CARLSBAD, Calif.--Although it has managed to grab nearly a quarter of the browser market, Mozilla now finds itself in an unenviable position--competing against Microsoft, Apple, and Google all at the same time.
Speaking at D: All Things Digital on Thursday, Mozilla's Mitchell Baker noted that the company didn't set out with that in mind.
"That's not the business model you are going to pick," Baker said. "It is a daunting space to compete with the three giants of the era."
That said, Baker and fellow Mozilla executive John Lilly said there is still a place for Firefox.
"We've just got to be us," Lilly said. "Mozilla has always been about scratching an itch."
Another challenge, Lilly said, is that people don't perceive the browser as something that changes their Web experience. "Most people just think it's this pane of glass," Lilly said. Three quarters of people use the browser that comes with their computer, he said.
But browsers are important, Lilly maintained.
"We spend more time with our browser than we do in our cars," Lilly said. "The real truth, I spend more time with my browser than I do with my family."
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Mozilla's Chairman Mitchell Baker talked about "opening the mobile Web" this morning at the Web 2.0 Expo. While not discussing planned functionality in future products, Baker's vision of tomorrow's browser is less Minority Report and semantic search (see Hakia and Powerset) and more about making browsing a simpler experience by taking advantage of your browser history. She also vaguely mentioned Mozilla's plans to step into the mobile browser market later this year with a browser currently code-named "Fennec."
Mozilla has already taken the first steps to get to such a place in Firefox 3. The "awesome bar" will pull up Web pages you've visited as you type them into the address bar. Going forward Baker said she wanted to see the same easy and simple experience make its way into mobile variants of Firefox on all devices.
Mitchell Baker speaks at the Web 2.0 Expo.
(Credit: Seth Rosenblatt/CNET Networks)Despite the fact there's not an official variant of Firefox for mobile devices outside of Minimo, which is far from the experience Baker was describing, she has a bold vision for what she thinks browsing on mobile devices should be like. Baker thinks one of the most important factors is making it so people won't have to learn two different systems of browsing when using different devices. To a certain extent, Apple has already done this with the iPhone and the miniaturized version of Safari, but Mozilla's vision centers more around having that experience be the same no matter what device you're on.
Baker also rallied the crowd around the idea of ditching some of the "baggage" that's come in the technology world. She noted that browsers are coming up on being 15 years old, while the desktop and laptop hardware that runs them is twice the age, "our industry is wizards for technical innovations...the ability to overcome technical limitations is within our grasp."
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