Lately, Mitchell Baker has been writing about a shift in Mozilla's focus to extend well beyond the browser. Her essays reflect an urge to move into the sphere being explored by Google's Chrome OS and Palm's Web OS.
Web browsers, despite early contention in the marketplace and the courts, have become a utility--in the economic sense of the word. A web browser is now as essential as water, sewer, and electricity. Furthermore, there's no interest left in competing over price because margins are already dangerously low (if not non-existant). The standards are as well defined as they are supported and there's little room to push new standards upon other vendors.
Ultimately, what can differentiate Mozilla in this sphere is its dedication to what Mitchell calls "User Sovereignty." Instead of having to put your trust in a number of 3rd party for-profit entities, maybe Mozilla can envision a world of web services that put privacy and data ownership back into the hands of the creators. This is similar to the work I've been doing with XOMBO, to establish an enterprise web desktop powered by a "cloud" that can be hosted yourself.
This means that Mozilla must expand its mission into developing web server software and increasingly comprehensive developer frameworks on both the client and server sides of the equation. Luckily, they have a background in developing web servers thanks to the lineage inherited from Netscape Communications, Inc. However, there's still a significant gap between having a web server and developing interfaces (XML-RPC, JSON-RPC, REST, SOAP, etc...) to work with the next generation of browser-based applications. Where W3C is able to define and perfect standards in an objective way, Mozilla is poised to create the tools that embrace those standards and make them available to all developers. Powerful standards-compliant tools will breed a whole new generation of web applications and make it even easier for developers to get started using the latest technologies.
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| The mission of Microsoft's Technical Evangelist team. |
Mozilla's installation base, brand recognition, and cross-platform support make it a virtual "no brainer" for anyone looking to build applications--the same desires Microsoft expressed in their technical evangelist slideshow.
Now that we've established the multiple layers Mozilla must be set out to bake into their cake, they simply need a compelling application to act as its icing. I believe that Mozilla's target should be to create an open source, distributed search engine. With their agreement with Google presumably coming to its contractual end this year, Mozilla needs an alternative and unbiased search engine that they can use to generate additional traffic-based revenue (ads).
In the end, if my interpretation is right, Mozilla could be set out to compete with some of the largest players in the market by creating an open source alternative. With Microsoft, Google, and Apple in their sights, will Mozilla be able to extend itself well beyond what was achieved with Netscape in the "portal" boom of the late `90's? Time will tell, but I believe that Mozilla is the only public-benefit organization equipped to take on the challenge.
