Why Firefox's Future Lies In Google's Hands

Barence writes "Firefox has just turned five, and it now accounts for 25% of the global market, according to figures from Net Applications. Its success has forced rivals to raise their game, and the past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly. Google is the default homepage when Firefox first opens, and the default search engine when users type something into the 'awesome bar.' The deal, which runs until 2011, was worth $66 million to Mozilla in 2007, accounting for 88% of the foundation's revenues that year (the last year for which it had published accounts). But now that Google is a competitor as well as a partner, is it really wise for Mozilla to be so dependent on Google?"

Comments

Lone Wolf

[sopssa]

Mozilla is actually alone in this. Even Opera (while also getting revenue from Google) does lots of its business with other devices like Wii, Mobile Phones, and other non-pc devices. Hell, I was visiting a hotel which had one of those tv's with hotel interfaces. One day it suddenly booted itself for update and when booting up, there was Opera logo on the start.

So only Mozilla is dependent on others.

Re:Lone Wolf

[richlv]

opera has a surprisingly large market share on various embedded devices (as you mentioned) and in included on very large share of mobile devices.

what i found funny in the summary - "past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly".

if anything, firefox has mighe have been closing the feature gap with opera, which had absolute majority of the features first.

disclaimer - opera user for many years here.

Re:Lone Wolf

[sznupi]

Opera is the number one browser (overall, ahead of IE) in Ukraine (and supposedly Belarus, though it's hard to get reliable stats about that country...), in Q2 2010 it should be no.1 in Russia. Also, in a lot of countries of Central Europe, in all those new EU members, it has quite respectable share of between 5 and 10%. In some of them even Opera Mini (j2me) is ahead of Safari.

I guess it's also about many people from those areas not visiting webpages generating stats at which you look.

Re:Lone Wolf

[atfrase]

You need to realize that most of the Firefox community is under 20 years old.

[citation needed]

"Under 30" I *might* give you as an out-of-the-blue ballpark figure, although still totally unsubstantiated; "under 20" is just setting up a straw man to justify the rest of your rant. No wonder you posted AC.

But I understand why you wanted to gloss over that age group of Firefox users -- we remember when Opera cost money. In 2000 they released a free Opera, but it was ad-supported, which I for one would never tolerate in a web browser. It wasn't until 2005 that the free Opera was ad-free, at which point Firefox was already very well established.

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)

Re:Lone Wolf

[FlyingBishop]

Eh? Anyone 20-25 had Netscape navigator in their middle school computer lab, and consequently remembers when IE was crap, and the transition where IE became king of the hill on up to the present.

I switched to Firefox... 2004 maybe? I don't know. Even then I think Firefox had more mindshare than Opera. It's not mindless fanboyism.

Re:Lone Wolf

[Hal_Porter]

non-pc devices.

I've noticed that too. My mobile phone is always complaining about how black people don't know their place, asking who that 'mulatto' is whenever Obama is on CNN and saying that women should be back home cooking for the husbands.

Oh well, it's an old model I guess.

Re:Lone Wolf

[BrokenHalo]

Holy assumption Batman. Citation please.

Indeed. Many Firefox users are old Mozilla users. In fact I used to maintain a build of Mozilla as a browser-only program (i.e. without the mail and html authoring stuff) for several years including the period when Firefox was still known as Phoenix. It took some time before I became satisfied that Firefox offered a useful (or usable) alternative.

Re:Lone Wolf

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I don't think it's a generational thing. The reality is that most Firefox users are those who migrated from IE; mostly likely IE6 and IE7, both woefully stagnant examples of a browser. Firefox was a big step up and most Firefox users have seen little reason to change, believing that Firefox represents the pinnacle of web browser innovation. And to be fair, up to 18 months ago, there weren't a lot of core features on other browsers compelling enough to get Firefox users to switch.

It's true that Firefox has typically been playing catch up throughout its lifespan. However, in the last 18 months, it has been seriously lagging behind other browsers (IE aside). Process separation, general speed, stability, memory fragmentation, etc. Their stance on self signed certs is also, frankly, backward; putting the brakes on a more secure web for each and every one of their users. And while extensions are all well and good, I personally find that Mozilla have been offloading much needed innovations in their UI and feature-set to third party add-ons (Tab-Mix Plus anyone?); Bare-bones Firefox leaves a lot to be desired. Now we're not likely to see Firefox 4.0 until the end of this year, if that.

I personally think Firefox is going to end up losing a substantial fraction of its userbase over the coming year as competitors--especially Google--keep continually releasing new features and widgets. Killer extensions are not going to save it if the core feature set falls behind.

Then again, there's always the Adblock factor.

Re:Lone Wolf

[dwiget001]

I beg to differ. I turned 48 last year, worked in the computer software field since 1987.

"Most of" the people I associate with, 30s and 40s, use Firefox.

Myself, I was using Mosaic, from the "Internet in a Box" days, circa 1994. Prior to that, from 1987 to 1994, my online connectivity was through CompuServe.

Not long after that, roughly 1995, I started using Netscape. I continued using it until about version 4.7, at which time I tried out Opera. I still found Netscape 4.7 to be more then sufficient for what I needed at the time. I continued using Netscape up until Firefox ("Phoenix" at the time, beta), and have used it as my browser ever since.

I only use IE when stupid fricken sites "require" or "recommend" it. But, thankfully, those sites are becoming fewer and fewer, to the benefit of us all.

As an aside: I tried Netscape versions after 4.7, but always went back to 4.7. When 6 came out, I was appalled at the bloat and slowness. So much so, that in 2002, I was at Internet World, visited the AOL booth, talked to one of their so-called techs about 6.0. His solution was to give me a copy of 7. I tried it, and promptly threw it in the circular file, piece of crap. I always have had top-of-the-line systems at home, due to the nature of my day job, so the system resources were never the problem with Netscape > 4.7, it was just that Netscape > 4.7, were pieces of crap.

Re:Lone Wolf

[AndGodSed]

+1 for lynx, absolutely killer for testing a website from remote servers via ssh if you are to lazy to telnet to :80 and call up the page source from there...

Re:Lone Wolf

[tjwhaynes]

It's true that Firefox has typically been playing catch up throughout its lifespan. However, in the last 18 months, it has been seriously lagging behind other browsers (IE aside). Process separation, general speed, stability, memory fragmentation, etc.

This meme about Firefox memory fragmentation just won't die! Firefox 3.0.x you could still claim that Firefox was sucking down more and more memory as pages got visited. With 3.5.x, you can kiss that problem pretty much goodbye - Firefox returns more memory back to the system than any competing browser.

And Firefox isn't the largest memory consumer here either - that prize probably goes to Chrome, simply because one-tab-per-process is inevitably a heavier memory requirement.

Firefox stability is still a minor issue. However, it's stable enough that I get about 1 crash every three days, which is well within my tolerance level (14 extensions, 11 plugins). Tools like abrt provide a decent mechanism for informing the necessary bug trackers.

Speed-wise, Firefox devs know they are in a race with Chrome. 3.6.x looks like it will be faster than 3.5.x by a fair margin. Project Electrolysis stands to improve matters further. I'm all for competition - keeps everyone working on the issue.

Give me a plugin sandbox so that Flash trapping doesn't take out the page and I'll be content.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Re:Lone Wolf

[travisco_nabisco]

In 2000 they released a free Opera, but it was ad-supported, which I for one would never tolerate in a web browser.

You do realize that Firefox is ad-supported as well. There is a reason Google it the default search provider, and why the Google toolbar is distributed with Firefox. You may not like a visible ad, but you certainly have bought into an ad supported browser.

Re:Lone Wolf

[JordanL]

I found the claim that Opera was "catching up" in the summary spurious at best. Many of the features that Firefox has were developed first by the Opera team, including tabs.

Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[elrous0]

This issue has been discussed on /. many times before. Mozilla needs a sponsor. Their revenues are the only thing that lets them stand out from most of the rest of the OSS crowd as a truly professional piece of software. Lose those revenues and it will eventually deteriorate into yet another lame piece of poorly-documented, poorly-maintained piece of abandonware on SourceForge. So, what options does Mozilla have? Well, they could stay with Google or they could defect to Yahoo or Bing. But MS is even more of a browser competitor than Google. And Yahoo isn't in a financial position to be sponsoring anyone right now. Sure, you could maybe come up with some other more complicated solutions, but $66 million worth? Not many companies, or even groups of companies, have that kind of money to throw around for a little advertisement. There just aren't a lot of alternatives.

So, SHOULD they break away from Google? Probably. CAN they break away from them (and maintain their quality)? Probably not. So, like a bad marriage of convenience, Mozilla is probably stuck with Google until the day (possibly) comes when Google themselves decide to break it off.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their revenues are the only thing that lets them stand out from most of the rest of the OSS crowd as a truly professional piece of software. Lose those revenues and it will eventually deteriorate into yet another lame piece of poorly-documented, poorly-maintained piece of abandonware on SourceForge.

No! It's F/OSS - all the Mozilla developers can go and offer paid support, write books, do some TV reality shows, and they'll make plenty of money! That's the whole business model of F/OSS, isn't it?

Or is that Mozilla is a perfect example of how the F/OSS business model isn't viable unless a project has a sugar-daddy like the big Linux distros?

I think we're starting to see the F/OSS model isn't sustainable.

Time will tell.

My captcha is 'discord' - irony?

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[jmyers]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years. Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers and a decent amount of overhead and never spend a dime of principal and never need additional sponsorship and strings that go with it.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[ZorbaTHut]

And the fact that the source is, you know, open. I feel that's kind of a major point.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Sir_Lewk]

FUD.

That's the whole business model of F/OSS, isn't it?

No, that is only one of many possible F/OSS business models. Other common F/OSS business models include dual licensing and paid support. Examples include Redhat, formerly Trolltech (aquired by Nokia), and many others.

isn't viable unless a project has a sugar-daddy like the big Linux distros?

Of the big linux distrobutions, only one (ubuntu) comes to mind as relying on a so called "sugar daddy". Debian is entirely community run, and Fedora is community run, with support from Redhat (an extremely sucessful and profitable F/OSS company).

Time will tell.

Time has already shown the concept to be quite workable.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[confused one]

I know you're trying to be sarcastic and/or funny; but, there's a history lesson, sitting right there waiting for you... It goes by the name of Netscape.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[grasshoppa]

I would argue that it is not a "truly professional piece of software". How do I manage it on a network? If I wanted to lock down the color settings, how might I do that? How about updating the software, and plugins? How is that achieved in a corporate environment?

Unless you meant for the home environment, in which case sure, it does have that market.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to lock down the color settings, here are the steps:

1) Before deploying, go to the configuration file.
2) Find a hot curling iron
3) Shove it up your ass

There's no fucking reason you need to lock down the color settings.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Sir_Lewk]

Well, Opera seems to be doing decently, selling mobile browsers or whatever they do (I don't use Opera browsers, I'm somewhat unfamilar with their products), but in this case I agree with you. No business model can save you if your product is crap people won't buy.

Right now Mozilla's product is users, which they are selling to google. I believe trying to make their browser the product would be a terrible move, regardless of how they do it.

All of this said, calling F/OSS business models bust because one particular company wouldn't be able to do it is particularly stupid. Business models are not "one size fits all".

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[recoiledsnake]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years. Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers and a decent amount of overhead and never spend a dime of principal and never need additional sponsorship and strings that go with it.

The money goes to salaries of the executives. A cool half million dollars or more for the CEO to be exact. I wonder how productive should they be to justify such salaries? That money can easily go to hire 5 top notch C++ coders for an entire year to hunt down memory leaks and make the code more efficient. The only reason to give such money should be as a bonus if-and-only-if the executives figure out how to reduce their dependence on Google, it's been 5 years and nothing's being done about it.

Disclaimer: I've seen my university students scrounge their last savings money to pay for the Firefox ad in the NYT 4 years ago, so maybe that makes me sick to the stomach to see Mozilla wasting so much money on administration.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[BZ]

> Where does the money go?

See http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-and-2008/ and the documents linked from it for the 2008 data.

> Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers

As of end of 2008, there were about 200 people being paid out of the $66 million, according to the link above. That would include programmers, QA, UI designers, marketing, administration, IT staff.

That's somewhat smaller than the number of people Opera, say, employs, at least last time I checked.

For comparison, by the way, FY 2008 revenues for Opera were about $87 million according to http://www.opera.com/media/finance/2009/2Q09.pdf

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[businessnerd]

So, SHOULD they break away from Google? Probably. CAN they break away from them (and maintain their quality)? Probably not. So, like a bad marriage of convenience, Mozilla is probably stuck with Google until the day (possibly) comes when Google themselves decide to break it off.

Seriously? Mozilla gets $66M from Google every year and you think they should break away from them? I think you let the article irrationally scare you. The issue is not that they have a deal with Google, it's that they may have all of their eggs in one basket. Google is Mozilla's cash cow, and yes, if Google were to decide to change their deal or pull the plug all together, then Mozilla is out $66M in opportunity costs. But until that day comes, Mozilla should milk that cash cow for all its worth, yet be prepared for that day by diversifying their revenue now. It's not about being partners or not being partners with Google, it's about being partners with JUST Google or having multiple partners. The response from Mozilla was that, yes, they do have other partners and other deals, so Google is not their only source of revenue. Partners listed included eBay, Amazon and Canonical. They even stated that they are currently working on more deals. But the concern is still relevent because Google still makes up a vast majority of the revenue.

The article is a little dumb because it is asking a question that has already been asked and answered by Mozilla. No company's business model should rely solely on one single partner and Mozilla already knows that. Mozilla is still dependant on Google, but they are working on changing that.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[BZ]

In summary, for 2008 and based on http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2008-audited-financial-statement.pdf , something like $17 million taxes, $12 million set aside for future (e.g. if the Google contract doesn't get renewed, say). About $50 million spent, from a total revenue of $80 million or so. That would presumably include salaries+benefits for those 200-ish people, whatever hardware is needed for the developers, the testing infrastructure (see http://atlee.ca/blog/2009/11/02/what-happens-when-you-push/ for example), infrastructure for the various Mozilla web sites (addons.mozilla.org, www.mozilla.org, update servers, etc). Oh, and office space lease, presumably.

How much do you figure it should take to run an organization with about 200 competent (so not necessarily cheap) staff and a fair amount of necessary infrastructure for a year?

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Gerald]

No! It's F/OSS - all the Mozilla developers can go and offer paid support, write books, do some TV reality shows, and they'll make plenty of money! That's the whole business model of F/OSS, isn't it?

Not if you're Snort, Asterisk, or Wireshark.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[icebraining]

How about updating the software, and plugins? How is that achieved in a corporate environment?

Well, Debian can do it: Iceweasel (the Debian version of Firefox) is updated via the repositories (and you can setup your own for internal use) and so are some of it's extensions and plugins.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[geek]

How productive must the executives be to justify the salaries? Seeing as it was them who negotiated the 66 million to begin with I would say there were quite productive indeed.

I'll never understand people like you that constantly whine about other peoples salaries. 1) it isn't any of your business how much they make, 2) if they didn't deserve it the board wouldn't be giving it, 3) if they grab more than they earn the company dies and the code base is free so no real loss.

Honestly, are people like you so petty that you must constantly whine that you don't make as much as someone else? Be happy they are making money, they will continue to do so and we'll all benefit as a result. If you really must insist on this socialist idea of spreading the wealth then by all means, move to Cuba and see how productive they are there.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Anonymous Coward]

When organizations ask for public donations, executive salaries become an issue of public concern. Donors deserve to know how their money is being spent, and they may be hesitant to continue their donations if the money is poorly manged.

As you mentioned, the Mozilla CEO salary would be justified if he negotiated the $66mil agreement. The public has a right to debate whether this was money well spent. It's not about jealousy--it's about efficiency.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[IICV]

1) it isn't any of your business how much they make

Seriously, this sort of attitude is part of what makes America so divided. It isn't any of my business how much someone else makes? Then how am I supposed to make a rational decision about my line of work? All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B. I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.

2) if they didn't deserve it the board wouldn't be giving it

You know why they deserve it? Because CEO 1 is on the board of company 2, so he says that CEO 2 should have a ridiculous salary. CEO 2 is on the board of company 1, so he says that CEO 1 should have a ridiculous salary.

3) if they grab more than they earn the company dies and the code base is free so no real loss

No real loss, except for the opportunity cost of all that extra money going into improving the CEO's bankroll instead of into improving the company.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[recoiledsnake]

How productive must the executives be to justify the salaries? Seeing as it was them who negotiated the 66 million to begin with I would say there were quite productive indeed.

I'll never understand people like you that constantly whine about other peoples salaries. 1) it isn't any of your business how much they make, 2) if they didn't deserve it the board wouldn't be giving it, 3) if they grab more than they earn the company dies and the code base is free so no real loss.

Honestly, are people like you so petty that you must constantly whine that you don't make as much as someone else? Be happy they are making money, they will continue to do so and we'll all benefit as a result. If you really must insist on this socialist idea of spreading the wealth then by all means, move to Cuba and see how productive they are there.

Why are you attempting to make this into a capitalism vs. socialism strawman? The issue at hand is the CEO of a for-profit organization backed by a non-profit organization, and hence pays no taxes whatsoever on the $66 million some of which goes into obscene CEO profits. Meanwhile, countless F/OSS supporters are poring in their precious free time to develop, report bugs and develop extensions.

And it is my business how much they make or what Mozilla does with it's money, because that money comes from Google searches that people like me perform on Firefox. If me and other users of FF suddenly decide to switch to Bing on FF or to Chrome, it's Firefox that stops earning millions and fold up since Google pays per search. There are plenty of other competing browsers nowadays that are faster and leaner anyway. If some of that money that goes into executive pay was used in the previous years to make Firefox faster and leaner(notice the number of 'Firefox is bloated' complaints that pop up everytime in a FF story?) Firefox would stop losing users and revenue.

So if the executives start paying themselves $65 million a year because they signed on the agreement with Google, I should be happy for them for making money? And while I am not a fan of socialism, Cuba is a bad example. From the Wiki:

Cuba also has succeeded in reducing poverty and equalizing the distribution of wealth. According to the United Nation's Economic Commission for Latin America, the decile ratio (share of total income for the top 10 percent of wage earners divided by the bottom 10 percent) in Latin America was 45 to 1, while that of Cuba was only 4 to 1. Cuba's income distribution was more than 10 times more equal than the rest of Latin America in the 1980s. Before the Revolution, Cuba's decile ratio was 65 to 1.[4]

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[recoiledsnake]

Did the CEO help broker deals that generated the $66 million, or did the coders? If the executives were able to talk Google into a deal that brings in $66mil, surely they are worth $.5mil

Welcome to reality, where paying executives and paying coders is not an either/or proposition.

What's up with people drumming up this 'fact'? Opera (while sitting all way the across in the Land of the Midnight Sun') was able to broker a deal with Google for pay-per-search. And their CEO gets paid the equivalent of 26K in 2010!

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=11669499&capId=532001&previousCapId=532001&previousTitle=OPERA%20SOFTWARE%20ASA

And what did the Mozilla CEOs do in the meantime apart from inking search deals? Thunderbird is a failure, Fennec is too little, too late. There's absolutely nothing of significance fro Mozilla in 5 years apart from Firefox which the community made a success of, not as much Mozilla which just piggy backed on the popularity to sign on search deals. Bugzilla is the only success to a limited extent. They dropped the ball on LIGHTNING and SUNBIRD too which could've easily supplanted Exchange by now if the funds were properly utilized, but still the executive keep getting paid exorbitant salaries for underperforming.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[pclminion]

I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.

You do realize that you CAN see this information, don't you? Go to, for instance, Google finance. Type in a ticker symbol. Scroll down to the "Officers and directors" section. Click on somebody's name. See that "Bio and compensation" link? Click that.

This crap is all required to be reported by the SEC for exactly the reason you are conjuring up here. Chill out. As for anybody who isn't an officer or director of a publicly traded corporation, no, you do NOT have any business knowing that person's compensation level. If you think otherwise, why don't you start the ball rolling by posting your full name and salary in response to this comment?

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[dveditz]

The issue at hand is the CEO of a for-profit organization backed by a non-profit organization, and hence pays no taxes whatsoever on the $66 million some of which goes into obscene CEO profits.

The Mozilla Corporation pays taxes on everything it earns just like every other taxable corporation. It is not allowed to share money back with the Foundation or risk costing the Foundation its non-profit status.

ehh .. feature gap?

[Jesus_Corpse]

Its success has forced rivals to raise their game, and the past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly.

When you look at it with a bird's eye view, I think FireFox has closed the gap, feature-wise.
True, add-ons never became really successful in Opera, but it was mostly complete already before firefox gained popularity

Choices? Really?

[stokessd]

Seriously, who should be the default search provider, payments or not? If I've got a choice, I'm heading to google, not because of some sort of "I love google" sort of thing, but because they have the best search. If firefox defaults to "Bing!" or "aunt martha's internet search and lemon pies", it won't matter as long as I can set it to Google.

It's the ability to choose that I want to protect, not what the default is.

It would be annoying if they switched to a different default, because that would be one more customization step every time I install Firefox.

Sheldon

Bias Posting

[Anonymous Coward]

"[Firefox] the past two years have seen ... Opera close the features gap significantly." Are we re-writing documented history? Opera is the longest running GUI Web browser, first to use tabs, sessions, customizable skins, ACID 2 & 3 compliant, download management panel, widget support, and a whole host of other features Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have taken and continue to take from Opera ASA. I suppose when your non-Opera Web browser lacks the security track record Opera possesses, delusive jealousy becomes a factor.

Privacy, and conflicts of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always worried that Firefox is making privacy too low a focus. Many of the privacy features I'd like would to see in Firefox would reduce the amount of data Google and other search engines gather about my WWW habits.

For as long as the Mozilla Foundation is financially dependent on Google, I presume that the Mozilla Foundation is betraying its users privacy in return for Google's money.

Being free software usually prevents projects from betraying their users, but this is a bizare case where those controls haven't worked.

(I know I can solve *my* problem by installing various plugins or changing browsers, but I'm not just looking for a quick fix for me, I'd like the privacy of my family and friends to be protected too.)

Re:What ?

[bunratty]

Oh, you mean like automatic software updating and automatic crash reporting, for example?

Or..

[Thyamine]

They can use that to help push them to be better. They need the money more than they can worry about Google being a competitor. I will say that I used Firefox for many years, but when Chrome came out for OS X I switched. It's faster, and cleaner (cleaner being my relative term for how it 'feels'). I still use Firefox for web development and testing because of the addons, but Firefox has grown sluggish lately. As many have said before, they need to strip it back down, and let a lot of their extras be added in by the users if they really want it. I'm doing without several of my preferred plugins (AdBlock especially) just because Chrome is that much snappier feeling.

Firefox Going Away Soon

[BitHive]

Firefox used to be the lightweight alternative. Now when everyone else is focusing on speed and usability, Firefox will take longer to start than any other browser, and do all sorts of things that you probably didn't have in mind when you clicked the Firefox icon (Please wait while we update your extensions....Oops, I couldn't update this extension. Please restart Firefox because I updated this other one. Do you want me to reopen all your old tabs? What about next time? Oh, please update your Firefox! No? Please tell us why! Here, fill out this survey web page which is embedded in this 320x240 pixel window for no reason, and tell us what we can do to improve Firefox.

Give me a break. I only ever use it for Firebug anymore and even that's becoming more rare as the tools for Safari and Chrome improve. Firefox will be irrelevant within 3 years, and still wondering where they went wrong.

Re:Firefox Going Away Soon

[TeXMaster]

Give me a break. I only ever use it for Firebug anymore and even that's becoming more rare as the tools for Safari and Chrome improve. Firefox will be irrelevant within 3 years, and still wondering where they went wrong.

Opera's Dragonfly is definitely on par with FF Firebug, if you're still looking for an alternative.

Re:Yahoo is the only logical choice.

[sznupi]

Yahoo is just a user of MS search technology.

Re:What ?

[rubicelli]

Firefox had one critical feature a year before Opera did: It was free. For years, Opera had been "that browser you had to pay for (or get advertising with)". That kind of stigma stays with you.

Re:Choices? Really?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Seriously, who should be the default search provider, payments or not? If I've got a choice, I'm heading to google, not because of some sort of "I love google" sort of thing, but because they have the best search. If firefox defaults to "Bing!" or "aunt martha's internet search and lemon pies", it won't matter as long as I can set it to Google.

It's the ability to choose that I want to protect, not what the default is.

It would be annoying if they switched to a different default, because that would be one more customization step every time I install Firefox.

Sheldon

It does matter. Sure, you can control your own settings, but the aggregate behavior of the masses who leave their settings at default does have an impact.

1. If the search engine profits from its users, then the default search engine makes a great deal of difference. If traffic goes down, the search engine has less income, and therefore less capital to re-invest into innovation.
2. If the search engine decides to skew its search results, a vast majority of users who don't change their default might not ever see whatever it is that the default search engine doesn't want them to see. Imagine if Google censored search engine results according to the whim of some bad government.
3. If you want to collaborate with anyone else, you'll have to take into account when they do a search, their results page will be different from yours, since you're not using the default.
4. Anytime you're using a computer that is not your own, you're going to have to deal with the default search engine, which isn't your preferred one. Sure, you can just browse to google and search from their homepage, but it's an extra step.

Is there a reason for Google to shaft Mozilla?

[qazwart]

I don't see any reason why Google would try to harm Firefox. Granted Google has a browser called Chrome, but what Google really wants is for people to use Google as their search engine. With Firefox the most popular engine after IE (and Microsoft wouldn't do anything, but make Bing IE's default search engine), I don't see why Google wouldn't simply extend their deal with FIrefox. They certainly wouldn't want Firefox to move over to Yahoo or Bing.

The only thing I can see is Google would use their leverage over Firefox to get Firefox to switch from the Gecko to WebKit. That would give Google a unified JavaScript/Web browser engine to run their applications against.

It's not usually a good thing to have another entity control your future like this, but Firefox really doesn't have a choice now.

Re:Is there a reason for Google to shaft Mozilla?

[tokul]

The only thing I can see is Google would use their leverage over Firefox to get Firefox to switch from the Gecko to WebKit. That would give Google a unified JavaScript/Web browser engine to run their applications against.

1. using same rendering library in all browsers is dangerous. Bigger user base is vulnerable to same exploits.
2. Presto, Trident, Tasman and other browsers. If you replace Gecko with Webkit, you won't get unified rendering engine.

Closing the gap on... Opera?!

[Mex]

I'm sorry, but other than the huge advantage that is all the plugins available for Firefox, Opera has always been lightyears ahead of any other browser's features.
http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations
Tabbed browsing and Zooming into a webpage are only the two that seem most important and were introduced by Opera, but they have always been incredibly innovative, much more so than Firefox. Yet there's not a big developer following, probably because it is not open source like FF, that's Opera's weakest part I guess, but as a browser, I love it.

It's like this..

[mweather]

Google just wants to be the default search engine. So long as Firefox has significant marketshare, Google will sponsor them. If Google drops their sponsorship, Microsoft or Yahoo or any number or regional search engines will step in.