by Jason Wilk on January 2, 2009
- More bad news for Microsoft since rumors of the 15,000 potential layoffs coming next month.
- Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s famed browser continues to lose market share. Stats from NetApplications in November shows that while IE fell below 70% dominance for the first time ever, Firefox grew beyond 20% market share for their first time.
- As we saw earlier this morning with Google’s Android for Netbooks, Chrome will certainly begin to chip away at IE as well. Apple’s Safari standard and mobile browser will continue to grow with Apple’s growth in the computer and mobile markets.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://tinycomb.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big4.png)
by Jason Wilk on December 22, 2008
- Mozilla Corp, maker of the Firefox Web Browser is becoming displeased with their current relationship with Google.
- John Lilly, Mozilla’s CEO, said in an interview last week, “We have a fine and reasonable relationship, but I’d be lying if I said that things weren’t more complicated than they used to be.” (CW)
- What’s causing this animosity? Google’s own browser, Chrome, which is slowly gaining a share in the booming browser market. The interesting part of the newly competitive relationship is that Mozilla makes the bulk of their revenue from Google, not to mention brings in a nice chunk of change every year for the search giant. 88%, or about $60 million of Mozilla’s 2007 revenues came from Google. Google pays Mozilla for placement as the default search in Firefox as well as powers the search for Firefox’s homepage (they share the ad revenue)
- What will Mozilla do? Well, even with the launch of Chrome, Firefox has seen a 24% increase in users since the beginning of the year. Currently 1 in 5 people are using the browser. Firefox only cooperates with Google so that it can provide its users with the best possible search experience and the most relevant ads. Looking towards the future and further competition from Google, Mozilla said they plan to explore other search revenue partners, starting with international country-specific firms first, such as Ramblr in Russia, Baidu in China, Yahooo in Japan, etc. When asked about searching for revenues outside of the standard web, Lilly said that 2009 will be the year which Firefox makes its strong entrance into the mobile browser market (Fennec is the name of the mobile browser).
- Mozilla will do what it takes to compete with Google. There is no end in near sight to their relationship, but by no means will they retreat. Should Mozilla ditch Google sooner than later?
by Jason Wilk on December 3, 2008
- EMG Technology, a Los Angeles based company, filed a patent lawsuit against Apple last week over “the way the iPhone navigates the Internet”. The lawsuit seemed frivolous at first and now there is more information coming out to support that it may indeed just be.
- Why is the lawsuit shady? Well, EMG Technology formed very recently and it seems to be solely on the purpose of filing this lawsuit. The patent was just issued to them last month by a court in the Eastern District of Texas and the company doesn’t do anything besides own this patent.
- Another fact that smells fishy is that one of the inventors named on the patent and who is one of the founding memebrs of EMG is Elliot Gottfurcht, a LA based real estate developer. Don’t you mean web developer? Hmmm.
- This would certainly be the first real estate developer to be added to the list of potential owners to the Apple technology. Others include IBM, Sony, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
- Lastly, the patent itself does not seem like it stands a chance in court, considering it is not specific to mobile browsers. Moreover, there are many way in which to develop a way to manipulate the way content is viewed, and the patent does not include enough specifics as to how exactly Apple copied what they patented.
- The claim says that the EMG patent describes the ability to manipulate, zoom, scroll, and view Web content on devices other than a laptop. The central concept revolves around a way to convert HTML Web pages into XML data that can then be displayed partially on different devices, including mobile phones. This is not something proprietary and is a joke that it was able to make it through the patent process. Nonetheless, just because the court made a mistake issuing it and EMG got lucky, doesn’t mean they will see a dime from it.
- Take a hike Gottfurcht
Photo (TechLuver)
by John Jorgensen on October 20, 2008
- Mozilla has released a free alpha build (Mac, Linux & Windows) of Fennec, their Firefox-for-mobile web browser.
- Supports touch-screen commands such as swiping left and right to pull up menus and browser tabs in the sidebar.
- Features Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar,” the URL bar that presents a drop down menu based on the first letters you type that displays links to matching bookmarks and past visited sites.
- Bookmarking supports folders and tags.
- Plugins are supported as well as extensions, the user-mod feature that has made Firefox so popular.
- Go here for screenshots and a video walkthru on a Nokia N810.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Skyfire’s office today.
Lifehacker
by John Jorgensen on October 15, 2008
- Flock, the social networking web browser, has released version 2.0.
- Interact with major socnets from Flock’s “People” sidebar.
- MySpace support now included, along with support for Media RSS which lets you stream Flickr photos, Digg stories, etc on Flock’s media bar.
- MyWorld is Flock’s startpage, bringing together your feeds, friend activity and media streams.
Mashable
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