Is Mozilla Behind a New Chromecast Competitor?

While the details are unclear at this point, it looks like Mozilla may have some role in delivering a competitor to Google's popular Chromecast dongle, based on the Firefox OS platform. Several sites have been reporting that Mozilla has been secretly developing the streaming device in conjunction with a partner. 

A Twitter post by a Mozilla developer evangelist helped fuel the headlines, but Recode and other sites are reporting that Mozilla is adamant that it is not working on the device directly, although a partner could be.

According to some reports, the unconfirmed dongle works similarly to Chromecast, and can also run some apps designed for Google’s Chrome OS-based streaming dongle.

As The Register notes:

"It's not hard to see why Mozilla could at least sanction the effort: the organization’s commitment to an open web makes a device that sends video from either HTML5 pages or phones running Firefox OS to larger displays nice-to-have."

Google's Chromecast, though, feeds users into Google's overall lucrative search/ad ecosystem. Mozilla doesn't have the same incentive if it is involved with producing a Chromecast competitor.

We'll probably hear official news of this dongle shortly. Here's the photo that was tweeted: