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Chrome Complicates Mozilla/Google Love-In
Barence writes "Mozilla CEO John Lilly has admitted the Firefox maker's relationship with Google has become 'more complicated' since the company launched its own browser. Mozilla is dependent on Google for the vast majority of its revenue and has previously worked closely with the search king's engineers on the development of Firefox. But that relationship appears to have cooled since Google released Chrome in the summer. 'We have a fine and reasonable relationship, but I'd be lying if I said that things weren't more complicated than they used to be.'"
I tried Chrome, and while I find it's a refreshing innovation in GUI design for a browser, it has a *long* way to go to match Firefox's features.
Also, it's not yet-cross platform, and from what I understand, it'll take some doing before there's even a Mac version.
There's no browser for me that comes close to Firefox in terms of features. Many will argue that Opera does, and this may be true, but I find the interface a little too alien for my preference.
Also, there's the question of privacy, which Google has a poor track record on. Will Firefox users start to trust Google? I'm not so sure.
This space left intentionally blank.
I don't agree. I feel a majority of the Chrome users are former Firefox/Opera/Safari users. When a dominant minority group (Firefox) is fractured or segmented... it doesn't hurt Internet Explorer. In fact, it helps it.
----- Current Breakdown -----
Internet Explorer 71.11%
Mozilla Firefox 20.06%
Safari 6.62%
Opera 0.75%
Netscape 0.46%
Google Chrome 0.74%)
Other (0.24%)
----- Fun Numbers ----- (100% made up)
Internet Explorer 60%
Mozilla Firefox 15%
Safari 10%
Opera 1%
Netscape 1%
Google Chrome 12%
Other 1%
With the above made up numbers, I can still hear our CFO saying "see, we should focus on Internet Explorer... everyone else doesn't even have 20% share! And, that 'Firefox' thing is going DOWN! "
I'd love to see some information as to what browser current Chrome users transitioned away from.
Of course it complicates things. Perhaps this should serve as a wake-up call to the Mozilla folks, seeing at this is now makes the developer (after AOL and Apple) to, having initially showed strong support for Mozilla's projects, ultimately reject Gecko when the time came to make its own browser.
The only common thread between these three companies (among others) and their rejection of Gecko is Gecko itself: they've embraced a wide variety of other engines, they stand in opposition to Microsoft to varying degrees (including, in some cases, none at all), and the browsers they ultimately produced tend to follow many different paradigms and philosophies. Yet all of them agree, in the end, that Gecko was not going to get the job done. Something is very wrong with that picture, and it bothers me how the Mozilla team seems to take it so nonchalantly.
I say all of this as a Firefox fan who is nonetheless worried about the future of the engine that made standards-compliance important on the Web again. I have a few guesses as to what mistakes might have been made, but I don't claim to know for certain. What I do claim to know is that something needs to be done, even if the first step is just to figure out exactly what that is.
you seem to have forgotten that little "be bold" thing. It's always easier and usually better to implement first and ask questions later. Good ideas will be adopted by others, bad ideas won't have wasted everyone else's time in discussions which lead to nowhere.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Like adopting WebKit? If you had followed the conversations, you would have known that that wasn't up for discussion. And knowing the attitudes of most of the Firefox developers, the other radical features that Chrome has might never have gotten started either. And even if they would have wanted to help, it would still have essentially meant a browser redesign, for which their previous expertise may not have been ideal; maybe Google felt their developers were more up to the task. The 'if you want something done, do it yourself' argument. It's all very understandable, and I don't think Google deserves any flak over this.
Right because we all know that Apple doesn't kill third party apps on their iPhone. Wait, you say they've been caught doing that?
I know that's a different company, but the argument that they couldn't do it if they wanted to is specious. Yes they probably didn't put code into the browser to do it, but they could. Suggesting that they won't at some point do so requires a suspension of belief.
I mean it's not like this is a company that's been trying to engage in anticompetitive behavior. Increasingly so, I'd be surprised if they stop before the DoJ gets involved.
They actually can't do that. They've been skirting a very serious MS sized antitrust action for some time now and if they start engaging in that sort of activity they will end up on the wrong side of a DoJ action.
The feds have been rather generous in their investigative and regulatory efforts into Google's control of the online advertising market, if they start using that influence to overtly harm competitors that's definite cause for an antitrust action.
As the article title states, it IS complicated.
Yes having many browsers is good for the web, as it helps to keep it standards complaint. (All browsers generally follow the standards, as opposed to Internet Explorer).
But, there is the issue, that goes deeper, than just a Browser. Google was build using Open Source. Firefox was saved, by the Open Source 'movement'. Firefox is/was the very SYMBOL that showed Open Source does work and IS a viable alternative to evil Microsoft, and Google was there to help Firefox, knowing that it (google) too used the same software dev model. Now google comes out and delivers their OWN browser? This in effect is a DIRECT COMPETITIVE move AGAINST the interests of Firefox and Mozilla. Mozilla's only real product is Firefox.
Point being, when a company gets too large, they start to get massive pressure from their STOCK SHAREHOLDERS, which in my opinion, makes businesses extra cut throat, in order to continue to GROW PROFITS and the stock. Google, it appears WANTS CONTROL over the web, due to the fact, without a browser, Google is NOTHING. However, Firefox has done NOTHING to harm Google, and now Google slaps mozilla in the face with a product to DIRECTLY COMPETE with an Open Source Icon (firefox)?
This my friends, makes the beginning of the end of the Google Goodness and a new era into slowly, but surely, google becoming 'evil'.
You joke about it, but I would dearly love to see the projects merged somehow. When I started using the Chrome beta a few days after it was announced I started compiling a list in my head of features that would need to be added before I would be happy using it instead of firefox. Skins, about:config, adblocking, generic addons preferably similar in implementation to firefox so that existing ones can be converted... After a while contemplating the list, I realised that it would be a lot simpler just to say that I wanted firefox with the seperated thread handling.
I tried the Chrome experience last week and had a similar experience. While the browser is faster (always a good thing), there is a serious lack of plug-in support under Chrome.
I too use Adblock Plus, Foxmarks and NoScript and consider these to be important features in any browser. Currently, Chrome is a less mature browser where few if any developers are writing plug-in's to equal the breadth and depth of tools available for Firefox.
I also have this nagging doubt that Google will be openly supportive of features similar to Adblock and NoScript as Google's revenue stream comes from selling advertising space. The old saying "you don't defecate where you eat" makes me question just how far Google will go to support features that allow us to deny adware, scripts and tracking cookies.
Tisha Hayes
Your Firefox browsing history is already going into Google's database if you have either of the following two options turned on:
Tools - Options - Security - "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected attack site"
or
Tools - Options - Security - "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery"
I don't understand why folks are calling this "evil." I see the biggest difference from everything I have read, is that WebKit is better suited for low resource (memory, CPU, power) utilization than Gecko is. Given that the mobile computing is the next "fertile" ground for marketing and capitalization, releasing Chrome as a desktop equivalent of whatever Google plans to do in the mobile arena (maybe in Android) seems like a really "good" idea; particularly if Firefox isn't as ideal for specific environments and platforms they are targeting for their products.
.NET or Rails) alone were not up to par to bring the same functionality that a full executable would.
I get that people like Firefox, but I don't understand the mentality that Firefox has some fundamental right to exist and anyone who does anything differently, in competition or cooperation that leads to a decrease in adoption is "evil." Even if Google is being "evil" that is pretty objective, where the legal reality is that Google has a duty to its investors; a legal duty, and if Chromium gets them closer to meeting their goals, then as much as one might not like it, they are doing what is the "least evil" in the eyes of those whose pocketbooks are proping Google up, and the government who has decreed that public companies have this duty. What Google does not have, is a bona fide responsibility to do anything for or against an independent third party, no matter how novel or great anyone or group of people think that 3rd party is.
If Firefox really is as great as many seem to think it is, it should flourish in the open market. I mean, it is already free-as-in-beer which is pretty difficult to compete with.
I don't care what anyone says and I'm willing to deal with being modded down, but a larger part (that most are willing to admit) of what made IE the dominant browser today is that IE4 "was better" in user experience and provided a better platform for developers than Netscape 4.x-n did. I'm not saying Microsoft's underhanded tactics weren't a big part of it... but IE4, for as often as it is bemoanded for ActiveX, made a "good enough" platform for the time, to bring "fat binary applications" to the web/intranet when Javascript/HTML (before flash, before AJAX, before frameworks like
This drove a lot of places I've worked to *require* IE for internal applications, because cross-platform didn't matter because everyone was on PCs or could Citrix into a Terminal server if it was important enough for the few Mac departments.
It could easily be said "no, it was because IE was there and IT didn't want to install Netscape on all those computers", but I have to say, if it provided any functionality IE didn't, the cost would have been negligible if it made our employees more efficient.
If Firefox is better, it will survive whatever is trown at it, and if it can't, then the market has deturmined that it "shouldn't."
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Does anyone think the web per-se will still exist 25 years from now, much less 100? Clearly to some extent all the major players(Mozilla, Google, MS, Apple) want to push the web in a variety of directions. Can Mozilla give us a vision of what sort of Mozilla product we'd be using say 15 years from now to browse the "web"
That's not sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious. 15 years ago Mosaic had just been released. Today people can message each other online using a wireless network that didn't exist back then, on a tiny iPhone that's an order of magnitude more powerful than desktop computers from 1993. Can Mozilla really write a business plan that looks even 15 years into the future and tells what it's place will be?