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Firefox Lead Now Working For Google
zmarties writes "In a very
low key announcement on his blog, Ben Goodger, lead developer for
Firefox, has announce that effective from a couple of weeks ago, he has become a Google employee. In practice his day to day job won't change that much, in that he will still lead Firefox through its forthcoming releases, but with Google paying his wages, we can be sure that new and interesting overlap between the Mozilla Foundation's browsers and Google's services are sure to develop."
Google toolbar like... https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/morei nfo.php?application=firefox&version=0.9&os=Windows &category=Search%20Tools&numpg=10&id=33
So the more FireFox users there are, the more Google users there are. I don't see anything mysterious about this move by Google. It's really in their financial interest, and not just because of the PR.
Because, while it may be good news to geeks, these are news announcements in a business sense. This is operational news which happens to enthrall geeks.
Since Google is first and foremost an Advertisement company, the news which will primarily drive their stock price will revolve around advertisement rates and demand, as well as the customary profit margins, revenues and such.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
So this means the Google will get the features it wants and to hell with everyone else, including standards compliance which seems to be taken a back seat these days.
I've never done so before, but this comment prompted me to run the basic main Google page through the w3c validator; the results were suprising. It's such a simple page; why not take the (minimal!) time necessary to code proper HTML?! Yikes. I didn't expect that level of sloppiness.
(Yes, my personal page validates just fine, thanks (though some subpages may not, given the age of a lot of the code, and the multiple generations of sites the content pages have churned through... After I graduate and pass the Bar, maybe I'll have time to go back and fix them...)
geek. lawyer.
I think you have an overly pessimistic view of human nature. I only do what I desire to do, but does my desire make it selfish? If I desire to help the poor, is that selfish? If it is, then calling something "selfish" is empty.
Even allowing that Google may have a monetary incentive to hire a chief Mozilla developer, I don't see what the problem is. At this point, Google needs an alternative browser to keep Microsoft in check. Supporters of Free Software also desire that IE marketshare should drop, and that more open alternatives (such as FireFox) should take the slack. The interests of a "selfish" corporation and Free Software hippies are aligned.
There's no guarantee that Google won't turn "evil" in the future. But let's judge them on things they have done, rather than what they might do.
Please note that I am not totally pro-Google. I have issues with their acquiescence to censorship of totalitarian regimes. But this action doesn't bother me, and I don't see why it should.
Why are you scared? This is free software. If Google tries to subvert the aim of FireFox, users can just fork it and take the development in a different direction. Open software is held together by the community behind it. If you try to act counter to that community, the community, and thus the software, will leave you behind. The worst that happens is that a developer is lost to the interests of a particular corporation and no longer works on the main branch of FireFox. But that seems unlikely to me, as Google knows trying to subvert FireFox to be GoogleFox or whatever would be counterproductive. All they really want, I imagine, is an alternative to IE so that users can choose Google without it being integrated like MSN Search is in IE.
This is an example of an interesting trend.
Companies are starting to hire people who make a name for themselves while working on open source projects. This makes sense on several levels.
The developer has proven themselves in an environment where capability is obvious, transparent, and peer reviewed. Try getting that out of a resume. They are hiring a known.
The company gets to use that person's *fame*/name as a marketing tool.
The developer is probably more willing to put in the extra hours because they must enjoy coding to spend so much spare time doing it.
This helps the open source movement a well. If new developers get out and try to earn a name, they'll probably start putting more effort if they think their code might get them a good job. They might take the peer review more seriously.
as well, I'll keep dreaming...
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Firefox is already too intertwined with Google.
To remove Google as the default search engine in the search bar you have to manually delete the files, whereas adding engines is integrated.
And to remove Google as the engine that is used when you use the "Search Web for" context menu option you have change some config file that is not easy to find. I've searched through the Firefox directories(install and profiles) for occurences of "google," and there are many occurences, but I could not find something that looked like it would be it. I can not find information on how to do this from the "Mozilla KnowledgeBase," although I don't deny that it may exist. The help files are of course totally useless.
Why this assumption that no one would use anything but Google for searching? I my opinion Alltheweb is a far superior search engine.
I'm not suggesting this has anything to do with Google pushing for these features. Saying merely what I said.
Type about:config in the url to bring up the config then in the filter field type search. That will list the relevant config settings I think. I had trouble finding any good explaination for all the settings in the config. I wish they had made an little info button or alt hover text text for each setting.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)