Will success, or all that money from Google, spoil Firefox?

Mozilla has come to resemble a Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog.
The New York Times

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[Jim Hubbard]

It already has....

Firefox is getting bigger and more bloated as we speak. Firefox 3 incorporates items that should have been made available as sdd-ons and the core browser should have been kept small, fast and secure.<br /><br />We had a great browser in Firefox, one that coudl be extended (or not) as the end user saw fit.<br /><br />Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

[ColdMast]

...but compared to IE...

Firefox is faster and by not being attached to Windows it is more secure {as well as not being the main browser}. If Firefox didn't exist everyone would be stuck with IE, and Opera {best zooming ever} would still cost money.<br />And of course Firefox is available on most distros one way or another.<br /><br />I tried the alpha of FireFox 3 and it was crap.<br />I haven't tried the beta... yet... was going to wait until 6 months after final release.<br /><br />I aggree: I hate unwanted BLOAT, Hopefully they develop a more "portable" version simultaneously parallel with a large one {why not?}.<br /><br />DOWN WITH IE AND POOR IMPLEMENTATION OF WEB STANDARDS

[imacpwr]

Re: It already has...

I guess if you really want to avoid the "bloat" you could go back to <br />using Mosaic but in the real world today where demands of web <br />designers and web surfers are ever increasing so too are our <br />browsers..

[michaelo1966]

What's wrong w/ Firefox as a proxy?

No matter whether one loves or hates Microsoft -- or doesn't care either way -- I don't see why it's at all relevant whether Firefox is acting as a proxy for Google. MS and Google aren't exactly pretending to be best friends, and the Firefox group isn't making pretensions about being in love w/ MS. <br /><br />The quality (or lack thereof) of the underlying individual browsers speaks for itself: the business motivation of either browser creator doesn't matter except to the extent that the existence of Firefox forced MS to start improving IE again and pushed compliance to standards, which -- no matter which browser you prefer -- is good for everybody (both company's too, though they may not realize it).