We and Mozilla are working together to make the web awesome
plus.google.comI would've thought this was obvious. Google didn't just pay $300 to stop Firefox from using Bing, although I'm sure that played a big role, too, but I believe the reason Mozilla got $300 million was because they knew how to negotiate the price up. I don't think Mozilla really wanted to change to Bing.
Also, Google is a lot better off having an ally in Mozilla. Not so much because they don't want Bing to get a lot of users, but because together with Mozilla they have over 50% of the browser market share, and since the whole total of that market share includes very modern browser versions(Chrome always on latest version, Firefox not too far behind with the old ones), Google and Mozilla can pretty much dictate where the web is going now. I wouldn't be surprised if for those $300 million they also got Mozilla to accept using Native Client in Firefox later on. I think this part of the partnership matters more than just stopping Bing from becoming the default search on Firefox.
Mozilla's decisions on what technologies to support and what to oppose are not influenced by our business arrangements.
Not officially, no, but I'm sure if google goes to mozilla and says, "hey, we think you guys should support technology X, it's really great" I'm sure you'd listen and probably get a good nudge from the higher ups that, "hey maybe we should listen to those google people".
We might prioritize things based on input from Google (we tend to listen to things Google's web properties have to say since they run some of the biggest websites on the planet). This is usually a collaboration between the technical folks at both organizations to drive things that are best for the web.
We're not going to implement things that we think are bad for the web just because Google says so. You can look around to see what Brendan Eich (CTO of Mozilla, a higher up by any definition) has to say about Dart and NaCl. Google's money doesn't buy our cooperation on these kinds of issues (and it's worth noting that we work with plenty of people who aren't paying us money, such as Facebook, the same way that we work with Google).
Think about who the higher ups at Mozilla are. Brendan Eich is CTO, for instance, and you can see exactly what he thinks about supporting NaCl right now if you look at his recent posts :)
I suggest you read any of the w3c/whatwg mailing lists where Mozilla and Google folk discuss issues.
I don't think you can accuse Mozilla of caving in to Google demands at all :)
Which, while annoying for you if you happen to want to push one of those things, is a fantastic thing for the Web. We all simply want to build a better web - and out of the disagreements, we get clarity how to do that.
You mean just like happened with WebSQL and Google's attempts to push back on the Do Not Track header?
That notion could not be more wrong.
> I wouldn't be surprised if for those $300 million they also got Mozilla to accept using Native Client in Firefox later on.
If you're suggesting that Mozilla would do something bad for the web for money, then I think you couldn't be more wrong. Mozilla is a nonprofit exactly for this reason.
(Worth noting that the for-profit Opera opposes Native Client too - it isn't just nonprofits that have values.)
Is that sarcasm? Native client is one of the best things that will ever happen to the web since jQuery made it possible to write cross-browser javascript.
Imagine how much easier it will be in the future when ever very intensive programs can be written, and run, on the web.
Native Client only works on x86 and x86_64. You can't run Native Client content on your ARM phone or your PowerPC game console. That is very bad for the web, the whole idea of which is that you can access it from anywhere, using anything.
There is some work to try to make it portable, but it is unclear how it will end up (how portable, how fast, how secure, etc.).
Partly because of this, NaCl is not standardized or even a proposed standard, which is another problem for the web.
I do admire the NaCl technology though - it's very neat. Although it's bad for the web, it is good for lots of other things.
"Native Client only works on x86 and x86_64. You can't run Native Client content on your ARM phone"
Not true: http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/reference/arm-overview
The point is that Native Client binaries are arch-specific. You only get the archs that you build for: If someone puts up a NaCl site with only x86, it won't work anywhere else. This is a horrible thing for the web.
Yes, you can build for more than one arch. But if you have x86 and x86_64, you are missing ARM. If you add ARM, you are missing PowerPC (consoles) and MIPS (some phones). If you add those, you are still missing new archs that will be invented later.
For this reason Google is working on PNaCl - but it has other issues.
You need to make it work for it. It's not a very good analogy because parts are portable, but good enough for me: I can recompile my C program for arm. Doesn't make the x86 binary run.
I agree that NaCl isn't the road forward, but I definitely don't agree that support for it is an indicator of good values.
In your original comment, were you referring to the fact that Opera also runs on money from deals with search providers, yet doesn't support proposals from them if they disagree?
Opera is funded by search deals, but I think I read that they make most of their money from carriers in return for installing Opera Mobile on phones. Not 100% sure though.
In any case, Opera has always been one of the biggest supporters of the open web, through working on standards, opposing things that are bad for the web, etc.
That future is better known as client/server, and it's a huge step backwards. There was only one client that worked at all, it was terrible, and you couldn't fix it. No, every time an author imposes fixed client behavior rather than writing publically addressible content which can be rendered and repurposed in many ways, the world-wide web dies a little more.
I seem to be somewhat dense today, do you mind explaining to me what harm will come if the next IDE to a language I use is implemented in native client and runs in a browser and wouldn't come if it was written in java and ran on my desktop? (and therefore was only available when my laptop was, etc) or for that matter the photoshop or some computer game.
My concern is for content increasingly being siloed within an app that only permits its use in ways encouraged by the author. An IDE is a decent counter-example, since nothing like it would have been feasible before js apps began displacing the web. But it's more and more unlikely that any app other than that IDE will be able to access your source code, simply because it's easier not to bother supporting a stable and documented API when the maintainer's favored client can be revved at a moment's notice.
"fixed client behavior"
What _isn't_ fixed client behavior on the web? Browsers don't just interpret HTML any which way that they want to.
Native client would lock the web into particular hardware platforms.
So it is in fact one of the worst things that could happen to the web.
How would NaCl lock the web into a particular hardware platform?
NaCl run on x86-32, ARM and x86-64.
Yes. Which means it does NOT run on PPC, or MIPS, or IA-32, or Sparc. Note that there are modern-ish web browsers available for at least PPC, MIPS, and Sparc.
More importantly, content using NaCl would not run on any new hardware platforms that might appear.
So if the web were to use NaCl to an appreciable extent, new platforms would be unable to get any traction in any context that relied on the web. We'd be stuck with ARM or X86 forever for any mobile devices we might have.
Maybe you think that's ok; I think that's a terrible idea; an attitude like that toward the web in the late 1990s would have meant that ARM phones that appeared in the late 2000s would not have been able to browse the web!
(Also, note that I said "hardware _platforms_", not what you asked above.)
PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway. X86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not. So it does make sense to target these platforms first. I don't buy that this is a step backwards. Rather, it is a step in the right direction: So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full speed - untangling the web from Javascript. It is about time.
> PPC, MIPS, and Sparc are dead platforms anyway
You say that because you're not the one actually using hardware built on those chips. And presumably you don't care whether people who _are_ can use the web. But some other people do care.
> X86 and ARM is where its currently at
Key word being "currently". That's fine, but we don't want to make the web _require_ this.
> So it does make sense to target these platforms first.
Sure, but with NaCl you _can't_ target other ones later. You'd have to recompile the code server-side to add any other platforms. This isn't the case with JavaScript, say, where all a new platform would have to do is write a jit for itself and existing content would just work.
PNaCl, if they ever get it working, might not have this particular problem, by the way. If that ever gets off the ground, I'd be happy to revisit this discussion.
> So we can run other languages in the browsers, at full > speed
And forever lock all computing in the world into the ARM and x86 architectures. No thanks.
Or are you talking about software that you only want to run this month and will never want to run again?
"I don't buy that this is a step backwards."
Moving from a hardware independent web to one where a full experience would be limited to a few "where its currently at" hardware platforms isn't a step backwards? Heck, while you're at it, why don't we just specify an iOS, Android, and Windows web only?
You're also, by the way, talking about the decline if not the death of a view-source web, a semantic web, and a hypermedia focused web, and probably some other things I'm missing.
By all means, feel free to write native client-server apps for any reason that pleases you, whether it's that you don't like JavaScript as a language or are working on something that truly demands native speed. Just don't advocate destroying the features that have made the web successful.
> 86 and ARM is where its currently at, like it or not.
The important word is currently. As the GP said, 10 years ago "archs where its currently at" would not include ARM, and the ARM success on phones and tablets would have been impossible, because they wouldn't have been able to run the web, if the web used Native Client!
10 years from now, we could have entirely new architectures, and if we lock the web into the currently popular ones, we might miss out on those.
s/300 ^[million]/300M
I think...
I work at Mozilla, and the atmosphere between us and Chrome is not the high-stakes cage match people would have it be. At a fundamental level there's only so much market share, but at an engineer-level, we're insulated from such corporate politics. It's a cooperative atmosphere, and we both succeed with each others' help and knowledge.
Google's browser efforts started with Gears. At the time browser development was stagnant an Google needed the technology to advance in order to improve their web applications and compete with the old desktop software model.
Chrome is an extension of that effort and has played a large part in driving adoption of new web technology.
But I don't buy the part about Google not being as interested in having users. Chrome is the operating system that runs the Google applications. They have increased their marketing spend this year by 69% to $4.9 billion dollars.
Google, marketing, something they never used to do and were known for not spending on. A lot of that marketing is for the chrome brand. The reason so many average PC users know about chrome is because of the market. They even hired Lady Gaga to do a Chrome ad, and I don't think they would go to the trouble of doing that if they were not interested in attracting users.
It is ok that Google want users for Chrome - nothing wrong with it. They have done so much to help users and the web with their investment in browser technology that there is no shame in marketing the product and wanting the world to use it.
Peter's drinking a bit too much of the Kool-Aid.
Chrome advances the web. It does this because it's damn good. It's forced others to be good. None of this has anything to do with the point being made in the OP he's responding to.
Everything between the user and the monetization mechanism (advertisement) is strategic to Google. To believe otherwise is to be delusional. It's like the people who thought they could partner with Microsoft in the 90s and it'd be good for them.
Some people would have a hard time surviving in the real world outside of Google's walls.
I can see why a guy on the Chrome UI team would dismiss a valid business strategy of hedging against the IE + Firefox user-base that uses the search bar and address bar for 100% of their searches (vs. going to http://www.google.com directly) ... having their default search engine switched on them.
To him, owning a share of the browser market is not really important to Google, in that way, because he has this image of himself and Google being the good guys and doing to no evil.
Someone drank the kool-aid.
My thoughts exactly. Paradoxically, being closer to the issue and company actually clouds your perception instead of enhancing it.
> * "It's very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible."*
This is actually a bit frustrating. There's a bunch of people writing sub-optimal web-pages; not understanding the features or the security; and then there's a bunch of browser engineers trying to keep up.
Security still needs huge amounts of research and energy to progress beyond the broken model (username and pass everywhere / single weak social media login for everything) to something that most users can cope with.
I sound like a luddite, but I miss the days when you could do a Google search for something and the first page would be people who knew a lot about that subject, and who'd written some great text about it, and given it a bit of markup.
Honestly, ideal web pages for me are those but with CSS.
A lot of the web now feels like it's been designed by people who grew up with Geocities and <blink> and <marquee>.
I'd note that browserid (browserid.org) solves the "single social login for everything". It also solves the "user and pass everywhere" in fact. It's pretty damn neat.
Unfortunately i'm not sure people will adopt it. It's only good for the user. It doesn't bring money.
Mozilla is putting a lot of resources; including some of their best coders, into advancing mobile. I don't see the same on Google's side. Am I wrong?
They have sponsored and released the only modern smartphone OS that isn't locked down to one company like iOS. They (through Android) are to Apple, what OpenOffice/LibreOffice is to MS Office. They are the reason Apple don't own smartphone. With Google/Android what would be the Apple competitor? Blackberry? OpenMoko?!
Maybe the only popular one, but certainly not the only one. In fact, only webOS is (was, I guess) locked to a single company. Windows Phone isn't open source, but there are at least four hardware manufacturers. Nokia's MeeGo is open source (and quite good on my Nokia N9). And, soon, webOS will be too. So, while Android is a more open mobile OS, it certainly isn't the only one.
In the context of this posting, I'm specifically talking about the mobile web.
Have you tried the Android browser in 3.2 or 4? It's pretty damn good....
Android?
Android's browser isn't nearly as good as Chrome or Firefox and only gets updated with the OS (which means never, for most phones).
This is why I'm hoping they will finally switch to Chrome in Android 5.0 or whatever version is announced at Google I/O (Android/Chrome event). And then they update that Chrome browser every 6 weeks, too. It's not like they couldn't. They can already push all their core apps to automatically update for Android 2.2+.
i dont think the chrome multiprocess model works well on mobiles yet. it needs more memory specifically if you start having a few tabs.
it needs more memory specifically if you start having a few tabs
- have you seen the specs of the latest high-end phones and tablets? 1GiB of RAM is the norm now
- the number of concurrent open tabs can be limited. It has already been done on Android and iOS (and might still be the case).
Starting with ICS it is Chrome.
And lots of users won't even get ICS. Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab 7", Nexus One, etc.
[citation needed]
According to this HTML5 compliance test, the ICS browser scores 230 (out of 450), while Chrome 15 desktop browser scores 342. Why would these browsers have such distant scores if they shared the same browser core? For comparison, the Firefox 8 desktop browser scores 314 and the Firefox 8 mobile browser scores 314.
There are a variety of options that are disabled on the mobile build to save memory and cpu. It's the same core, it just doesn't have all the bells and whistles enabled for a variety of reasons.
It's not Chrome. It's based on WebKit, like Chrome, yes. But it's not Chrome. (Easy way to check: note that the icon says "Browser", not "Chrome", and it isn't the Chrome icon.)
The name doesnt really prove much. Webkit really is a kit. The question is what features does it have and whn will it get others.
That core is called WebKit.
Android and iPhone are the only mobile platforms worth worrying about for the rather longterm goal of improving the web, both have good browsers.
So unlike Mozilla Google is not practically irrelevant on mobile platforms, why then should they invest more money?
I disagree that both have good browsers. What I'm worried about is the lack of emphasis that seems to be placed; Android browser is missing a lot of html5 features (according to caniuse.com it only supports 66% of current features in Android 4.0).
Mozilla, on the other hand, seems to be making mobile a priority with all of the work they are doing in WebAPI. Their browser is updating a lot faster than Android's, which I believe still only updates with OS upgrades.
OS upgrades that a lot of Android users don't get. If I want to get an up to date browser on my Nexus One, I have to use Firefox... as Google said they no longer support the phone.
iOS users are in the same boat, but Apple has been providing much more support to older devices.
To be perfectly honest, Apple pushing the latest iOS versions to older devices is not really a good thing. iOS 5 is a dog on my 3GS.
Weird, my 3GS seems no different on iOS 5 vs iOS 4. At worst, it's nothing like the iOS 4 performance on the iPhone 3G. This video apparently shows the 3GS being faster than iPhone 4 (believable, actually, if you consider the quadrupling of pixels on the iPhone 4 from the 3GS): http://techuncover.com/blog/tag/iphone-3gs-is-faster-on-ios-...
It's entirely possible that ios's shitty performance is due to me rescuing it from brick state via oven, but I don't really buy it. The phone works perfectly, except that it's very slow and experiences the occasional hang. It's. Ertainly nowhere near as smooth as my buddy's 4s. I don't expect it to be, but I do expect it to unlock without a 4 second lag.
Old Android browser versions are going to become the "IE6" of this decode.
It is easy to just use firefox on android though. Could push people to that.
If you have an armv7 chip, sure. But apparently nobody is motivated to fix the alignment bugs and make it work on older chips.
is it about market shareor advancing mobile?
the point, right there.
Please make the Chrome address bar awesome.
The omnibox is already awesome. It's Chrome's definitive UX feature, and I'm surprised nobody else has implemented it yet.
Yep, when i have to test something in Firefox i always forget that to search in Google (or in other popular site) i can't just write it in the address bar.
And it always remember all my sites so to go to hacker news i just write an "n" and it writes the rest... and i can even delete the suggestions with shift+delete.
So yeah, i also don't have any idea what the parent comment was triyng to say.
Except you can just write it in the address bar (and hit enter). Try it!
He must be confusing with Safari.
You can even change the search engine for that. Try about:config --> keyword.URL
uh? I type something in the address bar, and Firefox JFGIFM. It is called the awesome bar. I think you are confusing with Safari.
No, i just had an outdated version of Firefox.
very outdated then. It has been doing that for a very long time.
God I love chrome's autocomplete. HN is 'n', reddit is 'r', Facebook is 'f', gmail is 'g'... It's such a great usability feature. Google's approach with Chrome seems to be making the browser as invisible as possible, and I love it.
Google has said from the beginning that the purpose of Chrome was to move the web forward, not compete with other browsers, and I had forgotten that.
Actions speak louder than words. Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO , which has some authority around issues concerning the open web , think Native client and Dart are bad for the open web[1].
Also one small way to improve the search experience, is easy search in multiple search engines. Firefox's search box is one way of doing so, But it has been removed in chrome. Does it really improve the web ?
Does limiting the power of adblocking relative to firefox for example , really improves the web ?
Do giving better/faster experience for youtube and google(no data but few anecdotes from me and friends) , for chrome users is improving the open web ?
And if we talk about moving the web forward , privacy is one of the biggest issues the web currently has. privacy from big companies , privacy from advertisers , privacy from other people doing searches on you and privacy from being needed to show your real name publicly on the web.
Privacy is probably much more important than technical issues like current javascript speed.
Does google really help "move the web forward" on the issue of privacy ?
about the google sites speed its mostly all SPDY. It's hack but it's a good one. Thus it's in Firefox Aurora. Enable with about:config look for stuff called spdy, til its on by default
I heard a rumor that Facebook will support SPDY, but Google supposedly paid Facebook to only support SPDY for Chrome users. I guess we'll find out now that Firefox will soon support SPDY.
Does SPDY also improve video playback ? because that's what i heard was better for youtube on chrome.
This is not Chrome's purpose. Everything between the user and the monetization mechanism (advertisement) is strategic to Google. It just doesn't sound as warm and fuzzy when they say it like that.
The two statements are not necessarily in conflict. It helps Google's bottom line to move the web forward, and make more things possible through browser interfaces.
So close... add a couple more details: - Google makes money from ads - Promoting open web technologies reduces the stack they have to support - Promoting open platforms removes roadblocks to reaching customers - Supporting "competitors" that provide revenue generation channels ensures that even when the lose, they win.
Business is not warm and fuzzy. For that, you need to go non-profit. Look at these and you can see that Mozilla is really warm and fuzzy: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefoxlive/
Er, does OpenDNS exist only to make you money? This seems like exactly the simplistic analysis that the post was objecting to.
This article is BS. Google is a for-profit public company, hence google wants to make more money for google's shareholders. If they can do that by pushing chrome (advertizing platform) or firefox (OSS platform that they want to control) then that's what they will do. It doesn't matter what browser you use, so long as you look at their ads. Never mind their horrible privacy practices (2038 cookie) and associated shenanigans.
How is that incompatible with bringing the web forward?
Making sure the web is an open platform make sure no one control the technology, therefor Google have more opportunities to display ads. And also people have more opportunities to compete with Google too.
Nothing forces you to visit Google properties, etc.
Would Mozilla stop making Firefox an open, web-advancing browser if Microsoft Bing paid Mozilla's bills? I don't think so. So why didn't Google save its shareholders $1B and let Microsoft foot the bill to continue Mozilla development? Google clearly must profit from their relationship with Mozilla.
Q: does google win billions from this deal?
A:yes
Q: does google donatethis money?
A: no.
Q: what is TFA worth then?
A: oh, wait.
so.yeah. right.