As you may have read recently Google have renewed their agreement with Mozilla to include Google as the default search in the browser for the next three years. Google probably paid this out of their petty cash tin, but as far as Mozilla are concerned, it’s no small deal, representing a significant 85% of their profit.
I’m sure it’s also not escaped anyone’s attention that Google have just released their Chrome browser to the market. The timing of these two things triggered a thought in my head. With Firefox steadily gaining market share over Internet Explorer, you can’t help but wonder what the browser market place might look like in 3 years time with Chrome added in to the mix. How will it be viewed if Google takes a significant share of the browser market and then chooses not to renew the contract with Mozilla again in 2011? Could they kill Firefox? Perhaps google have little or no option but to renew it, after all, they wouldn’t want to see Yahoo or Microsoft as the default search. But, I can’t quite see Mozzilla signing a similar agreement with Microsoft going down too well with the open source community.
I love Firefox; the web developer toolbar and firebug plugins are essential tools for any developer. However, if Chrome changes all that (which it easily could in three years), is Firefox still an attractive option? It’s horribly slow, it consumes memory like there’s no tomorrow, it seems to be getting progressively worse with each new release and, if it defaulted to using Live search (is that even the name of it? Microsoft, your branding sucks) I think I’d like it a lot less.
What do you think?
Personally, I find it difficult not to love Google, they’re doing some great things at the moment… as I said to Mark this morning “they’re clever bastards”, but at what point do you draw the line? At what point do we all start rooting for Microsoft?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Oh no! The thought of a time coming where we all ‘root for Microsoft’ makes me feel ill! I Do you like Chrome? Personally, I used it for a week and a few things kept annoying me (whilst, admittedly a few things were cool) and I went back to Firefox. I did wonder – the same as you – if Chrome will mean Google stop supporting FF. I guess it depends on how the world accept Chrome. Google probably don’t want to lose the support of open source developers who love FF as we make them so much money using their YouTube API etc. But they’ll prob use their ‘petty cash’ (like that!) to make Chrome so good they’ll win us all over anyway.
“It’s 2012 and the World as we know it is owned and controlled by Google and Tesco…”
Lx