Having launched the much-awaited version 1.0 of the Firefox browser on Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation is busy planning future enhancements to the open-source product, including the possibility of integrating it with a variety of desktop search tools. The Mozilla Foundation also wants to place Firefox in PCs through OEM deals with PC hardware vendors and to continue to sharpen the product's pop-up ad blocking technology.

These and other enhancements, such as graphics display improvements, will help Firefox to continue building the already considerable momentum it has generated so it can capture between 10% and 12% of the Web browser market by some point next year, said Chris Hofmann, the Mozilla Foundation's engineering director. "We believe there's room for a lot of growth for Firefox's market share and there's a number of things we need to do to continue on this growth curve," Hofmann said.

For the past several years, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) had held around 95% of the browser market, but this year it has been slowly but consistently losing ground, while Firefox has emerged as a fast-growing product, WebSideStory, a San Diego Web metrics company, reported last week. At the end of October, IE had a 92.9% market share, while Firefox had secured a 3% share through its preview versions, according to WebSideStory.

Regarding integration with desktop search tools, the idea would be to offer Firefox users a choice of third-party tools for searching information stored on their PCs, Hofmann said. "We see a lot of growth with the integration of searching Web sites and searching your desktop ... so we'll be looking at ways to try and integrate that search within the browser, to make more seamless how users go searching for information, whether on the Internet or their computer," Hofmann said.

Desktop search is one of the hottest areas in the search market currently, as users look for tools that let them find information on their PCs with the same ease and speed of Internet search engines. Thus, multiple high-profile vendors either provide or plan to provide tools for conducting desktop searches.

For example, Google recently introduced one such tool, while America Online and Yahoo have separately acknowledged they are developing their own wares. Microsoft for years has bundled hard-disk searching functionality with its Windows operating system, but the technology has been considered generally clunky and Microsoft is expected to offer an enhanced alternative in the near future. In the meantime, vendors such as X1 Technologies, Copernic Technologies and Blinkx already offer desktop search tools.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.