Mozilla's 3 Big Bets To Keep the Web Open
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."
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."
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.