Disappointing: Mozilla Siding With Bogus EU Antitrust Action Against Microsoft

from the just-go-out-and-compete dept

Last month, it seemed silly that EU regulators were pursuing Microsoft for antitrust violations in the browser market for bundling IE. It was clear that some of the initial complaints had come from Opera -- an also-ran in the browser market. However, it seemed silly because there is vibrant and growing competition in the marketplace. Firefox has continued to grow its market share, and in the past few years we've seen new entrants in the browser market from Apple and Google -- both of whom have established small, but significant footholds.

So, it's especially disappointing to read that the Mozilla Foundation appears to be siding with the regulators, complaining about Microsoft's actions. Obviously, Mozilla is competing with Microsoft in this space, so at a first pass it may seem in their best interests to lobby the EU to punish Microsoft. But it's disingenuous to say the least. Mozilla got where it did because it competed effectively. It built a better, more secure browser that many people made the choice to support over IE. In fact, Firefox's chief architect, apparently unaware of what his "bosses" were cooking up, seems to have recently contradicted the Mozilla Foundation's new position, where he admitted that he couldn't see how anyone with a straight face could claim that Microsoft's ability to bundle created a monopoly, noting that Firefox's success in growing marketshare showed that making yourself "demonstrably better" worked. Oops.

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Is Firefox Missing The Point In Its Response To Google Chrome?

from the not-so-fast dept

Seth Godin thinks Firefox is missing the point by launching new features in response to Google Chrome. He says the problem now is that "when your friends switch to Firefox, your life doesn't get better." Firefox needs to provide people with an incentive to spread it, so that the more people use it, the better it gets for users (think of a social networking site -- you have a better experience if more of your friends join). He suggests new communication and collaboration features that only work if you have Firefox.

I think he's missing the point.

He ignores the Firefox community. The life of a Firefox user does improve as the user base grows. A more vibrant community means better add-ons, bug fixes, security patches, phishing reports, translations/dictionaries, etc. -- all members benefit. Mozilla is already providing the sort of incentive he describes. Sure, there may be ways to improve, but I don't think they're missing the point.

Plus, "only for Firefox users" isn't the Mozilla approach. Mozilla wants to improve the web for everyone -- not just Firefox users. Mozilla thinks your browser should be like your phone or your car; it shouldn't matter if your friends or co-workers are using the same product. You don't need to consider which phone carrier your friend uses before making a call, or which car your co-worker has before providing directions; you shouldn't have to think about what browser someone uses before communicating with them online. People don't need special browser-specific features in order to communicate browser-to-browser, that's what web services (or add-ons) are for. Those kinds of features would make life on the web more difficult for everyone if they were Firefox specific, and if they weren't, Google could just implement them in Chrome.

The community is one thing Firefox has that Chrome can't copy overnight.

If you read some responses to Chrome from people at Mozilla, it doesn't seem like they're missing the point. Competition in the browser market is validation of Mozilla's mission for Firefox, and Mozilla plans to compete by continuing to innovate and to involve the community. Seth Godin makes a great observation about giving people an incentive to spread your product -- "people will recommend something if adoption improves their lives" -- but he doesn't mention the ways in which Mozilla has already taken that to heart. How do you think Firefox became popular in the first place?

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Is The Google/Firefox Relationship A Conflict Of Interest?

from the trust-but-verify dept

CNET's Chris Soghoian raises some concerns about Google's close relationship with the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit that owns the Firefox trademark. He points out that the vast majority of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google, and notes a number of ways that Firefox is configured to use Google as the default for various online services. Soghoian is right that close scrutiny of these sorts of relationships is healthy. However, it's pretty hard to get too worked up about the specific problems he cites. First, he notes that Mozilla has chosen not to include a couple of ad- and cookie-blocking plugins with the default Firefox package. Soghoian thinks that's a sign of something fishy going on, since those products would deprive Google of revenue. But there are thousands of plugins out there, and all sorts of reasons they might have chosen to exclude any given one. Soghoian offers no evidence it was at Google's behest. But more to the point, even if it were Google's doing, I don't understand why that would be a bad thing. Google makes a profit by selling advertising and shares a significant share of those revenues with Mozilla, which Mozilla then spends on making Firefox better. That sounds like a win-win-win proposition to us. Finally, given Google's excellent track record of making ads actually useful, relevant, and non-intrusive, it's not at all clear that users even want Firefox to block its ads. As long as Mozilla doesn't try to stop users from installing ad-blocking plugins themselves, I don't see the problem.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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