The Gadget Blog » browsers

Mozilla Exec: Use Bing, not Google

Rico Mossesgeld — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:27:56 +0000

The whole “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” speech by Google CEO Eric Schmidt continues to have effects. Most recently it pushed Mozilla executive Asa Dotzler to tell Firefox users to ditch Google for Bing, praising the latter for having “a better privacy policy”.

This is big, because Mozilla and Google have had a historically strong relationship. Google has been the default search engine on Mozilla’s Firefox for many years now, and the browser has enjoyed exposure via Google’s push to attract converters from Internet Explorer—at least right until something called Chrome came around. In fact, the majority of Mozilla’s income for last year (around 97%) came from payments from Google and other big websites to be included into Firefox’s search engines by default.

In any case, what do you think of Schmidt’s “admission”? Personally, you can never fault a CEO for being honest, especially when he’s professed a willingness to follow the laws of the countries he operates in—like the Patriot Act in the US.

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How Would You Change Mozilla Firefox?

Rico Mossesgeld — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:45:03 +0000

By popularizing tabbed browsing, and allowing functionality extensions via add-ons, it’s easy to see why only Mozilla Firefox legitimately threatens Internet Explorer’s stranglehold on the browser market.

Firefox 3 on Windows 7

Yet Firefox’s developers have never made the browser more memory-friendly. Understandably, keeping multiple windows with multiple tabs open is very demanding. But Mozilla should’ve realized that a long time, as people started keeping tabs (pun intended) on things, and opening multiple windows to ensure they wouldn’t miss out on apparently compelling content. Users installing myriad add-ons probably didn’t help too.

It’s good that the Firefox 3.5 preview shows support for open source video. But I hope Mozilla takes steps to make their flagship browser less demanding on computers. It can demand a performance rating system for adds-on and help users stay away from unnecessary yet demanding plug-ins (non web-designers would find no need for Firebug for example), while concentrating on making the code do more for less.

That’s how I’d change Mozilla Firefox. What about you?

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Could This be Why Google Chrome is Faster Than Other Browsers?

Rico Mossesgeld — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:00:43 +0000

Ok, first things first: personal tests have shown that Google’s new browser is faster than what’s currently available. Not bad for an app currently in early beta stage. But Douglas did have something to say about that:

Keep in mind that every new browser or version of browser always has a speed advantage… until they plug up the security holes. We see this in every browser comparison on a new release.

Makes sense. Let’s see what happens as Google fixes everything up—if they ever take Chrome off “Beta” status. Anyways, what do you think of the new browser? So far so good, but some bugs crop up from time to time. We still have to use Firefox to get anything in Facebook for instance.

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