By 2003, options were looking bleak for anyone interested in an open future for the web. However, in that year both Apple and Mozilla ignited a renaissance in web browser development inspired by the classic ideals of an open, interoperable, and standards-based browser.
Both Apple and Mozilla were facing severe challenges as they struggled to deliver new browsers, but their contributions ended up rapidly changing the landscape of the web.
Some now seem to think that Apple is launching a war against Firefox--including Mozilla executive John Lilly. Were there secret plans or perhaps even WMDs buried in Steve’ Jobs WWDC keynote?
Here’s a look at how Mozilla and Apple delivered a new generation of web browsers and how they relate to each other in a world still dominated by Microsoft.
Mozilla Rises from the Ashes as Firefox: 2003 - 2007.
Dissatisfied with the failed direction of AOL’s Netscape plans, and disillusioned by the absolute failure of the Mozilla Application Suite to catch on, Mozilla developers decided to refocus their efforts to deliver a slimmer, focused new web browser.
Mozilla’s pragmatic new goal was largely forced by the circumstances of parent company AOL choosing to shut down the remains of Netscape entirely in 2003. Since the Mozilla Organization was mostly made up of Netscape employees, Mozilla as a project had to quickly learn to swim or die trying.
Much like Apple in 1997, Mozilla in 2003 had to jettison its grandiose--yet ultimately deadweight--architectural fantasies and get busy developing and delivering products real people might actually want to use.
Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine rose from the Netscape ashes under the name Phoenix, then Firebird, then Firefox in a series of squabbles over the project’s name.
Once that was sorted out, Mozilla developers began copying the success of the original Netscape browser from a decade prior by releasing regular, innovative, and free updates to Firefox.
Learning Sustainability from Apache.
Netscape’s old business plan of giving away its web browser while selling Netscape Enterprise Server software was not going to work for Mozilla, because the world had already standardized upon the free and open Apache web server, in addition to the availability of several other free alternatives.
Incidentally, Apache also descended from the NCSA Mosaic server, although instead of becoming a commercial spinoff like Netscape or Spyglass, it became an open source project curated by the Apache Software Foundation. Unlike Netscape, Apache’s dominant position in servers was never overtaken by Microsoft.
After AOL pulled the plug on the Mozilla Organization by laying off or reassigning all of Netscape’s remaining employees in 2003, Mozilla reorganized as the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, much like Apache had.
In 2005, this foundation set up the Mozilla Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary to allow it to earn revenue on commercial partnerships. Mozilla is now supported almost exclusively by its contracts with search engines.
The Firefox browser is primarily aligned with Google, which pays Mozilla for the default direction of search engine requests to its servers. Around 95% of the $52.9 million in combined revenues of the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation come from search engine agreements.
Firefox has grabbed back a steady increase in market share, and currently has about 15% of the browser market.
That consistent growth forced Microsoft to respond with the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, after five years of no new major updates to its browser, even on Windows.Apple Launches Safari: 2003 - 2007.
After being left for three years with a stagnant version of Internet Explorer on the Mac, Apple announced the release of its own new web browser at the 2003 Macworld Expo.
While many expected Apple to release a customized browser based upon Mozilla’s Gecko engine, Apple instead chose to base its browser upon KHTML, the engine powering KDE’s Konquerer browser.
By the time Apple began work on Safari in 2002, Mozilla had a couple years of development effort invested in its new Gecko engine. However, KDE had invested a similar amount of time in its own KHTML browser engine, which began in 2000. KDE’s engine was faster, smaller, and offered better support for web standards.
Apple began work on the KHTML rendering engine, replacing its dependancies on the Qt toolkit with an adapter that wrapped the engine with a Cocoa friendly Objective-C API. That enabled Apple to preserve as much portability and commonality with KHTML as possible. The result was the open source WebCore library.
Paired with Apple’s JavaScriptCore, a library similarly based on KDE’s kjs JavaScript engine, the entire package is called WebKit. That framework is used by a number of Mac applications to render HTML content, including Safari.
Safari adds user interface features to WebKit in the same way Firefox adds a user interface to the Mozilla Gecko engine. Like Mozilla, Apple earns some revenue from partnerships with Google. However, the main reason for developing its own browser has been to ensure the Mac platform isn’t left with a second class web browser.
Safari for Windows: 2007.
That being the case, why would Apple port Safari to Windows?
It is popular to speculate about Apple choosing to port various Mac applications to Windows, following the pattern of QuickTime and iTunes. For example, various columnists have predicted that Apple would port iPhoto to Windows in order to sync pictures with the iPod. That never happened however.
QuickTime and iTunes exist on Windows as part of a business plan that offers music and movie downloads to a audience much larger than the Mac platform. Other applications such as iPhoto lack this potential.
Apple doesn't have to establish JPEG as a standard, because Microsoft's attempts to kill it with a proprietary replacement entangled in patent claims already failed.
Apple's iLife and iWork suites, along with the other various other apps included with Mac OS X, exist primarily to differentiate the Mac platform. Porting them to Windows defeats that purpose.
Is Safari Stealing Mozilla’s Lunch Money?
Others have speculated that Apple is following Mozilla’s business plan behind Firefox, using Safari on Windows to reap a windfall of search engine income. Safari already earns some money from its Google integration. However, there is a finite amount of revenue available in that system.
Apple did not go through the efforts of developing a Windows version of Safari to bleed a scant tens of millions of dollars away from Mozilla. While $50 million is a lot of money to a non-profit foundation with around 60 employees, it is not very significant to Fortune 500 company with nearly 20,000 employees.
Apple now earns annual revenues of around $20,000 million. It will not beat up Mozilla to steal its $50 million welfare check from Google. Mozilla is worth far more than $50 million to Apple anyway; Mozilla is a key partner and ally in developing interoperable web standards.
John Lilly: Why Mozilla Needs An Executive Blogger Policy. 
This elementary math and logic was lost upon Mozilla’s own COO John Lilly, who responded to the announcement of Safari’s release on Windows by spewing a tirade of fear, ignorance, and unfounded panic in his blog.
Key to his blog rage was a slide presented in Steve Job’s WWDC keynote that compared existing browser share with what Apple hoped to achieve with Safari on Windows.
A second “after” slide presented Safari eating more of the pie chart, but rather that eating into IE, the pie chart appeared to replace Firefox with a big slice of Safari.
To anyone who has ever used Apple’s Keynote--or say any pie chart software--the reason for this was obvious. Some Apple admin assistant simply plugged in numbers for Safari and IE, and the chart was created without thought for the feelings of Mozilla.
Rather than seeking a public correction of this public relations mistake, Mozilla’s Lilly rushed to blog about how Apple was wickedly plotting to create an evil corporate duopoly in the browser market with Microsoft, the company that screwed Apple over in 2001 by putting IE on ice after Netscape had been neutralized.
Were Lilly employed as an executive for a real company, he might have been fired for his rash, unprofessional, and sensationalist remarks. As I happen to know from first hand experience, working at a non-profits allows one to get away with all manner of unprofessional insanity. That’s often why they are not profitable.
As a rule of thumb, when bloggers make comments like “make no mistake: this wasn’t a careless presentation,” it’s a sign they are dramatically trying to portray some insignificant fluff as the center of the universe. To save you the hassle, I’ve already Googled to make sure I haven’t ever said that myself.
Nobody Elicits the Wrath and Fury of Steve Jobs in Secret.
If Apple or Jobs had any intention of actually suggesting that Safari was gunning solely for the share of the market owned by Mozilla’s Firefox, it would have been clearly stated as a goal, not passively suggested in a slide.
In 1997, Jobs responded to a two pronged attack by Michael Dell--both the comment that Dell would “shut Apple down and return its money to the shareholders,” and Dell’s abandonment of WebObjects in its online store following Apple’s acquisition of NeXT--by pointedly announcing that Apple was targeting Dell.
Jobs’ intentions weren’t coyly suggested by implicating hints, or reconstructed by enraged bloggers bending over backward to assemble a conspiracy theory attack on rational thought.
No, at the 1997 Apple Event introducing the new G3, Jobs announced the unveiling of a new WebObjects-based Apple Store--and a custom build-to-order system even more sophisticated than the one NeXT had built for Dell-- by displaying a photo of Michael Dell with a bullseye target on his head, saying “we're coming after you, buddy!”
Nobody had to read any interpretation into that. (I couldn’t find a screen capture of the event, so if you dig one up, send it in and I’ll include it.)
Fast forward ten years to the 2007 Macworld Expo keynote, where Jobs announced that it had had passed Amazon to become the fourth largest music store. “You can guess who our next target might be,” Jobs announced, with a slide showing Target as the third largest store.
Incidentally, both Amazon and Target sell a lot of Apple’s iPods and other products. Jobs had no problem pointing out that they also compete for sales in the music business.
Jobs doesn't make coy allusions to threats in keynote slides. He made no comments about killing Firefox, and said little about the actual slide that resulted in a cacophony of blog rage. Certainly if Jobs hoped to kick Mozilla off the world’s stage, he wouldn’t have been too shy to say it.
Why Apple Needs Mozilla More Than $50 Million.
As Winston Churchill might have said, “I cannot forecast to you the screed of Mozilla’s John Lilly. It is a logical fallacy, wrapped in a tantrum, inside a blog; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Apple’s corporate interest.”
Mozilla is an important ally to Apple in its efforts to push standardized web development. In a world without Mozilla, Apple would be alone in pushing for development of open standards on the web. Apple’s interests on the web are aligned in symbiosis with those of the open source community.
Just as Apple benefits from the open source development projects related to BSD and Linux, and those projects benefit in return from Apple’s promotion of interoperable tools and standards in education, commercial, and consumer markets, Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox share more in common than they do in difference.
In particular, Apple’s Safari has aligned Mac users by default to a standards-based browser. That has put an army of non-technical users who are unlikely to download an alternative browser into the same camp as Linux users who are pushing to spread the adoption of Firefox and the development of interoperable web applications.
Inventing Enmity Between the Friends of My Enemies.
Who would benefit from the invention of conflicts between the participants and sponsors of the open source community? Quite obviously, those who are enemies of open source development. And who is a bigger enemy of open source development than Microsoft?
Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft executives describe open source development as a cancer and a threat to capitalism. Microsoft recently floated the threat of legal thuggery against anyone who might consider using open source software, using unspecified patent claims.
The media presented this as a threat only against Linux, but in reality it also attempted to cast a cloud of fear and suspicion over open source as a whole. Of the 235 patents Microsoft claims, 45 apply to OpenOffice and 83 apply to other open source projects that are not part of the Linux kernel or its associated graphical interface.
Microsoft can’t compete as an innovator on an equal playing field. Apart from terrorizing the tech world with patent threats, the best way to fracture cooperation among open source advocates is to shatter coalitions and seed paranoid fear, uncertainty and doubt among members of the open source community.
Tyranny Loves an Obedient and Complicit Media.
Microsoft is working hard to leverage the media to deliver a non-stop disgorgement of propaganda against free and open source software. It’s no surprise that those directly benefiting from Microsoft’s domination of the industry with predatory and anticompetitive behavior support it, but it is sad to see the media happily join in.
An army of shock bloggers on CNET and its subsidiary ZDnet have joined the pawns of IDC’s Computerworld and InfoWorld, the militia of populist headline titillation sites like Digg, and a few self styled experts, to form a coalition of the willing to push the world back into the slavery of the late 90s, when there were few viable options to Microsoft’s products.
They apparently don’t want a free world where companies compete on merits, and where new technologies are rapidly applied for consumers and businesses in the form of new products and services.
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•They didn’t want to use the Mac in 1984, they wanted Microsoft to deliver a shoddy copy in 1995.
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•They didn’t want to hear about NeXT in 1988, they wanted to wait for Microsoft’s Cairo, which vanished in 1997.
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•They don’t want to bother with Firefox or Safari, because they like waiting four years between IE releases.
What else do they want you to forgo and instead patiently wait for Microsoft to duplicate? The iPhone! Based on historical precedent, a Microsoft equivalent may arrive in 2017, although that may also be the year that its vaporware promises simply vanish.Why Is a Mozilla Executive John Lilly Busy Blogging Knee Jerk Rants?
Given the outrageous fraud perpetuated by Microsoft over the course of its existence:
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•its repeated failure to deliver upon its promises to both consumers and partners,
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•its inability to offer any strategic vision for the future,
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•its stranglehold on the market earned through criminal behavior,
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•the well documented nature of its criminal behavior,
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•the billions Microsoft pays in fines each year for that criminal behavior,
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•the blind credulity of the majority of tech media that willingly pledges its allegiance to Microsoft despite an obviously plain reality,
there is some reason for concern when Apple’s most significant ally in web browser development indicates that it is being run by an executive who not only lacks any grasp of professionalism and logic, but is also willing to stir up contention rather than work to solve problems diplomatically.
The world needs a lot of things, but it does not need another pointless war eating up resources and spitting out destruction. Given the boundlessly arrogant nature of blogs, one might expect a LOLBBQ tirade based on a misinterpreted slide detail to entertain Digg users at some point.
However, when the blogger is John Lilly, or say any executive, it’s really a sign that Mozilla should have a blogger policy to prevent upper management from looking like fools to the public.
The Glass is Half Empty, And It’s Probably Poison.
Floating on top of Lilly’s paranoia that Jobs wants him jobless--and is plotting to scuttle his non profit foundation in order to team up with Microsoft to co-rule the browser world--are similarly insane fears that:
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•Apple is willing to kill its own largest ally for a measly $50 million or less.
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•Apple’s Safari browser will never develop beyond the initial beta release with its current bugs and limitations.
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•The million downloads of Safari were part of an invented fraud and conspiracy.
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•Apple is plotting to close down significant open source projects.
All of these overwhelmingly negative, and self-contradictory memes about Safari sound suspiciously similar to those circulated about every other Apple product.
People who seem to think that Mozilla’s $50 million in annual revenues are somehow significant to a company the size of Apple also seem to think that the $500 iPhone is prohibitively expensive to consumers buying millions of $500 iPods, game players, and other fancy high end phones. Perhaps there’s no coincidence!
These same people also warned us that iTunes was taking over the world while at the same time generating all sorts of statistical evidence to demonstrate that nobody uses iTunes and that it is a dismal, collapsing failure.
These same people also seem to think Apple will have a hard time getting Windows users to download Safari, despite Apple being one of the largest developers and distributors of downloadable Windows apps with iTunes and QuickTime.
You may be interested in a look at who might want Safari on Windows, what it shares in common with Apple’s existing offerings, and how it relates to Apple’s future strategies.
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The Web Browser Renaissance: Firefox and Safari
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
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