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Mozilla's 3 Big Bets To Keep the Web Open

Posted by Soulskill on from the mozilla-also-suffering-from-gambling-addiction dept.

GMGruman writes "Savio Rodrigues writes that Google's latest agreement with Mozilla will ironically fund three new areas of competition between Google and Mozilla — areas that users and open source advocates should cheer on as they will make the Web both better and more open. The alternative, he says, is more control by the likes of Google, Facebook, and Apple."

5 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. The "big" bets: by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since the summary didn't provide this, the allegedly large bets are:

    1. An alternative to Android
    2. An alternative to OpenID
    3. An App store

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:The "big" bets: by asa · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not quite as simple as that. A better bulleted list would be:

      1. An alternative to the proprietary mobile stacks which control the full vertical from hardware to app stores. An open Web stack based on real standards.
      2. An alternative to Facebook Connect, Sign in with Twitter, and Google Accounts. A web-wide ID system that doesn't depend on one particular provider.
      3. A set of standards for Web applications discovery, monitization, and installation and an implementation that will work across all platforms.

    2. Re:The "big" bets: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Try reading http://identity.mozilla.com/post/7669886219/how-browserid-differs-from-openid for the difference between BrowserID and OpenID.

      TLDR: OpenID is harder to integrate into the browser, and needed a third party for every login (meaning it just swapped Facebook, Twitter or Google with someone else that could potentially track you).

    3. Re:The "big" bets: by metrometro · · Score: 3, Informative

      The core innovation is that BrowserID does not require you to phone home to your certificate authority (say, Google) every time you want to look at a page. Instead, it passes certificates around in a way that allows the site (DonkeyPronz, or whatever) to check that the cert is valid, but does not reveal to Google (or Mozilla, or whoever is running the cert authorty) which of the many BrowserID users is opening the page. This is a fundamental difference.

  2. WSJ: $1 Billion Google Windfall for Mozilla by theodp · · Score: 5, Informative

    What Google and Mozilla declined to disclose, reports AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, is that Google will pay just under $300 million per year to be the default choice in Mozillla's Firefox browser, a huge jump from its previous arrangement, due to competing interest from both Yahoo and Microsoft. Sources said this total amount - just under $1 billion - was the minimum revenue guarantee for delivering search queries garnered from consumers using Firefox. Google's main rival in the bid, sources said, was Microsoft's Bing search service."