Google and Firefox renewed their partnership last week, ensuring that Google will remain Firefox's default search engine (and major source of revenue). Kara Swisher reported that the deal brings in just under $300 million per year for Firefox, amounting to almost $1 billion total. Google has to cough up the cash to prevent this coveted spot in the popular browser from going to Bing and Microsoft.
MG Siegler wondered why Google would bear this expense, "paying all that money to a competitor." He considered whether antitrust concerns played into the decision, or whether it was about mobile dominance. But Chrome engineer Peter Kasting offered a simpler answer today: "Google is funding a partner," not a competitor.
Well, 2011 didn't see the beginning of the end of Firefox after all. That is, Google renewed its agreement with Mozilla, ensuring the nonprofit's popular browser wouldn't lose 84% of its revenue and thus face the ominous fate that some predicted and others decried as unrealistic.
The browser was knocked from its #2 slot behind Internet Explorer, though, at least according to one company's stats. The culprit? Google's Chrome, a browser half Firefox's age.
Ending a month of speculation, Google has renewed its search exclusivity deal with Mozilla, who has long featured Google as the default browser on its Firefox Web browser.
When the deal expired in November, it gave rise to speculation that Google might not renew it, which would deprive Firefox of about 84% of its annual revenue. That possibility seemed bolstered by the fact that Google's Chrome was said to have recently ousted Firefox as the number two browser on the market. An end to the deal could have put the future of Firefox in jeopardy, although some thought the ominous predictions were overblown.
Dear Web developers: Microsoft knows how many hours of your life have been wasted trying to troubleshoot designs and functionality for Internet Explorer 6, and they're sorry. They promise they're never going to do that to you again.
To ensure such nightmares are never relived, the company will start rolling out automatic upgrades to Internet Explorer across Windows 7, Vista and XP, the company announced in a blog post today. Rather than relying on users to update the browser themselves or requiring you to trick your parents into updating theirs around the holidays, Windows will update to the latest compatible version of IE on its own.
When it comes to HTML5 implementation, Android has historically lagged behind most of the other major mobile platforms. iOS is considered the crown jewel of HTML5 performance and even Windows Phone has faired better than Android. That may all be about to change.
In Sencha's latest HTML5 benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich was put through the paces. The newest flagship Android device acquitted itself well. As Sencha puts it; "The Galaxy Nexus is a big step forward for developers looking to leverage HTML5 on Android." See the details below.
Google just released the latest stable version of its Chrome browser, which adds support for multiple personal profiles. Chrome already has syncing of bookmarks, extensions, passwords and settings for one user, but today's release allows multiple accounts.
For shared computers, each user can save have his or her own settings, as well as switch between two different profiles, such as a work account and a personal account. This allows for a synced experience using Chrome on any device. All you have to do is log in, and all your browser settings appear.
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Just a few years ago, Mozilla's Firefox browser was rising fast as the chief challenger to Microsoft's stubbornly dominant Internet Explorer. Things change pretty fast in the world of Internet technology, however, and today Firefox's once bright future seems much less certain.
In 2008, Mozilla entered into a three-year partnership with Google. In exchange for remaining the default search engine on Firefox, Google hands over about 84% of Firefox's total revenue. Well, it's 2011 now and, as ZDNet's Ed Bott points out, the status of that partnership is unclear.
The latest data on browser trends from Sitepoint show that more people browse the Web on smartphones than use Internet Explorer 6 and 7 combined. Those two old clunkers have been the bugbears of Web developers for years, requiring sites to degrade as nicely as possible to that least common denominator of browsers. But it's a new world now; 6.95% of Web activity in November 2011 was on mobile browsers, and only 6.49% was on IE 6 or 7.
As Richard MacManus pointed out this week, there are lots of interesting trends in Web browsing lately. Another big story is that Google's Chrome (our consumer product of the year) has eclipsed Mozilla Firefox as the number 2 browser for the first time. But the shift from desktop to mobile is the real trend. The days of developing for the worst desktop browser are drawing to an end, and having the best possible mobile site has become a priority.
As soon as Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet started shipping last month, users eagerly unboxed it, took it for a spin and started posting their reviews online. Some were enamored with the device through and through, while others expressed disappointment over its shortcomings, one of which was a slower browsing experience than expected. As compelling as they may be, what many of these first impressions lack is hard data to back them up. Until now.
Google employee and Web performance expert Steve Souders decided to put Silk through its paces and test its performance alongside other leading tablet devices. He loaded a series of 11 URL's on the Fire, iPad 1, iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab versions 7.0 and 10.1. Souders, who created the Y Slow Firefox plugin while working at Yahoo, used a tool he built called Loadtimer to test the load speeds of each site. The results confirm what many have already noticed: Silk is slow.
Only three years after hitting the market, Google's Chrome Web browser has overtaken Firefox as the #2 most-used browser, according to new data from StatCounter.
Chrome now has 25.69% of the global browser marketshare, just a slight notch above Firefox, which holds on at 25.23%. In September, it was predicted that Chrome was on track to bump Firefox from the #2 slot by about this time, and sure enough that projection has come true. Granted, that prediction was also based on StatCounter numbers, and this data often looks different depending on who is doing the reporting.
