“As much as anything else, it’ll mean there’s another interesting browser that users can choose. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — there’s been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better.”
However, with Chrome now out in the open, Google become one of Mozilla’s rival. Will the Chrome-Firefox competition lead to changes in the relationship between the two companies? Lilly doesn’t think so. Moreover, he claims that Google and Mozilla have collaborate on several project and expects this to continue.
“Mozilla and Google have always been different organizations, with different missions, reasons for existing, and ways of doing things. I think both organizations have done much over the last few years to improve and open the Web, and we’ve had very good collaborations that include the technical, product, and financial. […]
So all those aligned efforts should continue. And similarly, the parts where we’re different, with different missions, will continue to be separate. Mozilla’s mission is to keep the Web open and participatory — so, uniquely in this market, we’re a public-benefit, non-profit group (Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation) with no other agenda or profit motive at all. We’ll continue to be that way, we’ll continue to develop our products & technology in an open, community-based, collaborative way.”
Furthermore, Google has been one of Mozilla’s financial supporters. Frankly speaking, it was expected from Google to support anyone competing against Microsoft’s attempts to monopolize the web, and Firefox has proved over the years to be an excellent adversary. However, it remains to be seen if Google will continue to be as friendly in the future, now that it has its own browser to fight Internet Explorer.