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See the original image at wired.com

The Mozilla CEO on his FF Strategy, his Google Gambit &Apple

wired.com — When Mozilla released the Firefox browser in 2004, IE dominated the market with a whopping 95% share. Now FF has 18 % of the market & Safari has another 6%. Along the way, Wall Streeters began pressing Mozilla to go public (it won't) and CEO John Lilly wowed scores of suits with his talks about how the open source project became a succesful biz....

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  • CoffeeJoost, on 07/21/2008, -10/+33Really enjoyed this article. Great submission.
    • DesertSquirrel, on 07/22/2008, -13/+7Isn't this what the "digg it" button is for?
      • freebird09, on 07/22/2008, -3/+6Idk, but at least I now know what the bury button is for. ;)
  • jamshid, on 07/22/2008, -9/+22"The iPhone has been influential, but there's not that many of them. We're part of the LiMo Foundation — Linux on Mobile."

    I have nothing but love for Mozilla, but seriously dude...
    • hugolp, on 07/22/2008, -2/+9Agreed. Specially because LimMo foundation uses linux as a kernel, but what goes on top of that kernel is not open source. So its a closed platform.
    • FredFredrickson, on 07/22/2008, -0/+7At least he's not humping the iPhone's leg.
  • Griny, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3This would be amazing. Great, reasonably accurate, global, FREE data. Good grief. yes, please “free the data” ;) . It’s been too long I’ve had to caveat and consider the flaws of current services.

    On privacy - yes, a concern - but I trust Mozilla and think as long as data is anonymous, etc. - the benefits of having this type of access outweigh any concerns.

    To the degree mozilla can incent/encourage a broad user base to participate would be great…don’t just want early adopter folks. If any demos/psychos are possible to layer on to the traffic info (optional data from users and anonymized) would be a nice bonus.
  • viksra, on 07/22/2008, -14/+2SO I HERD U LIEK MUDKIPZ?
  • viksra, on 07/22/2008, -14/+6i think FireFox is a pretty cool guy, eh owns 18% market share and doesnt afraid of anything
    • Jeffler, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2My name is apparently Internet Explorer and I'm supposed to challenge this Firefox fellow you speak of (Though I could've sworn he was a piece of computer software) to a fight in the playground at 2 PM.
    • smacksaw, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2He's cool, but only because he has voice-activated weapons systems and is capable of mach speeds. The suck thing is he only speaks Russian.
    • GTRagnarok, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1You go to GameFAQs, viksra?
  • netneutrality, on 07/22/2008, -4/+18Their CEO's photo looks creatively cropped... What's going on behind?
    • Miff, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8Nothing. They took that photo from his myspace.
    • maxownz, on 07/22/2008, -0/+6He creatively cropped it to hide the strippers in his face that are a standard at Mozilla headquarters
    • lordtyros, on 07/22/2008, -1/+3Mild *****
    • macslut, on 07/22/2008, -0/+4It's an old photographer's trick. People often look more pensive when sitting on a toilet. You then crop the part actually showing them taking a dump.
  • JamesMorris, on 07/22/2008, -4/+33"Wired: Are you going to develop a version of Firefox for the iPhone?

    Lilly: No. Apple makes it too hard. They say it's because of technical issues — they don't want outsiders to disrupt the user experience."

    LOL ***** you apple.
    • HonoredMule, on 07/22/2008, -0/+7I think the key quote would be, "That's a business argument masquerading as a technological argument."
      • smacksaw, on 07/22/2008, -2/+2Actually, if you really want to be accurate, it would be "That's a business argument masquerading as a technological argument, paraded as a dogmatic decree."
  • ladbroke, on 07/22/2008, -4/+6Without coming out and saying it explicitly, he makes a good argument against Apple's walled garden approach. How much are iPhone users losing out by not having the power of open-source apps on their side? What kind of creativity and innovation are they losing by only including a Safari browser? If Apple comes out with a palm-top reborn Newton running iPhone OS X, how many features will we lose if it can only run apps from the iTunes Store?
    • Karmavs, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1…the power of open source apps like, say, webkit? http://webkit.org/
      • ladbroke, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Really? Webkit is an app now? Well let me go download webkit.dmg and drag it over to my applications folder.

        Just because apple is harnessing an open source browser foundation doesn't mean that the iPhone platform is open or inviting the open-source community. You're comparing apples and oranges. Hell, you're comparing apples and steaks.
      • Karmavs, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1OK. http://nightly.webkit.org/
  • sc0rpi0n, on 07/22/2008, -5/+13"Safari has another 6%"

    I think this is either a misunderstanding or a misreading. Since when Safari has 6% market share? It barely goes above 1% let alone 6%. I own quite a few big websites, and I read this thing called AWStats as well as Google Analytics, and Safari is at 0.4%, no more. If you say Opera has 6% then I might agree, because I'm receiving 4.6% of Opera users here.
    • RizzoFrank, on 07/22/2008, -1/+15100 uniques a day isn't a big site.
    • dema, on 07/22/2008, -4/+4> I own quite a few big websites

      Sources or stfu noob. I run a "big" website too; it gets 21.3% hits from Safari and 18.2% from Firefox. Obviously, following your logic, this means Safari actually has a larger market share than Firefox... obviously.
      • DestroyFascism, on 07/22/2008, -2/+1Apple fanboi blogsite?
      • rossisdead, on 07/22/2008, -2/+2You're not following his logic at all. Google Analytics and AWStats cover a way wider variety of sites than your one website.
    • skyshock1, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5That wholly depends on your target audience though doesn't it?

      If your target audience is mostly computer geeks then it stands to reason most of them will be using Firefox and/or Opera. If your target audience is mostly Apple fans, it would stand to reason you'd get more traffic from Safari. If you run a .NET web application support site, most of your traffic will most likely come from IE.

      It's not always quite so black and white dude, and stats can be manipulated in any number of ways.
  • JQP123, on 07/22/2008, -1/+4"John Lilly wowed scores of suits with his talks about how the open source project became a successful business."

    One word: Google
  • MikeSobe, on 07/22/2008, -1/+5Is firefox working on a Blackberry mobile browser? I like Opera Mini but it would be nice to see a mobile FF.
    • niczar, on 07/22/2008, -0/+8Opera Mini is nice but it's not a real browser. A proxy at Opera's HQ pre-chews sites up and compresses images for example. Can't do Ajax and stuff. Then again, that's not bad at all for something that fits in less than 150kB
      Minimo OTOH is a real browser, but it's in alpha. That's what you want.
      • skyshock1, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2+1. ***** to try and use Pandora w/ Opera mini only to be redirected to a section of the site telling me Pandora's not available b/c I'm coming from a Norwegian IP.

        :/
      • MikeSobe, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Well right, but its also running on a Blackberry
    • SSUK, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2Mozilla is drafting concepts for Firefox mobile, but we're yet to get any potential platforms other than LiMo they could release it on.
    • skyshock1, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2I'd like to see the open-source webkit browser ported to more mobile devices personally. The webkit rendering engine has Gecko (Mozilla's) beat in so many different ways. There's a reason Apple chose to use it on their iPhone, and Google is including a port of it in their AndroidOS as well. I have a browser based on webkit on my SymbianOS smart phone (nokia n95) and it rocks to no end.

      Firefox mobile currently = colossal fail.
  • katierosekills, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3This interview was the only interesting part of the August issue of Wired.
  • hoppy44, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1"It's got 15,000 improvements. It's more secure and easier to use. It's two or three times faster." That's a pretty damn good list of features to start with. Maybe Microsoft should take some notes here for their next version of Windows.
  • ChristianD, on 07/22/2008, -5/+5"Wired: Are you going to develop a version of Firefox for the iPhone?

    Lilly: No. Apple makes it too hard. They say it's because of technical issues — they don't want outsiders to disrupt the user experience. That's a business argument masquerading as a technological argument."

    I have a 3G iPhone, an iMac and a 5G iPod, but this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The sad part is that when M$ does it, their a monopoly, when Apple does this, their maintaining the User Experience. I suppose I'll never see Opera Mobile 9.5 in the App store either which sucks because even the beta is ahead of Mobile Safari (Which is great though) in several areas.
    • bronskrat, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3"business argument masquerading as a technological argument" -- I love that line. Dude is smart.
    • ChristianD, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2It's the best line in the whole interview and yet I'm of course being voted down because as Jack Nicolas said in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth!" I love Mac products, but even i know Apple gets a pass where others get beheaded and raked over the coles.
  • shoediva, on 07/22/2008, -2/+2Learned a lot for this article that I didn't know before.....very interesting.
  • smacksaw, on 07/22/2008, -2/+1I have mixed feelings. It's like installing IE via Wine in Linux - unless you're accessing a specific site that needs IE, you're better off sticking with Firefox. If you have an iPhone, Apple is going to make sure it's software really works well with it. What he said is right about using Apple products the way they come, yet every iPhone user is pissed because the software keeping making it bug out.

    People want to customise their iPhone? You're kidding!

    And in the same article he mentions about how things are going from the desktop the browser. Hmm. I see a HUGE missed business opportunity. Sounds to me like they need to make Firefox overlay over the iPhone and use extensions in Firefox to add extensible features to make it work exactly the way people want it to work. I admire his confidence and his commitment, but he's too stuck in it. They could own the world by offering a common UI via Firefox on all mobile platforms. I hate booting my browser up on my phones. If I want to play tunes on my phone, can't I use last.fm? Extrapolate the possibilities.
  • droversoul, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1Dugg for Gambit
  • FredFredrickson, on 07/22/2008, -4/+2Safari... Ha.
  • sq2shooter, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2I'm sure there is a simple answer to this but I have always wondered how Mozilla pays its bills. It says 85% of their revenue comes from Google but what exactly is that for? Are they licensing something to them?
    • netneutrality, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3Firefox uses Google as the default search engine. It also always uses Google automatically when you type words directly into the location bar that can't be found as a URL. So Google make money out of the advertizing, and pay Mozilla to keep it that way.
  • computershack, on 07/22/2008, -3/+0Wired: Why did Firefox catch on in the first place, and how has it stolen users from Microsoft's Internet Explorer?

    My answer would be that they didn't ram it down peoples throats. No fanboiism and no perma-slating the opposition. Their approach was a "We've created this browser. We like it and we think you will too. Come give it a go." And people did in their millions.
    What there wasn't was a bunch of people going " XX browser is *****. All its users are ***** morons and if you don't use this, the world will come to an end because XX is a monolithic megacorp who will starve children and puppies."
    Perhaps some of the Linux fanbois should learn a lesson and then they might end up converting more people to Linux than they put off.
    • SreyaNotfilc, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1Well, that and as John Lilly said tabbed browsing.
    • Karmavs, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1“What there wasn't was a bunch of people going ‘XX browser is *****. All its users are ***** morons and if you don't use this, the world will come to an end because XX is a monolithic megacorp who will starve children and puppies.’”

      Yes there were.

      Firefox is catching on because the barrier to entry is small. The barrier to entry for linux (Wubi aside) is comparitively high
  • swoosh_bnd, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1What good would come out of Firefox going public?
  •  

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