Wednesday Grok: Google is about to kill Firefox
- 07 December, 2011 10:31
- Comments 3
When was the last time you even noticed which browser you used, and frankly why would you care? They all will pretty much get you from 01000001 to 01000010 on the Web as quick as you click.
It matters more if you manage your own nerd farm. If so, you will be familiar with the trouble involved getting your nerdlingers to care about how your shiny new website works on Internet Explorer. For you, Internet Explorer is the biggest browser in town, but for them it's a pig of a platform. Instead, the code monkeys all want to give it up for Mozilla's Firefox.
Now it seems Google may be about to break its infatuation with the Love and Sunshine browser. It appears increasingly likely that Google has pulled the plug on a licensing deal with Mozilla that will cost the open source browser about $100 million of its $123 million annual revenue.
According to the Business Insider, "The Mozilla Org is funded almost entirely by a toolbar deal with Google. The little Google search window you see at the top right corner of your Firefox browser is a paid product placement: For the past several years, Google has paid Mozilla something on the order of $1 per copy to have that window there. Last year, that Google search window accounted for 84 per cent of Mozilla's $123 million of revenue, or about $100 million. The Google-Mozilla search deal ended in November. There has been no update about whether it has been renegotiated."
On the one hand, welcome to the world of real things, Mozilla. And on the other hand.... This all has somewhat of an eerily familiar feel about it, from Grok's perspective. The Valley's new princes are behaving more like Microsoft during its gazillionaire moment every day, and the word "Antitrust" is just itching to jump off the page. But of course, this is nothing of the sort surely, since there's nothing wrong with Google turning off the drip. After all, it aspires to replace Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the dominant browser with its own Chrome, and it recently bumped Firefox into second place through perfectly normal competition.
But somewhere in that part of the cerebral memory chip that Grok long ago blasted into obsolescence, a little bell is ringing in alarm — not about browser-die-back as Grok prefers to use RockMelt which is the Greatest. Browser. Ever. Instead, all that tiny little voice wants to talk about is corporate behaviour and market power. And as Wikipedia reminds us, Joe Klein's 1998 prosecution of Microsoft under the Sherman Antitrust Act revolved around bundling and browsers. "Bundling them together [Windows and Internet Explorer] is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer."
After a soap opera lasting three years, Microsoft finally settled with the government in 2001. Skip forward down the time tunnel a decade. Grok's sense is that bundling browsing with a monopolistic position in search feels just a little bit...evil, more so when it’s achieved by a brutal assassination. The missing piece of course is the behavior of Google's developers and their treatment of rival platforms. That is what brought Microsoft undone 10 years ago. It's a topic that may warrant further investigation.
Not everyone accepts anarchy's browser is finished
PCWorld's, Katherine Noyes offers three reasons why she thinks it's too soon for a Firefox requiem; (1) it's history of innovation, (2) a strong developer community with a strong sense of ownership, or as the author puts it – it’s “driven by users”, and finally (3) no evidence of weakness in the product improvement pipeline. OK, technically you might argue that's only two reasons since one and three are basically the same.
Andrew Birmingham is the CEO of Silicon Gully Investments. He currently jumps between Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and RockMelt (Go RockMelt!) Follow him on Twitter @ag_birmingham
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
-
How to implement next-generation storage infrastructure for Big Data
-
Pfizer's Future Depends on IT Transformation
-
Pfizer's Future Depends on IT Transformation
-
Pfizer's Future Depends on IT Transformation
-
Apple aims iPads at High Schools
-
EMC 15-Minute Guide to Smarter Backup Transform your future
Backup and recovery has become fundamental part of business and an essential element of information management. Information is useless to customers, employees, or business partners can't access it when it is needed. Availability and integrity of information, of the lack of, can directly impact revenues and profits - as well as company reputations. Read more. -
HTML5 and security on the new web
There are lots of changes happening to the key technologies that power the web. The new version of HTML, the dominant web language, offers impressive enhancements for rich web applications. But as HTML5 comes into greater use we’ll see new security issues arise. It’s typical for a new technology to have defects and pitfalls. And although the standard is still being defined, it's already being implemented. So how does HTML5 stand up to security scrutiny? -
Seven Tips for Securing Mobile Workers
Seven Tips for Securing Mobile Workers is intended to offer practical guidance on dealing with one of the fastest growing threats to the security of sensitive and confidential information.
Get exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis. 
Comments
Joseph
This is spin to make it look like Mozilla is in dire straits. The "Business Insider " source you quote is a well-known Mozilla-basher, just like the ZDNet fool who started this whole campaign a few days ago, and who judging from the contents of his articles probably draws an extra paycheck from Microsoft.
It has been reported for more than a day that Mozilla and Google both have stated that they are currently in negotiations and yet your article title says "Google is about to kill Firefox". Bad.
Dan
So Opera has reliably been paid for its insignificant marketshare for *years*, but Google is going to walk away from 25-30% of internet traffic? LOL, who wrote this article, a mentally disabled chimpanzee high on weed?
Joe
Yes, Dan, I believe that is correct. Think about this - search is a huge business. Microsoft and Yahoo have been trying to get a bigger piece of that pie for years. How much do you think they would pay to replace Google in the upper right-hand corner of Firefox? A lot. It can only benefit Firefox to place that space on the open market. If nothing else, Google will have to pay more for it to make sure it doesn't go to the competition.
Post new comment