The Open Road

It was announced Monday that smartphone maker Research in Motion had acquired Torch Mobile, a provider of browsers and other applications based on the open-source WebKit project. Though Webkit has become the unofficial standard for mobile browsers, as Don Reisinger reports, it seems to be a largely Apple-controlled open-source community, one that has the potential to leave RIM, Palm, Google, and other WebKit users constantly playing catch-up to Apple.

Is WebKit open source? Absolutely. But is it truly an open, level playing field for RIM and other would-be competitors to Apple? Likely not.

Yes, there are other developers from Nokia, Torch Mobile, and Google involved with the project, but Apple controls the project, if by no other means than sheer numbers. Apple employs the majority of WebKit developers (30), with Google coming in second (19). Torch Mobile? It employs just eight of the WebKit development team members.

More pertinently, Apple employs far more of the WebKit reviewers than anyone else, which gives it much more control. Most of the other participants are committers, which are important but not equal in control to reviewers.

I've even heard that WebKit is not accepting outside contributions at present, though I have not yet been able to verify this.

Not that you need to look too deeply to see Apple's grip on the project. Just look at the logo:

WebKit logo

Look familiar? It should. Here's Apple's logo for its Safari browser, which is based on the WebKit project:

Safari logo

Coincidence? Um...no. After all, the WebKit blog is called (get this): "Surfin' Safari. Think the blog is going to change its name anytime soon to "Surfin' RIM"? Don't hold your breath.

As the proud owner of four MacBook Pros and three iPhones, I'm not bashing Apple. I love what it produces.

But if part of RIM's interest in Torch Mobile was influence in the WebKit project, it could have saved its money. WebKit, for better or worse, is largely an Apple project, with serious support from Google. For everyone else, WebKit may be the best game in town, but it's Apple's town. It almost certainly will result in a better Blackberry browser for RIM customers, but not one that RIM has as much control over as it would like.

There are some technologies that make less and less sense as proprietary software. The browser is one of them. With Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome actively gaining at Internet Explorer's expense on the "desktop," it would be nice to see a truly open-source project--open in source, and open to outside involvement--standardize the mobile browsing experience, too.

There's Mozilla's Fennec, of course, but its development has been slow. WebKit may be the best option for RIM and others, but it would be an even better option if Apple took its hands off the wheel to open up the project further.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

If "only the paranoid survive," as former Intel CEO Andy Grove used to say, then Mozilla, the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser, needs to put its paranoia on overdrive.

That's the sense I got reading through Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady's billet-doux to Chromium, the open-source project behind the Google Chrome browser. O'Grady has long been friendly to Mozilla and a dedicated user of Firefox. When his head is turned by another browser, it's time for concern.

Yes, Firefox continues to grow its market share, now sitting comfortably at 22.47 percent, while Chrome is far behind at 2.59 percent. But O'Grady is an influencer (even if he has yet to persuade me to adopt the Linux "desktop"), and his reasons for preferring Chrome are important:

The open source version of Chrome is far from perfect; the recently enabled plugins which permit the usage of Flash and so on are regularly disabled and/or non-functional, the rendering engine still has its occasional issues, and too many poorly designed browser-sniffing sites give it a hard time. But it's just so damned fast. And speed is not just a feature, but a feature I prioritize.

Not in the rendering. Although its from-scratch V8 Javascript engine definitely gives sites like Google Docs a boost, I've found Firefox 3.5's counterpart, Tracemonkey, very competitive on most sites. But that's where the good news ends for Firefox.

In virtually every other sense, Chromium outperforms Firefox. Google's browser launches more quickly, features snappier tab creation and--perhaps most importantly--doesn't bog down after prolonged usage. And while the performance gains when measured might seem minute...they really add up over time.

As O'Grady notes, his observations apply to the Linux versions of Chrome and Firefox, but they still should give Mozilla pause.

In this little war, however, perhaps Microsoft is taking Firefox's side, at least against Google. As The Register reports, Microsoft Office Web Apps, due out in 2010, will support Firefox and other "familiar Web browsers," which doesn't include Chrome, Safari (for Windows), or Opera. Apparently, Microsoft will only be supporting those browsers that don't have an operating system competitor attached to them.

The browser market has become hugely competitive and, as a result, more innovative and much more interesting. I'm confident the Mozilla team will respond to Chrome's apparent speed advantages, but equally confident that Google, Apple, and Microsoft will work just as hard to outflank Mozilla and the other browser competitors in other ways.

All of which is good for you and for me as we enjoy the results of the competition. Now if we could just get this level of competition in all areas of software.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

It's a good thing that Mozilla is profitable, because the open-source foundation would likely struggle to get venture funding.

For any Sand Hill venture capitalist, Mozilla fails to tick any of the correct boxes. While it does have a world-class development organization, Mozilla also relies on an external, unpaid workforce to contribute up to 40 percent of its code. Also, 88 percent of its revenues come from one source, Google, which also happens to be a competitor.

Speaking of competitors, it has three big ones--gargantuan ones. Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Tell a VC that you want to go up against one of these and you're likely to be turned away. Tell them you want to take on all three and, well, they might just make a full-on sprint for the safety of their Aston Martins.

And yet, Mozilla may be superbly positioned to compete with these big competitors precisely because it isn't anything like them: at its core, Mozilla is a nonprofit foundation that wants to save the world more than it wants to make a buck.

The New York Times highlights Mozilla's challenges in a searching review, but it falls just short of highlighting the fact that Mozilla's success derives from its unique mission, which encourages broad development and adoption, and is a direct byproduct of its nonprofit structure.

Because it is a nonprofit, Mozilla can lobby governments differently, and it has. Because it is a nonprofit, Mozilla can focus on delivering an unparalleled user experience, not on figuring out how to monetize the Web, hardware, etc.

Because it is a nonprofit, Mozilla can be truly disruptive in a way that its competitors cannot.

I'm sure there's not a day that goes by that John Lilly, Mitchell Baker, and the other Mozilla executives and employees don't wish that they had the resources their biggest competitors do. I'm equally sure there's not a day that goes by that they don't benefit from the decisions their resource constraints force upon them.

Firefox is as good as it is because of all that Mozilla has...and has not.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Apple has been desperately trying to turn Safari into a mainstream browser player. Unfortunately, its numbers simply don't compare to Firefox.

Safari 4.0 notched 11 million downloads in just three days. While significant, this number is almost a rounding error compared with Firefox 3.0.11, which pulled down 150 million downloads in just 24 hours, as Mozilla's Asa Dotzler reports.

With more than 300 million active users of Firefox, Mozilla is miles ahead of Safari in terms of users. Firefox also dwarfs Safari (and Internet Explorer) in community; indeed, it is Firefox's rich ecosystem of add-ons and extensions that arguably render irrelevant any performance advantages Safari claims.

Perhaps for this reason, despite the apparent rise of Safari, Firefox is actually gaining at its expense, as Dotzler calls out:

Safari, just like IE, gets virtually all of its usage by shipping as the bundled and default browser with its operating system...

Safari usage is growing...the explanation, though, is not more people choosing Safari; it's more people choosing Mac. That's a very different thing. Having chosen Mac, Safari users, about 27% of them, have opted out of the bundled and default browser and instead chosen Firefox.

That's an even higher conversion to Firefox rate than we're seeing on Windows.

I'm an example of this. I was one of those 11 million Safari downloads, but I did so because the Apple update system pushed the update to me, not because I actually wanted it. (Nor am I alone in this.) I use Safari roughly twice per month: once when I check my bill on Comcast.com (which doesn't seem to work with Firefox), and once when I review Net Applications for browser market share (which, again, doesn't seem to work properly with Firefox).

Other than that, it's all Firefox, all the time.

I'm a Mac fanatic, but that doesn't mean I swallow Safari along with it. Safari lacks the add-ons that make my Firefox experience so rich. Safari may be fast, but it's like having a fast car without enough room to seat my family or accommodate a stereo and cup holder. I'm sure there's an audience for that, but I'm not it.

So, while Microsoft resorts to charitable donations to goose its IE8 downloads, and Apple claims misleading Safari numbers, Firefox wins because it's simply better.

Update @ 3:50 PT: It turns out that the Comcast.com problem stems from Adblock Plus, not Firefox. I guess I shouldn't blame Firefox for its extensions' problems.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Apple recently redesigned the tab system for its Safari 4 browser, placing tabs at the very top of the browser screen. As an occasional Safari user, I find the new tab placement confusing. Half the time I forget that the tabs are even there. It seems like much has been given up for very little benefit. Apparently, I'm not alone in my complaints and confusion about the updated tab placement.

Even more confusing to me, however, is why Apple decided to change tabs in the first place. Did you request it? I know I didn't.

This, however, is the point. Apple doesn't ask. Sometimes, this is a very positive thing as Apple has a good track record of redefining the industry standard (e.g., iPhone's touch screen).

But sometimes it's a negative, as here.

Now consider the open-source alternative, Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla is also considering changing the way it does tabs, but it's going about it in a very un-Apple-esque fashion:

It's asking its user community to conceptualize the next generation of tabbed browsing in Firefox.

The Mozilla Labs Design Challenge 2009 is focused on answering the question, "Reinventing Tabs in the Browser - How can we create, navigate and manage multiple web sites within the same browser instance?" It's an important question, given the central role Web browsers play in computing today, and it's equally important that Mozilla wants to improve the tabbed-browsing experience by looking to its community base, rather than assuming the full burden of design and development itself.

Mozilla, in some ways, is the antithesis of Apple. The open-source bazaar competing against the Apple cathedral, and doing quite well.

Intriguingly, Microsoft probably will fall somewhere in the middle. Microsoft has always been fairly community-oriented, with a thriving partner ecosystem. As Microsoft seeks to revive its sagging (but still strong) browser fortunes, I suspect it will bridge the divide between Firefox and Safari by keeping Internet Explorer (IE) closed, but encourage a community of extensions--open source and proprietary--that will make for a richer browser experience.

This is the approach Microsoft is now taking with its CRM and SharePoint products, and I believe it's a strategy Microsoft will increasingly adopt as it seeks to embrace the best of both open-source and proprietary worlds.

Safari, the ultimate proprietary browser. Firefox, the ultimate open-source browser. And Internet Explorer, the ultimate mixed-source browser?

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Apple promises much with its Safari 4 browser, but it ultimately underdelivers. This isn't really its fault: the browser has simply become too big of a product for any one company to manage. Safari 4's blessing and cursing is that it's the brainchild of just one company. Safari lacks community.

Safari 4 is in public beta, but it comes with some pretty grandiose claims: "The fastest and most innovative Web browser for Mac and PC." This would resonate a bit more if Safari 4 didn't strive so hard to replicate features that Mozilla's Firefox browser already innovated (e.g., the "Awesome Bar"), offered performance that lives up to its billing (I found page rendering to be delayed on my Mac and not much faster, if at all, than either Internet Explorer on Windows or Firefox on the Mac), and came with a community to fill in the many missing features that the Firefox community delivers in spades.

Safari 4 installation screen

As CNET News' Stephen Shankland points out, it's this lack of an add-on community that handicaps Safari 4 the most: "The lack of something like the extensions architecture that Firefox pioneered still means Safari 4 is better only than Safari 3, not the competition."

Firefox, of course, is open source, and Safari, while borrowing from open source, is firmly proprietary. But that's not an excuse. The thing that has made Microsoft so powerful upon the desktop is that it has bred a rich partner ecosystem for Windows and Office which delivers Firefox-like add-on value. (Interestingly, Microsoft has largely failed to accomplish the same thing with IE.)

So, Apple could foster community around Safari 4, and perhaps it will: Apple has demonstrated with its App Store for the iPhone that it knows how to create an add-on culture.

But for now, Apple's Safari 4 claims ring hollow. If its community-building efforts are anything like what Apple accomplished for Safari 3, they will continue to ring hollow.

I'm a huge Apple fan and have used Macs exclusively for a long time, but Apple cannot keep pace with the innovation of the Firefox community. It's just one company, however smart and driven. It needs to bring the power of its App Store community-building to Safari or its new browser will remain underwhelming and underpowered.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

Years ago, Mozilla introduced its mobile equivalent of Firefox, then-called Minimo. Minimo unfortunately largely died of boredom within Mozilla. In early 2008, however, Mozilla resurrected Minimo as Fennec, and the heavens rejoiced (though even the heavens couldn't get it installed on [Name your mobile device of choice]).

As recently announced by Mozilla, however, Fennec just hit its second alpha release, with the option to download and install the mobile browser on Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops for testing purposes. (If you want to install it on your mobile device, you're going to need to have a Nokia N810 device on which to install it.)

Alpha 2 has made significant improvements to Fennec's performance (e.g., Faster panning and zooming plus improved responsiveness while pages are loading) and ease-of-use (e.g., Bookmarks, tabbed browsing with thumbnails, etc.)

But Ars Technica picks up on one of the best new "features" of Fennec:

As Fennec development continues to move forward, the value and significance of having the complete Firefox stack in a mobile environment is becoming increasingly apparent. Developers have already started creating innovative add-ons for the new browser that increase its functionality in various ways. For example, the TwitterBar extension allows users to post to Twitter directly from the Fennec address bar. An early Fennec port of Mozilla's Weave framework is also underway.

Like Apple's iPhone rendition of Safari, Fennec may well prove to be most disruptive when replicating and extending the desktop experience in a mobile device. This is where open-source Fennec could leapfrog its proprietary competition, including the iPhone's Safari.

Just as Mozilla's desktop Firefox set the pace for what a desktop browser can be by tapping into a disparate, global community of hackers with their own assumptions as to what a browser should mean so, too, can Fennec become the mobile browser's innovation leader by letting users define the experience, not any single company.

Much as I love Apple, I almost never use its Safari browser. If Mozilla can get Fennec right, I suspect I won't be using Apple's iPhone browser, either.

I was really pleased to see SugarCRM announce that its latest release (5.1) now fully supports the Apple Safari browser. When my company first started using SugarCRM I was still using Safari, but SugarCRM worked poorly in Safari. With 5.1, Mac users should have a better experience.

Of course, SugarCRM works great on Firefox, so it's not as if Mac users have been crippled from getting the most from SugarCRM. But this makes SugarCRM that much sweeter. (I see that my IT administrator upgraded us to 5.1 this morning, so I'll give it a spin with Safari and will let you know if I run into problems.)

Microsoft used to tell Mac visitors to its web pages to use Internet Explorer. When the company stopped developing IE for the Mac, it instead suggested that "Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari."

But now? As discovered by iTnews, Microsoft is now asking Mac and Windows users to use the open-source Mozilla Firefox browser, albeit a slightly outdated version (2.0).

Perhaps Microsoft doesn't want anyone using the uber-cool (and getting cooler all the time) AwesomeBar?

At least Microsoft is finally recognizing that there are technologies beyond those that it develops. It seems like a small thing to suggest that its site visitors could try something other than IE, but for me this marks a significant step forward for the software giant.