put together their own addon?
Is ebay running out of marketing ideas or what?
Duncan, yeah it’s being branded this way to fool the uninformed user. Plus why is it on the .co.uk site and not the .com site? Maybe some legal stuff they couldn’t figure out for the US, Google probably had something to do with it I imagine.
It sounds shady to me.
For my needs, I just use the Sage FF Plug in and have an RSS feed version of each search I have set-up (as provided by eBay) .
Steve (comment 12)
probably.
Ali (14)
not sure, though if you visit the site and click on the download you end up at mozilla.com
Hi – Regarding the link to the UK site, from the FAQ:
What countries does the Firefox Companion for eBay support?
Initially, Germany, France and the United Kingdom with others possible at a later date.
This is an interesting move for FF, a great way to market their browser with a font-page eBay link!
i have tried out the plugin and I think that it will provide a useful shortcut to eBay sellers. I particularly like the way that the sidebar can be easily turned on and off which is not a feature of the rather cumbersome eBay toolbar
Monitoring auctions is an addiction which this tool will help fuel!
I like the way an item changes colors when you become a highest bidder from being outbid. Also the alert functionality is very powerful.
Very interesting feature. I guess an RSS integration within IE7 could do about the same thing (more geeky although).
heh They are basically licensing their branding of their product –
-Nothing wrong as long as they don’t force it on us -
– this is a great business model for firefox.
I am actually surprised that it has taken this long to create “Branded” use specific editions of FireFox. With all the available functionality in FireFox it’s a poor blogger’s dream machine. This begs the question…where is the Blogger version? I can also see a Digg version and take the GoogleFox one step further and introduce it like the eBay version.
Woooooo !!!! This will be hot. It would be almost a BDA for eBay and I am sure this will add on to the user base of both the parties.
anyone else notice the irony of the screenshot being from IE7?
ahh, missed teh existing comment on this… sorry
I will never ever use this application, but I think it likely points to Ebay focusing future development in a single “known” browser environment due to IE’s random adherence to standards. This way they can tell their members to “Get the Ebay edition of fireFox” and be able to predict a stable user experience.
This is clearly the future. All web2.0 featur^Wcompanies from today onwards will be releasing “Firefox Editions.” I will not be satisfied until I have 50GB of co-branded firefox editions on my computer, each with their own cookies, cache and memory leaks.
Firefox and Ebay, eh — I could actually use this one, thanks for the announcement.
I would hope open source advocates see this is a great thing– an attempt to get more people to use an open source, standards based browser.
This isn’t about revenue (although revenue allows Mozilla to build a better browser and web experience for 110 million people). This is about getting more people (large companies included) to have a stake in web standards.
Also, the ebay companion isn’t for everyone. But for the tens of millions of people who use ebay, this is a great way to make their web experience better. Shouldn’t we be happy about that?
I think I’ll stick with my standard Firefox.
http://thefunbu...5/ebay-firefox/
Does anyone else find it interesting that TC used Internet Explorer (IE) to do this screen shot?!?
I think this could be really good for firefox if ebay promotes it on their website. Think of all the non-tech savy people that probably use IE and buy and sell stuff on ebay. If they see something called an “ebay browser” they could download it start using it without any idea that they are using firefox and not IE.
Sell out or not, this could be a good move for firefox.
“Whilst Mozilla is more than entitled to partner and provide such a service, open source purists may see the deal as Mozilla selling out.”
Duncan, Open Source purists will undoubtedly understand that one of the primary advantages of Open Source is that individuals and organizations _can_ take the code use it to provide their users with a better or different experience. That Mozilla helps make that happen for Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Joga.com, Kodak, AllPeers, and others isn’t a sell out, it’s a sell in – bringing more players into the Open Source community and growing the installed base for OSS.
How is an Open Source organization promoting the use of Open Source technologies and growing the Open Source Software user base not a good (and pure) thing? What Open Source purists have been telling you that this is selling out?
- A
Congrats to the team for launching this. This plugin has an interesting history, that I won’t go in nauseating detail here, but I was involved in iteration number 2, back in late 2005 when it was called the “eBay Toolbar for Firefox.” I heard later that my code served as a good prototype for Glaxstar (developers of the thing) who came in and applied their C++ ninja Mozilla skillz to built it for real.
Note that although this is hosted on eBay UK, it will work with US, Germany, and France too.
I’m glad that the team that took this over from me went with the “Sidebar” UI instead of the Toolbar. I’m toolbar-weary, as I suspect many other users are too.
Alan Lewis
eBay Product Manager, San Dimas
And of course the partnership works both ways as other companies see an opportunity to reach Firefox’s growing user base.
As another example, 20th Century Fox released today a The Simpsons Movie Firefox theme: http://mozillal...-firefox-theme/
not a bad idea. ebay can co-opt more of the user’s desktop; mozilla gets more converts from the eBay crowd who probably have no idea wtf firefox is all about.
in the same vein, ebay should probably do a private-labeled version of somebody’s email (most likely Yahoo’s, since they already have a partnership). ebay could significantly improve / cut down on spam & phishing if they had better knowledge of both sender & recipient emails.
(full disclosure: while working at PayPal a few years back, i tried pitching an internal ebay skunkworks project to build/buy/partner an “ebay-branded email” solution, as a way to both reduce phishing and increase transactions. didn’t get any exec interest however… c’est la vie.)
this is the way which Firefox rule the internet browsers
nXqd
Hello,
thanks for your entry. I have written something about it on my website under : http://blog.sin...x-ebay-edition/