Firefox is Open-Source and extensible, but what does it really mean? It means that if you have the skills, you can reuse our technologies and/build extensions to expand functionality. Who does that? On top of the existing (almost) 2000 add-ons, there are interesting and innovative ones. Here are two of them that have been recently announced in Europe:

EasyGate / EasyNeuf hardware

Neuf Telecom, a leading ISP in France has announced that they will be launching soon the Easy Gate device, a Linux box running Firefox for those who are not interested in purchasing (and maintaining) a full-fledge PC. Some pictures of the prototype are already available. Easy Gate (using English-sounding words is probably a way of making sound cool) will include a DSL modem (up to 8Mb/s) for roughly $50/mo (includes subscription to the service for Internet and phone). Easy Gate features a simplified UI which looks very GNOMEy to me. Mouse, keyboard and LCD screen are to be sold for an additional $130.;

NEuf's Easy Gate hardware

iGraal Firefox extension

iGraal is an extension that leverages the existing affiliate programs offered by e-commerce Websites in an innovative way. Instead of trying to send people to such Websites and get take all the referral fees in the process, iGraal shares them with the user. So when you buy stuff online using the iGraal extension, you get a rebate on many eShops listed by iGraal. What's nice is that the iGraal partners are listed in the UI along with the money you could save. At the end of the month, you receive a check (provided that you saved more than 30 EUR).

AllPeers extension

I'm not sure that AllPeers still needs to be introduced! The Drag'n Share add-ons offer transparent integration with BitTorrent technology in order to share easily files with your friends using peer-to-peer technology. AllPeers is a British company located in Prague, Czech Republic.

Other innovative products

There are other Firefox extensions that have been developed in Europe, such as the Wengo VOIP extension and the Yoono bookmarking extension, not including NVU, based on the Composer component of the Mozilla Suite. There are probably many more, but I can't list them from the top of my head...

All of these products are interesting in the sense that they are built on top of the Mozilla / Firefox technologies. Mozilla is creating new markets, combining open-source with Web standards, cross-platform support and our add-ons mechanism. When I think that a few months ago, there were only volunteers hacking Mozilla in Europe, there are no doubts that giant steps have been made since then!