Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Firefox

Mozilla and Google Concerned About Windows RT Not Supporting Chrome and Firefox

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:53:53 +0000

Windows RT (RT is for runtime) will be a version of the Windows operating system for ARM device like tablet computers with a touch screen interface will only run software available through the Windows Store or included in Windows RT. Google and Mozilla are not happy with this because they believe that they will be locked out. Mozilla said that Microsoft is preventing them from bringing a competitive version of Firefox to Windows RT. Other browsers will not get the same access to the same operating system abilities that IE10 gets. Google has also given their opinion on the issue in the statement below:

We share the concerns Mozilla has raised regarding the Windows 8 environment restricting user choice and innovation. We’ve always welcomed innovation in the browser space across all platforms and strongly believe that having great competitors makes us all work harder. In the end, consumers and developers benefit the most from robust competition.

According to Mozilla spokesman Asa Dotzler:

First, Microsoft has a browser that runs in Classic mode on Windows ARM. They are not allowing us that same access to run our browser on Classic. Second, Microsoft has a browser that runs in Metro mode on Windows ARM that has access to rich APIs that they are denying to third-party Metro browsers on Windows ARM. So, we are denied the ability to deliver any browser on Classic, and we are denied the ability to build a competitive browser on Metro.

Google and Apple have both allowed other browsers on Android and iOS. Firefox and Opera Mobile are among the browsers available for Android. Opera Mini is on iOS devices, but they do not have their own browser engine so it uses Opera’s servers to render websites.

Google Points Out Firefox Is A Partner, Not A Competitor

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 03:02:46 +0000

Google and Mozilla have renewed their search partnership. Google will end up paying Mozilla about $300 million per year to be the default search engine for the Firefox web browser. This seems odd because Google’s own web browser, Google Chrome, is growing at a rapid pace. CrunchFund partner, MG Siegler, wrote a blog post speculating that the reason why Google is funding a competitor is because of antitrust issues. However, Chrome engineer Peter Kasting said that “Google is funding a partner.”

“People never seem to understand why Google builds Chrome no matter how many times I try to pound it into their heads,” stated Kasting says. “It’s very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible.”

“It’s completely irrelevant to this goal whether Chrome actually gains tons of users or whether instead the web advances because the other browser vendors step up their game and produce far better browsers. Either way the web gets better. Job done,” he added.

The way Google sees it is that Google is not concerned about competition with Chrome. By funding Mozilla, they are helping keep Firefox alive. “Firefox is an important product because it can be a different product with different design decisions and serve different users well.”

Regardless, I like Google’s style. Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer. No matter how you spin the story, the end goal is to have more people use your own products over everybody else’s.

[ReadWriteWeb]

Google Will Be Paying Mozilla About $300 Million PER YEAR For The Search Deal

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:29:10 +0000

Google and Mozilla have struck a search deal for another three years. Google will be paying a little bit under $300 million to renew the deal. This is a huge jump from a previous arrangement that Google had with Mozilla. Google had to outbid other companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! for the search deal. The $900 million agreement is the minimum revenue guarantee for delivering search queries that will be garnered by consumers using Firefox.

Microsoft was pushing heavily for the deal because they are spending a lot of money to grow Bing’s market share. Although Microsoft still has the dominant market share with the Internet Explorer browser, Google is quickly catching up with their Chrome browser.

[AllThingsD]

Rough Times Ahead For Firefox As Google Deal Expires

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 07:29:40 +0000

Mozilla Firefox has been rapidly losing market share ever since Google released a browser called Chrome. Mozilla has also lost a lot of their enterprise customers. On top of that, Google’s contact with Mozilla is expiring. Google supplied Mozilla with 84% of their revenue.

Firefox’s market share plunged from 25% to 22% and Chrome rose from under 5% to over 18% in the last two years. Firefox has been accelerating the development of their browser and has been neglecting their enterprise customers lately.

Mozilla’s biggest source of income has been their search deal with Google. That deal expired in November 2011. However Mozilla has partnerships with a number of search providers that differ by market. It is unconfirmed whether Mozilla is renewing their deal with Google, but they said that “We believe that search providers will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future.”

In 2010, Mozilla made $123 million revenue and 84% of it came directly from Google. If Google does not renew, then Mozilla will instantly see $100 million in revenue drop. When Google signed their three year partnership with Mozilla in 2008, Google Chrome was still nothing more than just a project.

More details to follow once we find out whether Google renews or not.

[ZDNet]

Firefox 8 Available For Download Today, Officially Launching In Two Days

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:53:44 +0000

Mozilla is officially launching Firefox 8 on November 8th. Mozilla uploaded the final version to the web a couple of days earlier and gHacks spotted the files on Mozilla’s FTP servers. Firefox 8 has launched six weeks after Firefox 7. The new version of Firefox has Twitter embedded in the search bar and has an improved tabs system. There is support for HTML5 context menus as well. You can download Firefox 8 for Mac here and PC here.

Mozilla Launches Firefox 5.0 Beta

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 21 May 2011 18:25:23 +0000

Mozilla has updated their beta channel to include Firefox 5.0 beta. It’s only been about 2 months since Firefox 4 was available for download. Firefox 5.0 Beta is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Firefox 5.0 Beta has performance and stability enhancements.

Other specs include CSS animation support, Firefox development channel switching, improved canvas, improved JavaScript, improved memory, and improved networking performance. HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL standards have been improved. Firefox 5.0 Beta allows people to quickly switch between Aurora, Beta, and Stable channels from the About menu of Firefox.

Aurora is a new release channel that was launched by Mozilla traced by Google Chrome’s Canary “nightly builds.”

[CNET]

Firefox 4 Hit 100 Million Downloads Within One Month

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:03:31 +0000

Mozilla released Firefox 4 about a month ago and they hit 100 million downloads within one month. The milestone was revealed by the Firefox download stats ticker. Now Firefox 4 has a 7.94% browser market according to StatCounter. Internet Explorer 8.0 has 29.99%, Firefox 3.6 has 24.43%, and Chrome 10 has 15.35%. [TechCrunch]

Firefox 4 Available For Download

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:19:34 +0000

If you want to get your hands on the newest version of Firefox, you can download it now from their FTP servers. It currently is not available from the Firefox homepage. Some of the new features in Firefox 4 include hardware acceleration, HTML5/CSS3/WebGL standards, built-in Sync, and Panorama workspace management. You can download it from these links:
- Windows
- Mac OS X
- Linux

[Download Squad]

Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Candidate

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:16:44 +0000

Mozilla has released Mozilla Firefox 4 Release Candidate for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Firefox 4 has exited the beta cycle and is available in over 70 languages. Firefox 4 users will be automatically updated to this version. Over 70% of the Firefox Add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 4 too. You can download Firefox 4 Release Candidate here: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/RC/. [Mozilla Blog]

No RSS Button In Firefox 4? [RANT]

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 07:04:47 +0000

Dave Winer is an Internet pioneer. He helped paved the way for XML-RPC, RSS, OPML, and the MetaWeblog API. His blog Scripting News is one of the oldest weblogs in the world as it established in 1997. Apparently in the next major release of Firefox, they are removing the “RSS” button from the address bar. Winer said that “this is an unnecessary step backward” and he wants subscribing to websites to get easier, not harder. I must say that I agree with Winer here. When I watch my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. use their computers, they are completely oblivious about what RSS is. There needs to be some sort of middle-ground between RSS-savvy people like myself and the average computer user.

I am completely dependent on RSS to find out what the most important news of the day is. By removing the RSS button as a whole, that means that a lot of people will have no idea how useful the feeds are. Personally what I would like to see is the RSS button in the address bar and when you click on it, it suggests that you subscribe to the feed in Google Reader, Netvibes.com, etc. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.