Mozilla’s announcement last week that they are mothballing their Metro-specific version of Firefox for Windows 8 is pretty much a non-event in my mind. Although people will try to read into it all kinds of things (just take a look at the comments), surely it’s just an example of good resource allocation based on data. The data said this particular implementation wasn’t being used. So instead they’ll focus their resources on other areas. Seems wise to me. If only more companies/product departments/teams did this!
However, that’s not to say the announcement isn’t interesting for other reasons. The main thing for me is it shows just how attached everyone still is to the term ‘Metro’ – including tech companies, and the tech blogs that cover them. Microsoft really did have a brand winner on their hands with that one – such a shame they had to lose it.
