Google Spares Mozilla. Evil or Good?
Google’s “Do No Evil” creedo has been sorely tested. Google fan? There are hundreds of examples of Google’s inevitable evolution into a corporate power house of capitalist “evil.” See Google’s censorship collaboration with the Chinese government. Use a Google account or Google Desktop? Everything you do online is tracked and permanently recorded. Everything. It’s safe to say Google’s capitalistic engine is certainly more powerful than it’s “do no evil” creed.
So, as the economy cools and the corporate hunger pangs set in, I’m surprised to note that at least a spark of that “do no evil” spirit is still alive.
If you’re a internet marketing geek like me, you have at least three major browser shortcuts on your screen right now. Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google’s Chrome. I generally only use IE for sites that require it (lame) and I use Firefox to run my personal gmail account. Chrome powers most of my web surfing including my business Gmail account and Google searches.
“This is a free pass for Mozilla to fail.”
For some unknown reason, I happened to hit Google.com with IE and I saw something that doesn’t show up when visiting Google.com with Firefox or Chrome. Here’s what I saw: 
A targeted attack on Microsoft’s dominate search engine market share. Wise. Capitalistic. I approve. Yet, this is a free pass for Firefox. Do I approve? I don’t know. I’m a fan of the guys over a Mozilla. Smart guys trying to make the Internet a better place. And they have. But, I’m using Chrome because it’s better. Why let Mozilla off the hook? Even without all the add on’s that I loved about Firefox, Chrome is still more efficient for memory usage…running each tab and instances of Adobe’s Flash content in separate threads. This makes it faster. Chrome is even built on the open source, Web Kit project, making it’s development that more efficient. It’s definitely the current best mouse trap.
So, I note and approve of the apparent “do no evil” intent to spare Mozilla. But won’t real competition make Mozilla an even better browser? So Google holds off on shooting at Mozilla, allowing them to offer an inferior product for the moment, when pressure could force Mozilla to defend their ground through performance improvements… Seems like a set up to me. Is Google afraid that a more efficient, faster Firefox will rub out Chrome’s niche?
They have a contract with Firefox that Firefox defaults to Google for its search features. It expires, I think, next year, and from the looks of it, Google isn’t going to renew the contract. I expect once it expires they will be promoting Chrome on any non-Chrome browser.
Very interesting. As with most in the online space, firefox add-ons help us get through the day – any idea why Chrome doesn’t support add-ons like Firefox does? I was suprised to learn that this was the major flaw with Chrome. And it seems if Chrome had the capability for add-ons then it would be a clear cut winner in the browser race.
Did a search for “chrome add ons” (on Google of course!) and found mychromeaddons.com. There’s a handful there but nothing I would bother using.