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?
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by Jason Wilk on December 17, 2008
Microsoft takes the main-stage to battle Adobe and a slew of startup companies trying to be the leader in Web video and collaborative animation/web design tools. The WSJ outlines the major online destinations that have gone with each service this year. For example, Netflix, CBS, The Olynpics (via NBC.com) have all gone with Microsoft’s Silverlight player this year stealing further business from Adobe.
“Adobe’s Flash player is installed on about 98% of Internet-connected PCs, and Silverlight is only installed on about 25%, according to Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe executives said this gives the smaller company about a two-year head start. But Microsoft is “willing to invest” in order to win certain “trophy sites,” said [Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Microsoft unit responsible for Silverlight].
Places like CBS are raving about Silverlight, saying it is saving costs greatly over Adobe’s flash player. This is bad news for Adobe who has been receiving their share of bad news this year. Another big loss came in the mobile department. They have spent two years now trying to deploy their ‘flash lite’ technology to mobile phones, only to see minimal adoption. Most importantly, Apple will have nothing to do with flash on the iPhone yet, which Adobe has been banking on for quite some time. All the bad news has caused Adobe to lay off over 600 employees as well as scale back on the MacWorld Expo in January. Some say they won’t even be having their Adobe Max conference next year. Will Adobe Flash be a thing of the past?
by Jason Wilk on December 17, 2008
- It’s no secret anymore, the iPhone is popular (who knew?). It is so popular that it has been entirely strange to me that competitive carriers unable to strike a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone haven’t taken stronger action to do so. Well, that changes today.
- On September 18th, France’s third largest mobile operator Bouygues Telecom filed a complaint with the regulator, arguing the deal between Apple and its larger rival, violates local freedom of competition and pricing laws. Today, that ruling was passed, forcing Apple to cease its exclusive relationship with France Telecom’s Orange carrier. The French competition counsel ruled that Apple must open up the phone to other French carriers and French Telecom is further prohibited from signing any further exclusive deals with Apple in the event they release a new phone.
- The French Competion Counsel said:
Apple’s exclusive arrangement with Orange poses a serious and immediate threat to competition in the wireless sector and causes consumers to incur hefty and unjust fees should they attempt to switch providers. (A copy of the 48 page ruling can be seen here [PDF] in French.)
- France Telecom plans to appeal the issue, but it is likely that they won’t be able to get the decision turned around. This is a big win for consumers who should have the right to use whatever device they want with any carrier they choose. We will see how the carriers in the US who want to carry the iPhone react to the issue. Moreover, how will this ruling bleed over into neighboring European countries and extend into Apple’s upcoming deal with China to carry the phone in early 09′?
by Jason Wilk on December 11, 2008
- When things were running fairly smooth in the financial markets for the last few years, clean energy technology was on everyone’s radar from world leaders all the way down to the average consumer. That widely spread optimism is now taking a back seat due to the financial crisis, which is not good in the face of a potential global catastrophe, not to mention billions of dollars in venture capital money pouring into clean tech companies. Venture investments in North America, Europe, China and India across 158 companies reached $2.6 billion in the third quarter of 2008, a record quarter for clean tech investments.
- The recent global summit on climate change in Poznan, Poland outlined the fears of green supporters surrounding the growing apathy for clean tech solutions while we fight through the tough financial crisis. Moreover, their survey shows less support from high level adopters for wind energy, solar power, biofuels, biomass and hydrogen energy as technologies with “high potential” to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere over the next 25 years. It’s not just the adopters however, climate experts now have less faith of finding a ubiquitous solution for the masses that will reduce the carbon emissions to appropriate levels in time. The survey below shows the breakdown in the drop of what experts feel will make a difference over last year (this year in blue).
- The biggest drop in optimism was for first-generation biofuels from crops. Only 12 percent of respondents saw high potential there, down from 21 percent last year. This was an obvious one. Last week I broke down the math equation to why it’s physically impossible to use biofuels to come close to alleviating a major nation like the US off of standard oil. Energy conservation and more efficient technology wins everyone’s vote, but the problem is no one knows what technology that is yet.
- Electric cars are certainly not the end all solution to the problem. Even if everyone in the US drives an electric car (which won’t happen), that’s still only 33% of U.S carbon dioxide emissions. Not to mention electricity burns coal, which emits around 1.7 times as much carbon per unit of energy when burned as does natural gas. (also, there is no such thing as clean coal)
- Let’s talk about the political side of things holding up clean tech. The Kyoto Protocol is about to expire, and we are in desperate need of finding a new one that includes China and India as well as puts regulations on other developing nations (not to mention ourselves). Currently, the European Union is struggling to reach agreement on its own climate rules with conflicting arguments happening between Eastern European (and Italy) and Western European governments. Especially in the financial crisis, the climate measures being proposed upset the developing nations due to high costs, which stunts growth. They also feel that the regulations are unfair considering that the Western countries producing the majority of the emissions like the US are the ones proposing regulations, yet have barely complied with green policies, ’saying actions at this point can be voluntary for citizens’. Such a joke.
- The next few years for cleantech could prove devastating for clean tech companies, venture capital firms and the polar ice caps as we try and agree upon a sound solution to how everyone will work together and with what technology. Obama should be picking out the best of the clean tech companies come the start of his term and make stiff regulations to mandate them throughout the country. This will inject the VC’s who backed the ideas with more money to go out and fund further projects and it will put us on our way to lower emissions. If we can’t inspire hope in the eyes of the experts and the scientists, then a layer of apathy across all green minds will surely lead to far greater problems for our ecosystem than sub-prime mortgage woes. All the experts want to see is some sort of adoption happening around the nations causing the large portions of emissions. Our current technologies may not be the best it will get, but its a start and things need to change in the face of an unhealthy environment.
(An overview of the survey, along with PowerPoint slides, is available here.)
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