As always on this blog, this article does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
In the light of the recent Google announcements about Chrome, Chrome OS and the Web App Store, I am getting questions from people around me and from reporters. Many people seem to forget how Google and Mozilla differ. While both of us- like Apple and Microsoft - are browser vendors who care a lot about speed and security, Mozilla is different by nature. Mozilla is a non-profit, mission-driven organization who cares about the health of the Open Web. I recognize that this may be hard to understand, as it's not very concrete. So let's see in very concrete ways how the Mozilla approach differs from the other browser vendors, who are all commercial ventures[1]
An App Store for the Open Web, not for a specific browser
Mozilla has recently announced a Prototype of an Open Web App Ecosystem. Let's see how this differs from Google's announcement on a similar topic.
In Mozilla's approach, Open Web Apps:
- work in all modern Web browsers
- Support portable purchases: An app purchased for one browser works in other browsers, and across multiple desktop and mobile platforms without repurchase
- Can be distributed by developers directly to users without any gatekeeper, and distributed through multiple stores, allowing stores to compete on customer service, price, policies, app discoverability, ratings, reviews and other attributes.
Fore more details, go read Pascal Finette's recent post: Building the Open Web App Ecosystem.
On the other hand, Google's App Store requires Chrome and centralized, two things that differ from the principles of the Open Web (choice of browsers and services to use)[2].
Getting a personalized experience without losing your privacy or control over your data
The promise of the cloud is that our data is accessible from anywhere. Like many other people, I love this idea! Now it does not necessarily mean that everything has to be stored centrally. As an individual, I want my data to stay private and not data-mined, while enjoying the benefits of the cloud.
Firefox Sync is one of these services. Built into Firefox 4 for both mobile and desktop and available as an extension for Firefox 3.6, it enables people to store their browsing history on a server so that they can access history, passwords, bookmarks and even open tabs across all his/her devices.
Mozilla understand that people expect things to work right out of the box, so we offer a server to host people's data in order to make their life easier.
- User data, when hosted by Mozilla, is encrypted on the client side, so it cannot be data-mined by Mozilla (what Mozilla hosts is encrypted data that cannot be analyzed).
- Users - should they want to - can run their own server: the protocol is public and extensible, the code is free and open (for both client and server).
Some other browser vendors offer similar services, but you cannot run them on your own server and data is not encrypted.
Conclusion
All Browsers are making significant progress in terms of performance and some of them also offer more when it in terms of security and standards support. But when it comes to choosing which browser you are going to use, one should consider the reasons of the organization who's producing it, and how it relates to keeping the Web Open and user data private.
7 réactions
1 De Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl - 14/12/2010, 20:55
Let's keep honest here : there are some companies, which are lucrative by design, but still cares a lot about the Open web, and interoperability. I'm thinking about Opera Software here.
2 De Biloute_62 - 14/12/2010, 21:03
Bonjour Tristan,
J'ai choisi de rester sur Firefox pour cette raison : garder à l'esprit l'ouverture du web.
Les navigateurs sont plus performant et respectent les standards du web à l'instar de IE9 ou Chrome. Et il faut continuer à entretenir cette dynamique.
Mais aujourd'hui, le navigateur offre des services plus importants. Hors comme vous le dite dans votre article pour accéder à ce service il est nécessaire d'avoir leur navigateur.
Pour moi un exemple est frappant celui de google chrome dans la messagerie Gmail, sur chrome je peux prendre une pièces jointe d'un e mail reçu et la mettre directement sur mon ordinateur (Glisser/deposer).
Mais si je suis sur un autre navigateurs je ne peux pas le faire.
Cette fonctionnalité qui peut paraitre anodine montre une dérive de l'internet. Je ne veux pas et je ne souhaite pas que l'internet devienne un Itunes store.
Je ne crois qu'il faut stigmatiser certaines entreprises. Mais de critiquer leurs actions (Bonne ou mauvaise) pour permettre un meilleur respect de l'ouverture du web.
Concernant les données de la vie privée, pour moi il est essentiel de permettre a chacun de gérer ses données comme il le souhaite. Il est impossible de supprimer un compte Itunes ou très difficile de supprimer les données sur facebook et/ou de savoir ou sont elles stockées.
Cordialement
3 De Tab Atkins Jr. - 14/12/2010, 23:17
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. You're not just passing around an opaque blob of encrypted data. The entire point of syncing is that the browser can decrypt it and use the data.
You might not datamine synced data (I don't know if Chrome does any mining of theirs). But by definition it's possible for you to do so.
4 De antistress - 15/12/2010, 00:11
I used to agree with the statement that Mozilla Firefox is better for your privacy.
However it looks that IE9 will have strong fonctionality to better handle privacy (« Tracking protection » 1).
Even Robert Kaiser alone made cool work with SeaMonkey and Tahoe Data Manager which can be downloaded as a Firefox plugin 2.
With Firefox 4, Mozilla did a great job in terms of performances and standard but privacy seems to be postponed.
Nothing related to http://jboriss.wordpress.com/2010/0... has been implemented for Firefox 4.
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/04/ac... will also not be part of Firefox 4.
I would have loved to see Firefox making progress related to performance and standards and still keeping leading for privacy.
1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/...
2 https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firef...
5 De Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl - 16/12/2010, 11:17
@Bilote_62 : Chez moi, le comportement que vous décrivez ne marche pas, ni avec Chrome, ni avec Firefox. Par contre, avec les deux navigateurs, je peux ajouter des pièces jointes par glisser déposer.
@Tab Atkins Jr. : This is not non-sense, this is cryptology. The user password used to decrypt the data is stored locally, on the user computer, and Mozilla cannot access it. Unless they push to the user an update of Firefox that acts as a spyware, which is very unlikely to happen. It is basically like if Mozilla was storing the data inside a safe created by the user without having the key to open it. They can send the safe back to the user, the user opens it, and uses the data.
6 De Thunderseb - 16/12/2010, 13:00
Pour ma part, j'utilise Firefox avant tout pour la puissance de création d'addons, chose totalement impossible dans les autres navigateurs. Je développe mes propres addons pour modifier le navigateur comme je le veux.
Au niveau du respect de la vie privée et des buts recherchés par Mozilla, je dois dire que c'est tout a fait secondaire pour moi. L'important est d'avoir un navigateur aux normes et qui possède un moteur de rendu qui évolue rapidement et en accord avec ce que veulent les développeurs. Je trouve que Firefox (enfin, Gecko et les différents moteurs d'exécution du JavaScript) remplissent bien ce rôle.
Je regrette néanmoins que Firefox "rentre dans le moule" des autres navigateurs en proposant une interface (Firefox 4) épurée, peu pratique pour les développeurs, et finalement calquée sur les autres navigos. Mais, mais, on a toujours je choix d'avoir les onglets SOUS la barre d'adresse ou les menus affichés par défaut.
7 De Dominique De Vito - 16/12/2010, 14:51
Nice, open web apps and open web data are taken into through these 2 initiatives.
Just a question: AFAIK open web app may be run on Firefox due to enhancements provided by Jetpack. Or to say things differently, how Jetpack is related to such open web apps, and is it needed to let run open web apps on Firefox ?
If it's true, if Jetpack is needed, how these open web apps are going to run on top of other browsers ? Is Jetpack going to be ported ?
At least, AFAIK no Jetpack port is needed for Chrome because this browser has already a simple mechanism enabling to define extensions, needed for open web apps. But what about other browsers ?
Thanks.