Kettle to Pot: I am catching up!

Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.

A spate of security flaws and updates, culminating in version 1.0.2 yesterday, call that contention in question. Microsoft would have been hauled over the coals if it had been Internet Explorer, but people are willing to cut Firefox a lot of slack, because, um.. because it is not Microsoft.

The spate of vulnerabilities and the updates bring into question the assumption by many that Firefox is more secure than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, one of the reasons many experts and analysts have given for Firefox's rapid climb from 0 to about 6 percent of the usages hare in the United States.

Every browser will have security flaws, it is just that none of them had market shares large enough for anyone to care. Now that Firefox is growing rapidly, it's flaws are getting visibility. To be fair to Firefox, IE has done this emergency patch thing a lot more, so Mitchell Baker could still be right:

“There is nothing that will be perfect,” said Mitchell Baker, president and chief lizard wrangler of the Mozilla Foundation, during a panel discussion at PC Forum in Scottsdale Arizona. (PC Forum is owned by CNET Networks, publisher of ZDNet UK.)
Still, Firefox, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, won't harbour nearly as many security flaws as those that have Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and increasing popularity won't change that, Mitchell predicted.

PS: (weasels out of controversy by stating that) I still like tabbed browsing though. And the plugins are great.