There are a couple of things I like about Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome browsers that Apple just doesn’t do with Safari. Updates.
Safari just hit 6.x, while Firefox turned to version 19, and Chrome is already at version 24. I’d like to see Safari updated more frequently and automatically like Firefox and Chrome. On a related note, I don’t see how Mozilla and Firefox can remain anything but a niche player on PCs, smart phones, and tablets.
We Live In Desperate Times
The latest Firefox for Mac and Windows comes with a built-in PDF viewer, a few more nods to HTML 5. Mozilla has already conceded that open source doesn’t always win the race.
How so? Adoption of H.264 video; a proprietary standard which replaced Flash as the web’s de factor video standard.
Regardless, it’s far too little and too late for Mozilla. They’re on the downhill slide toward oblivion, or, at best, a niche player with a footnote to history.
How so? How many browsers does the world need? The WebKit web page rendering engine totally dominates the non-Windows world, which is increasingly becoming irrelevant.
Apple uses WebKit in Safari. Google uses WebKit in Chrome. Even lowly Opera dumped their web engine and moved toward WebKit. That leaves Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Firefox as the odd men out in the mobile world, completely dominated by WebKit, Google, and Apple.
The future is WebKit. The past is Mozilla. Mozilla is becoming increasingly desperate to remain relevant. Google’s Chrome browser on both Mac and Windows tops Firefox in usage. Now we hear that Firefox OS will show up on smart phones in the not too distant future.
Why? Because the world needs another smart phone operating system and platform?
Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone are not enough? What can Firefox OS bring to the table that isn’t already on the table? More apps? Nope. Speed? Nope. Better security? Nope. Lower price? Nope. What’s the point of differentiation other than a clearly attractive and recognizable logo?
To me, Firefox OS stacks up as the beginning of the end for Mozilla, a desperate move designed to maintain relevance in a market place that is quickly passing it by. Firefox OS does not disrupt the market with a better product. It merely adds to the clutter and cruft of a long list of also-rans.
Mozilla’s geeky fan boys may applaud Firefox OS, and look forward to every minute iteration of Firefox (version 19? Really?) no matter how small, or late to the game, but the mobile world is moving on a very fast track, and Mozilla doesn’t have a dog in the race.
About Kate MacKenzie
Firefox rocks.
Expansive extension support.
Kerberos SSO authentication support.
It is faster on my Android OS phone than Chrome.
Flash is separate, as I disable Flash most of the day.
Safari and Chrome don’t play well with some my web pages and form data.
Firefox is available for my Mac, PC, and Linux (Intel and PPC) boxes, Chrome is not. However, Midori, a WebKit browser is available for my PPC Linux installs.
And updates are a pain for corporate users; Firefox offers an alternative FF browser for corporate types. Yeah!
Just wait to see the Firefox, Ubuntu and Tizen OSes on smartphones in 2013 and 2014, that may shake up browser wars too.
Me thinks Mozilla’s Firefox is a dying breed. It holds everything but the kitchen sink, and works more like Microsoft Word than Bean. The geeky set of Mac users probably love Firefox for the extensions, but the masses, especially on mobile devices, seem to shun Firefox in favor of WebKit browsers. The market has spoken. Mozilla may hang onto the dream for a few years more, but a laundry list of features that few people want or use, aside from the usual tech and corporate suspects, means Firefox is headed for the footnote of tech history.