Savio Rodrigues

Although a renewed search deal between Google and Mozilla is welcome news to millions of Firefox users, Mozilla has three big ideas for 2012 and beyond that will see it competing much more aggressively with Google, Facebook, and Apple. Here's why you should be cheering on Mozilla.

Biting the hand that feeds it?
As InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard notes, it was in Google's best interests to prevent Microsoft's Bing from becoming the default search provider in Firefox. As much as Mozilla relies on Google for more than 80 percent of its revenue, so too does Google rely on the search traffic from millions of Firefox users. Although Mozilla's blog post about the recently signed deal espouses a mutually beneficial agreement, it's difficult to believe that the relationship is anything but strained between Google and Mozilla.

An ex-Google employee recently expressed concerns about the antiquity of Google's software infrastructure. This is the same software infrastructure underpinning Google App Engine, and as Google prepares an enterprise-class version of Google App Engine, it's important to understand what's under the hood.

[ Get the key insights on open source news and trends from InfoWorld's Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]

A high-profile VC and a well-known mobile application developer were recently involved in a debate about whether to build for Android or Apple mobile platforms. The answer, it turns out: "it depends," "both," or "simply build for the mobile browser." The third answer is the correct one for most developers.

App developers and companies have different goals, so why follow the same advice?
Well-respected VC Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures, has suggested that developers interested in the largest user base should invest as much, if not more, in developing for Android as they do for iOS. Wilson justifies his recommendation by looking back at the desktop operating system market: "I believe the mobile OS market will play out very similarly to Windows and Macintosh, with Android in the role of Windows."

A prediction in 2009 that Ubuntu usage was going to grow in the face of Red Hat's Linux operating system dominance could easily have been laughed off. Yet that's exactly what Ubuntu has been able to pull off, thanks in part to developers and growing adoption of cloud computing.

Developers are ahead of the Ubuntu usage curve
Like many, I was quite surprised by results from the 2009 Eclipse User Survey that found strong adoption of Ubuntu on developer desktops and production servers alike.

According to the latest Net Applications numbers, Internet Explorer stills hold 60 percent of the browser market, while Firefox is stuck at about 23 percent and Chrome has doubled its share over the past year to reach 7.5 percent. Yet the two open source contenders have a disproportionately large mindshare among smart business users -- and are taking distinctly different approaches to win hearts and minds.

For Google, the main selling point of Chrome is speed. Mozilla, on the other hand, is banking on Firefox's flexibility and functionality.

By now you've read that Oracle has sued Google for patent and copyright infringement related to the Android platform. Google has responded that the claims are baseless and counter to the open source community movement. In all the hullabaloo, the press, pundits, Oracle, and Google seem to have ignored the impact on enterprise Java.

Here's why IT decision-makers shouldn't ignore the enterprise Java impact.

With the iPad's release and growing adoption of touchscreen smartphones, it's only a matter of time before natural user interfaces become a mainstream IT requirement.

Useful, Usable, and Desirable Applications

I've been spending some time learning about enterprises that are evolving their Web applications for devices other than a personal computer. Several increasingly related trends are behind this evolution:

Lately there's been lots of blog and Twitter chatter about recognizing an open source product. While an interesting intellectual exercise, the debate could also have a real-world impact on IT purchasing decisions.

Open Source "Purity"
I used to spend time debating the open source "purity" of a given open source vendor. I moved on when Shaun Connolly, with JBoss at the time, wrote a post titled "Open Source Community and Barack Obama." In 2010, it's incredibly difficult to define an "open source vendor," because virtually every IT vendor uses open source in its products, contributes to open source, or provides services around open source.

Reports suggest that Google will partner with phone maker HTC to deliver the much hyped and long-awaited Google phone -- the gPhone, as some like to call it. The Google-branded phone is rumored to be out in early 2010 with advertising starting in January.

As PC World's Ian Paul suggests, the driver behind a Google-branded phone is to "own the customer experience" through the gPhone. While this makes complete sense for Google, what does it mean for Android and, more important, handset manufacturers building Android-based devices?

Project Renaissance aims to deliver a new user interface for OpenOffice.org. The team recently completed the prototyping phase and is asking users to provide feedback on the eight UI options, which strongly resemble Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon UI.

Response to the ribbon-based UI options has been, well, one-sided:

Are you confused by reports that 60 percent of companies plan to skip Windows 7, while at the same time reading that Windows 7 is selling well in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, according to a recent IDC estimate of Windows 7 forecasted sales? Join the club.

[ Also on InfoWorld: "Microsoft is learning from adoption-led marketing | Get the analysis and insights that only Randall C. Kennedy can provide on PC tech in InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blog. And download our free Windows performance-monitoring tool. ]

I'm an equal-opportunity critic of bad decisions, regardless of whether they're coming from an open source or closed source purveyor. A few weeks back I wrote that the IE8 "Get the Facts" campaign gets it wrong by showing little respect for the target audience's intelligence. Today, I'm calling out Mozilla for needlessly playing the same game: "See How We Stack Up" in Mozilla-speak.

Someone at Mozilla wants me to believe that Firefox is so much better than IE that Firefox leads 6 to 1 in the "handy browser comparison chart". I don't disagree that Firefox leads in the items that Mozilla included in the comparison. But if Firefox didn't lead in "Thousands of free way to personalize your online experience," Mozilla would not have put that item on the comparison table.