In a recent interview with derStandard.at Mozilla's Chris Blizzard talks about the rising competition by Google Chrome, the evolution of the web platform and the prospects for WebM. He also promises that Firefox 4 will be "one generation ahead" of other browsers in relation to Javascript speed.
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To be honest, I think you're reacting impulsively and expecting Firefox developers to do the same.
They stood firm on H.264 which might have been one of the deciding factors in Google arranging WebM for HTML5 video. As a result, the future looks better than you claim for online video. (For sites that keep Flash for DRM, the only thing that comes to mind is letting them learn what it means to shun rabid mac-heads. Requiring Flash for DRM is like a lesser version of requiring Silverlight for DRM.)
As mentioned, Google doesn't even control 80% of global search traffic and, really, Firefox would have to cripple their efforts to compete in their areas of strength to be able to throw any significant amount of effort into in this area they know nothing about.
Facebook IS trying to control online identities, but the Firefox guys are doing what they can to help the competition with experiments like "Account Manager" which chip away at the advantages of centralized ID... especially when paired with stuff like the up-and-coming "OpenID + OAuth + WebFinger" stack. (In this use case, WebFinger hides the counter-intuitive OpenID URL behind an email-style identifier as everyone's grown used to)
Yes, Google is trying to become an ad monopsony, but again, all Firefox can really do there is to become the best platform for extensions like NoScript and AdBlock.
As for talking about "plugins and websites", the plugins side of things CAN be helped by better Javascript engines. The Firefox guys have actually demonstrated pure-Javascript DSPs, Darkroom image filtering, and other CPU-bound operations using WebGL statically-typed variables and special builds of Gecko which provide an API for getting raw bytestream data from HTML5 audio tags... as well as experimental JS multi-touch APIs. That makes plugins like Flash and Native Client less necessary.
Take a look at http://hacks.mozilla.org/ if you want to read more.
Edited 2010-08-19 03:32 UTC
Member since:2010-05-14
These are real issues that are facing the internet today and the foreseeable future. Also, this have more to do with the organization's management than the developers.
I don't know what Mozilla should do about Google but Firefox isn't even remotely addressing the situation. Especially since they're getting paid to keep them as the default search. (By the way my search statistics come from Net Applications: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qpr...)
I agree that their leverage of Firefox has helped with the video codec issue but not really the runtime (flash player) issue. Even then I believe there's so much more they could do if they weren't still focused on the browser wars.
I'm not saying the Firefox team is at fault here this is about the Mozilla Foundation's effort for making a better internet.
Member since:2010-05-14
@Elv13
I think your referring to "Account Manager". While I'm happy mozilla takes the threat seriously enought to do something about it, what about the 77% of internet users that don't use Firefox? This will only help those users if competing vendors adopt their idea.
When will Mozilla be able to focus on other important non-browser related internet threats? What could they realistically do with Firefox to address these threats? How much of a priority should Firefox be for them at this point?
@iwod
You must have accidentally glossed over the word "global" in my post. In any case it's well over half of internet searches; the greatest source of internet traffic.
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2010-05-14
I think mozilla at this point has been pretty aimless. They seem to think they are still in a browser war like Netscape vs Internet Explorer but now the browser isn't as important today.
Adobe controls which devices can watch the majority of online video now.
Google controls over 80% of global internet traffic.
Facebook is starting trying to control the sharing of online identities.
Both Google and Facebook are gathering sharing private data about their users to advertisers. Google's ad network has about 65% share of the overall ad serving market.
What can Firefox do to combat those threats to the internet? I mean we're not talking about browsers here we're talking about Plugins and Websites.