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The Growing Open-vs.-Proprietary Rift Between Google and Mozilla

Although Microsoft continues to beat the hype drums about its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser, the fact is that Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome--both open source browsers--are doing most of the innovating in the browser arena. Google and Mozilla are favoring some very different strategies with their browsers, though, and the long-term results of those differences could be meaningful. Among other things, Mozilla appears to be embracing more of a pure stance toward web standards than Google is, and Google is, questionably, leaning more toward a browser strategy that favors native code and proprietary plug-ins.

Cade Metz at The Register quotes Mozilla's vice president of products, Jay Sullivan, as saying that Mozilla has no intent to bundle Firefox with Adobe Flash, as Google has said it will do with Chrome. Instead, Mozilla will pursue web standards, including HTML5. Sullivan tells The Register:

"These native apps are just little black boxes in a webpage. That's not something we're pursuing. We really believe in HTML, and this is where we want to focus."

This could shape up to be a big difference between Firefox and Chrome in the future, and it's hard to predict what may happen. Folks in the open source community may applaud Mozilla's tendency to embrace open standards, but consider the fact that about 80 percent of the video on the Web is Flash. Could Chrome, by embracing proprietary standards, end up being simpler to use and more compatible with online content than Firefox is?

Mozilla built its substantial market share for Firefox, which sits at over 40 percent share in some parts of the world, on openness. History is littered with companies that built success around proprietary standards, though.

One possible future for Mozilla, with Firefox, might be to fork it into multiple versions. There could be one purely open version, and another that leans in the direction of proprietary standards, as is true with Google Chrome. If Google and Mozilla continue to offer the best browsers but don't have comparable stances toward proprietary plug-ins, don't be surprised to see such forks. 

by Grant on Jun. 25, 2010

Or, like it is now, with it not shipping installed (security reasons) but easily added the first time you hit a page that needs it.

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by an anonymous user on Jun. 26, 2010

Putting the words "innovating" & "browser arena" in the same sentence while leaving out Opera is simply preposterous.

Have a quick look here http://operawiki.info/OperaInnovations while making sure to doublecheck the year above each one.

Opera has always been a big supporter of open standards.

Now that it caught up in the native js execution department with Carakan there's only native video performance left to be completed and it will prevail again as the greatest browser in the world.

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by Demetri on Jun. 27, 2010

When to stand on principle, that that principle might guide the future direction of design in ways that truly benefit the common grass roots citizen, rather than caving in to foisted, incumbent, advo-greed's baited bells and whistles, time and time again. Come on people. Get behind free and open standards.

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by anita schwarz on Jun. 30, 2010

i am for free and open standards.

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