The meaning of the existence of Firefox

As for the share of web browsers, as of 2019, Google Chrome is taking the first place with a big vote. The second place is Firefox. Firefox has suffered big and small ups and downs so far. But Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, says he is fighting for the future of the Web, not just for market share.

Netscape Communications, the predecessor of Mozilla, was founded in 1994 and renamed Mozilla in 1998. In 2004, Mozilla Firefox version 1, a web browser, was released. As of 2019, Mozilla had the second most popular browser after Google Chrome, but after its development, until 2019, there was a rise in popularity. Netscape Navigator, developed by Netscape Communications, was a browser that dominated the market in 1996. But in 1998, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer lost its throne.

Since then, the gap between Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer has widened overwhelmingly, and Firefox, which appeared in 2004, gradually expanded its market share, accounting for 30% of the total market share in 2010. However, Google Chrome will appear. As of the second quarter of 2019, Google Chrome occupied 70% and Firefox occupied 10%.

Firefox’s rival is Chrome, but with Chrome falling into a monopoly, the Mozilla Foundation’s mission is not simply to regain market share, but to protect the future of the web. Chairman Mitchell Baker says that in the early days of the Internet, we thought that all businesses and social networks were doing for us, but we slowly learned that they did not. “We need someone to protect us.”

Chrome is developed by Google’s parent company Alphabet. Although Google’s monopoly status has been frequently questioned recently, Alphabet is hoping to control Google Search and Chrome, and to do everything on the web through Google. This is the reason why voices appear to risk the current situation.

For example, AMP promoted by Google makes all website addresses start with’google.com’ in order to direct Google to the place hosting the website on the Google server. Pages tend to be displayed at the top of Google search results because AMP makes page loading a little faster. For this reason, many companies use AMP.

What Mozilla is concerned about is that there is no one that can stand up to Google’s dominance of the web. Technically, it is possible for an advertising company to create a browser that collects user information, but if the browser developer is an advertising company, this function is not provided.

Like Google, Facebook is also eager to use user information for advertising. This makes it difficult for Firefox to use the Facebook container extension to isolate activities on Facebook to container tabs and to track users on the external web. Mozilla also introduced Firefox Monitor, a password manager (Firefox Lockwise), and an encrypted file sharing service (Firefox Send) that alerts you when your online account is subject to known data breaches, as well as a trial VPN service. Started to do.

“The dystopian future is coming,” says Baker. “The danger lies with all of us.” She asks whether the novel 1984 is the possibility of the future as long as humanity is in front of it.

Companies that value the protection of user privacy include Apple. Safari, developed by Apple, has intelligent tracking protection. At first glance, Apple and Mozilla are developing browsers with similar goals, but in a sense, Apple is a more dangerous competitor to Mozilla than Google.

The reason is this. Desktop computer users can always choose an option other than Google Chrome, and Google Chrome is preinstalled on their Android smartphone, but they can use a different browser. On the other hand, on iOS, it is possible to install Firefox, but on iOS, other than Safari, browsers cannot be set as defaults, and browsers running on iOS have technical limitations, such as having to use the Safari rendering engine.

Apple’s position can be summed up by saying that consumers must trust Apple and that Apple is better than others. What’s available through Apple for this is great, but anything that’s a bit alien and doesn’t fit Apple won’t work. Until now, to make the Mozilla browser powerful, it has invested heavily in the development of rendering engines, but Apple is simply banning Mozilla technology and preventing it from gaining power. Related information can be found here.