Mozilla exec calls Apple's Safari plan 'duopolistic'

Mozilla's chief operating officer, John Lilly, is calling Steve Jobs' plans for building Safari's market share "out of date" and "duopolistic."

Lilly made his comments following the Apple CEO's keynote speech last week at the Worldwide Developers Conference, where the Mac maker unveiled a version of the Safari browser designed to run on Windows Vista or XP.

In the speech predicting how Apple would expand its market share, Jobs showed a slide with Safari dominating almost a quarter of the market--a market shared only with a single other browser, Internet Explorer.

Lilly says he doesn't believe that this was an omission or simplification, but instead an indication that Jobs is hoping to steal people who use Firefox and other smaller browsers in order to run a "duopoly" with Redmond.

"This worldview...betrays (Apple's) thinking: it's out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented...It's not good for the Web. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don't think this two-party world will really come to be," Lilly said in his blog.

A browser market split exclusively between two companies is the "wrong thing to do" and would cause a dip in end-user experience, as well as ruining participation and engagement, the Mozilla Foundation executive said.

Still, Lilly went on to welcome the latest addition to the browser market. "Another browser being available to more people is good," he said. "I'm glad that Safari will be another option for users...We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the Web open and a public resource. The Web belongs to people, not companies."

Lilly, however, cast doubt on whether Jobs' two-browser state would come to pass, saying the rise of Wikipedia and Linux suggests that people are no longer content with the "monopolies and duopolies and cartels of yesterday's distribution" led by the big software vendors.

Since Safari for Windows debuted on June 11, it has notched up 1 million downloads. It has also seen a number of security vulnerabilities unearthed, resulting in Apple issuing three patches.

Jo Best of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

[skipperpma]

OH PLEASE!

How can the head of such a cool company, be such a baby? Reading a bit much into a slid-show aren't we? - Oh yes, I'm sure that Steve's evil master plan is to destroy all other browsers so that there would only be Safari and IE - Today browsers, tomorrow the world!!! (Que the evil laugh) -
Come on, are you serious? Are you honestly that scared of a little competition? Let's be real for a minute. The only reason IE has the dominant market share is because most computer users aren't that computer savvy. Those who are, aren't going anywhere, and will continue to love just about anything other than IE.
Personally, I think this guy needs to sit down and stop making the company that many of us love, look like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum.

[mattumanu]

They can all just screw it...

I used internet explorer for my standard fare sites, my blog, and other things, and I use firefox for youtube and other video related stuff. I don't need safari.

I think the real reason Jobs wants to do this is so that more apple software will get into the hands of users, making them more amenable to apple computers in general. Stevie boy, let me tell you... If it weren't for the fact that for some reason or other there are people offering quicktime content, I wouldn't have that thing on my computer. With each update it hijacks my settings, reinstalls itself into my startup folder, the list goes on... Why would I want safari? So it can hijack my preferences too?

I do want to get a mac in the near future. But mac stuff on my XP machine? Nah, not happenin'.

[ewelch]

Sour grapes

Lilly doesn't get it. Jobs is not out to kill Firefox, he's out to make it
easier to program for the iPhone. Lilly's paranoia betrays his anti-
buisness attitude. Pretty lame.

[justice007]

Deliberate charting

I specifically noticed the chart and Mr. Jobs' mannerism -- the chart showing about 15% of Firefox installed base now and Apple Safari completely replacing and increasing it to 25% and with IE at 75%. Apple is smart enough to know their increased market share for browsers (most of it) will come from reduction in the number of IE users rather than reduction in Firefox users. There are two big reasons for it (1) Users who know anything about alternate browsers will install not only ONE alternate, but look at different alternate browsers and (2) Even though Safari is good, Firefox is has significantly better customization capabilities by use of extensions (e.g., Safari doesn't even have an option to delete cookies on exit).

I believe the reason for Mr. Jobs showing the chart with Safari market share cutting into Firefox and leaving IE "as is" is meant to not offend Microsoft overtly and give them a reason for retaliation. But Microsoft marketing is smart enough to notice that. Safari's entry into the MS Windows boxes is good for web standards adoption and for the average consumer -- besides also providing a develop/test environment for iPhone applications for third party developers. The announcement was made the the World Wide DEVELOPERS Conference after all.

[oldbookhunter]

it would never be "duopolistic"

It would never become "duopolistic". The thing it's probably
going to do is just shift IE a little down the rung for home users.
I don't think it would ever touch the business users.
I work on a Mac at home and I run two browsers depending on
my requirement. Safari is good, but it has it's limitations.
Firefox is amazing, but even it has it's limitations. I use the best
features in both of them. When I worked on a PC at home, I
hated using IE but reluctantly there were still a few things I
found it could do better than Firefox. IE was my last resort for a
few things. If I had a PC at home now, I think using Safari and
Firefox in combination would be a great setup, the same as with
my Mac. I would never use IE again.
The thing is that at work it's a different story. I have to work on
a PC because it's the company standard. I have to use IE
because it's the company standard. A free version of Safari
wouldn't make them want to change that standard, since even
the dependability of Firefox on PC over IE hasn't changed their
minds in all the years it's been available. I don't think my
company is a unique situation. Since the work world seems to
be heavy into Windows, I seriously doubt that Apple is going to
hurt Firefox's percentage of the market in that area. If anything
they'd end up getting the full Mac replacement of the PC before
they'd get the browser market from either IE or Firefox.

[nicmart]

Not to worry

As a Mac user who primarily relies on Safari, I don't think Mozilla
has much to worry about. If Safari for Windows is as incompatible
with as many web pages as the Mac version, Windows users will
quickly toss it. Apple is proudly unwilling to bend Safari to
accomodate Explorer-centric sites. This is widely recognized by
Macoholics, but they deny reality and shift the responsibility from
Apple to web designers, defensively calling the problem "Mac
marginalization." Firefox should be distinguished by its
capabilities, not by the political attacks of Mozilla executives.

[sebastianlewis]

Another Example of how to look like a Fool, courtesy of Mozilla Corporation

Todays Topic: Reading too much into a chart on a keynote.

First, the story in summary, paraphrased of course:
"Oh look! Apple completely wiped out Firefox and other browsers with Safari in their
keynote today, gentlemen, run for the hills! They're plotting an evil duopoly (which is
unbelievably enough, an actual word) with Microsoft."

The reality:
Steve Jobs was editing his keynote and decided it made more sense to wipe out the
small guys with Safari than to try and guesstimate what the new market share values
might look like or to completely wipe out IE from the chart which still has the largest
market share of them all in order to make his point: Apple's browser market share will
go up if they launch on Windows.

Sebastian

[Penguinisto]

Oy, vey...

Okay.

Safari works great on the Mac. I don't have/use Windows, so I have no Earthly idea if it will work well there or not.

That said, even if the Mozilla camp is right, a duopoly beats the hell out of a monopoly. Personally, I think he's miffed that Safari and Mozilla's own spin-off, Firefox, is eating Mozilla's lunch.

/P

[BrandonEubanks]

Pig Latin?

Great way to make your point.

[donny111]

It doesn't matter anyway....

I installed Safari on my Windows XP PC, and started testing to see how good Safari is.

I didn't like the way things showed up on the browser, and the first time I used it, the browser crashed within 5 minutes.

I un-installed it right away.

If you want a good reliable browser, just go with Firefox. It's easy to use, and rarely crashes.

[ethana2]

If they were to target the Linux platform,

which has about as many users as OSX, if I understand right, they would see a huge surge in downloads as everyone tried it out, and come back a month later to find no one still using it. I tried it out on windows. It was pathetic. I have 20 FF extensions, and there is basically nothing I can't do with it.

I do hope they steal a huge chunk of IE users, though. That'd be sweet, to break up windows into 3 nearly equal browser market shares. It'd bring the emphasis back to open standards compliance. I also think it would be interesting to see Firefox come up with a webkit variant or add private browsing. We're living in exciting times.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Do not taunt happy fun geek.

It's not wise for Apple to mock Firefox and the geeks who support it for they have a lot of spare time on their hands and Apple is giving them a juicy unsecured target with Safari, especially claiming it was secure from Day One of beta and that they will push Firefox to the side as insignificant.

Geeks don't like to be mocked like that.

[LuvThatCO2]

Apple has a long history of being a control-freak

From not allowing the OS to run on computers they dont make, to this. Is anyone suprised?

That being said, to mozilla, stop whining. It reflects badly on you. FF -AND- IE have nothing to fear from Safari. Just download the beta and see why. Its awful.

(yes, they have a windows version now, and it blows chunks)

[mortega98]

Safari Internet Browser

What does it mean Safari has "notched up 1 million downloads"?
Does it mean Safari now has an additional 1 million users and the other browsers 1 million less users?
I am one of those who downloaded Safari.
I am also one of those who removed it from the computer within 24 hours of installation.
You see, Safari is not faster than Firefox, Safari is not more functional and not even equal to Firefox, and Safari is not better than Firefox in any way.
In other words, Safari is not Firefox.

[JDavis19]

Firefox must support photographers...

To maintain its market share FireFox must become color managed
(ICC-aware), a key reason for photographers to run Safari on
Windows.

[t8]

Nothing will displace Firefox

Firefox is open like the Web and for that reason it will continue to see great innovations.

Proprietary browsers are not about the technology rather they are just pawns in certain companies strategies. What benefit is it to me to use IE or Safari? I am just a number to them.

Open is best and that is why Firefox is the best. Firefox is made by the people and for the people and it is the best of breed too.

[open-mind]

Jobs Is Helping Lilly

And Lilly seems to need the help.

Despite the fact that Firefox is tremendously better than IE 6 and has been for a long time, Firefox mind-share and market-share numbers are terrible. Most people don't even know about Firefox. In that respect, Lilly has failed. As a result, Microsoft can still use their IE market share to manipulate internet standards.

Apple is good at marketing and can leverage iTunes. So they can help solve this problem by letting more poeple know that there are browser alternatives besides IE. Some of those people will migrate to Safari and some will migrate to Firefox.

The result is more browser choice for users, and Microsoft will be required to again follow web standards. I don't see a downside.

[jonathanchambers]

Safari is still too crippled to make an impact

I don't know whether Jobs actually believes what he's peddling, but if he actually used the web outside of Apple's suite of tools then he might have noticed that simple things like Gmail's Talk/Chat features still don't work in Safari, and that Hotmail will only load the 'classic' version in Safari (thus far). Regardless of the speed argument, Safari 3 beta still doesn't have the goods. I'm a Mac user and I don't use Safari for more than 'light browsing.'

[murphtall]

lilly missed the point of the illustrative market share pie chart

lilly missed the point of the illustrative market share pie chart. it
wasnt to suggest that safari and IE be the only browsers it was to
ILLUSTRATE what percentage of market share apple wanmts. apple
doesnt want FireFox to die, apple wants 25% of the market share. it
was illustrative tool. end of story.`
Km

[phantomsoul]

Who Cares?

Fact of the matter is that most people really don't give a diddly squat about what browser they use; rather, they just care about actually being able to see the page they're looking for.

Fact of the matter is that unless you have some kind of financial or emotional interest in the positions of Microsoft, Apple, or Google/Mozilla, chances are you could care less about whether you click on the compass, the blue E, or the firey globe. In fact, most people don't do any of those, instead accessing the internet by merely calling a URL to the operating system from perhaps some program they have open -- in which case the page opens in the default browser. Further, that default browser was probably not set by the person who is actually accessing the pages.

Yes Internet Explorer has its security issues, and it probably doesn't load pages as fast as other browsers. But its not that much slower, and one thing remains an advantage for the big blue E over any other browser on Windows in that it opens way faster than Safari, Firefox, or Opera -- completely blowing the others out of the water. Same thing holds true for Safari on Mac OS.

And when you get into clicking assortments of URLs for accessing webpages, it suddenly seems to blur the line between "going on the Internet" and "balancing your checkbook", and the company behind the browser suddenly doesn't seem as important as how long you have to sit there and wait for a browser window to open because you clicked on something that references a web URL...