Mozilla is carefully calling the move a “planned leadership transition,” saying Lilly had always wanted to move to the VC world. In a blog post, Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker (who had the CEO gig before Lilly) wrote:

The timing of this announcement — just as we begin a formal search for a new CEO — is to make this process more open than is generally the case and is a reflection of the uniqueness of Mozilla as a public benefit organization dedicated to openness and participation in Internet life.

Lilly wrote on his own blog that he would leave Mozilla later this year after a replacement is found.

Mozilla has been in, not exactly a holding pattern for the last two years, but — let’s just say its new product releases haven’t been particularly snappy. Exhibit A is Fennec, the company’s long-gestating mobile browser. Mozilla now measures its web browser Firefox at 30 percent global market share, and it laid out a vision yesterday for Firefox 4, its next major release.

The company’s long-championed HTML 5 is now firmly gliding toward the mainstream, but that’s mainly due to other key players like Apple and Google pushing it so hard. Google, which has long been a key financial backer of Firefox, now challenges it directly with Chrome and is expected to open-source the VP8 video codec as soon as next week at its developer conference, which would displace the HTML 5 video codec Mozilla has been funding, Ogg Theora.

Here’s a video interview Om did with Lilly shortly after he took the CEO gig in 2008:

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What Does the Future Hold for Browsers?

Last month saw the release of Firefox Mobile for Maemo, but without many devices to take advantage of it, people are wondering which platform will be the next one to see Mozilla’s browser. Windows Mobile has long had an alpha build of Firefox Mobile, but it hasn’t seen much updating in the past year or so. And with Microsoft making a clean break with Windows Mobile 7, that puts the Mozilla folks in a bit of pickle. Do they continue work on the existing alpha for Windows Mobile 6.x and lower or does the development team bide their time and start with Windows Phone 7?

While waiting for an answer to that question, the obvious alternative is looking like Firefox Mobile for Android. And even though we’ve seen some early porting progress on the Android front, it could be a while before a finished product arrives. It’s likely to happen this year, according to Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s VP of mobiles. During Mobile World Congress, he explained to TechRadar that Android is a “modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us. It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake.” Part of the holdup for Firefox Mobile on Android is the different code base — Android is built on Java while Firefox Mobile is developed in the C and C++ languages, says Sullivan. Now that the Open Handset Alliance supports native C and C++ code in the NDK, Mozilla can move forward on the Android front.

Coding platforms aside, at the end of the day I wonder how many Android handset owners will consider moving to Mozilla for browsing when the time comes. I don’t see Google stopping the availability of a competing browser, but I do expect to see the Android browser mature by the time Mozilla delivers. The main advantages of a Mobile Firefox version is in the extensions, plug-ins and desktop synchronization. Google has already made good progress on the last front with its Chrome browser and Bookmark Sync — news today hit that even more data will be synchronized in the future. Might Google be able to offer some, if not all, of those other features on the native Android browser before the year is out? I know we have a large contingent of Firefox fans — jkOnTheRun readers use Firefox more than any other browser — so is this development something you’re eagerly awaiting or is it just another browsing option you’ll check out on an Android handset?

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Google’s Chrome Is Poised to Come On Strong

This weekend, during my onstage interview with Mozilla CEO John Lilly, I asked him what his plans were to get Firefox going on mobiles, especially since Webkit had gained so much attention and market share. “It is a different day, same story on the mobile as it was on the desktop,” Lilly quipped. On the desktop, Firefox continues to try to disrupt the entrenched incumbent, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Sure, we are behind, but we didn’t want to do a browser that didn’t do the whole web,” Lilly said. “We wanted to build a browser that did everything — Javascript, CSS, Flash, SVG, video and audio. What that meant was we had to wait for a while for devices to get better to handle this modern browser.” Lilly said that Mozilla’s mobile browser, code-named Fennec, is Firefox with the most advanced rendering engine. “It is the most advanced mobile browser,” he said. Fennec is based on the Firefox 3.6 engine, which is not even available on the desktop just yet.

And Lilly isn’t just tooting his own horn. I’ve been playing around with an early version of Nokia’s N900 device, and Firefox is perhaps its single biggest standout feature. It works just like it does on a desktop and, thanks to the seamless integration of AwesomeBar, a smarter version of a URL bar that uses Mozilla Weave, I can get access to all my bookmarks, my browsing history and other preferences. (Related Post: “Coming Soon: A Mozilla App for the iPhone“)

When I asked Lilly about why Mozilla is interested in the Nokia Maemo, which is still not a viable platform, he explained that Mozilla was betting on the future and Maemo was a modern mobile OS built with the Internet in mind. “Nokia is invisible in the U.S., but that is not the case in rest of the world,” Lilly said. Even if N900 doesn’t prove to be the device that gets explosive adoption, then the next Maemo device will be the one that gets traction. Mozilla will release Firefox for Windows Mobile and then Android, he said.

Why? Because he thinks there is a lot of overlap among folks who use Firefox and those who might buy Android-based devices.  When I asked why not develop Firefox for BlackBerry, Lilly said that because the BlackBerry is a Java-based platform, Mozilla had no interest in building a browser for it, regardless of the number of devices in use. Mozilla also has some misgivings about Symbian, preferring to develop for Maemo instead.

“Until recently, Android was Java, but they released Android NDK which uses C/C++ and that is what we program in, so we are now looking at developing Firefox for Android,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mobile for Mozilla.

“Mozilla Firefox will be the first mobile browser to support add-ons,” boasted Sullivan, pointing to the fact that nearly 2 billion Firefox add-ons have been downloaded to date, and they’ve spawned successful companies such as StumbleUpon. He expects similar traction for Firefox on the mobile. “We have been spending a lot of time on making sure that JavaScript and our engine work really fast on ARM processors,” Sullivan said. “That has taken some time.”

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The reason: Mozilla wants developers to embrace the more open HTML5 standards instead of developing separately for different mobile platforms. “For a company of 20 people, it is hard to support multiple platforms,” Lilly said. “Even if one platform takes 20 percent of the  market, there are other platforms you still need to develop for, and that isn’t easy for a small company. So that is why we are with Google in supporting HTML5 technologies.”

Like Lilly, Sullivan acknowledges that they have their work cut out for them: Webkit-based browsers and Opera are the dominant players in mobile, and Firefox will need to prove itself.  The good news is that mobile is a much bigger market than desktops; multiple browsers and companies can thrive. With Nokia, Mozilla has a willing (and somewhat desperate) ally, and that is a good start.

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Despite it success, the open-source browser maker finds itself in an all familiar situation: fighting the odds on multiple fronts. Unlike the past when it had to contend just with Microsoft, Mozilla’s competition has grown many fold. Furthermore, the browser battleground has grown much bigger and now also includes mobile devices. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, Apple’s Safari 4.0, Google’s Chrome, Opera and Firefox are the five major competitors on the desktop, while WebKit-based browsers are the champions of the mobile world. Last week, when Mozilla announced its new Firefox 3.5 browser software, I decided to reach out to CEO John Lilly for a quick conversation about the state of the browser market. After all, Firefox’s latest browser comes at a time when Google, Apple and Microsoft have all upped the ante in the browser marketplace.

“The world is a lot different from a year ago, and we have three brand new browsers and there is a lot more competition and as a result the users are getting a lot more technology,” said Lilly. But he was not coy about the fact that Firefox has taken over a substantial share of the market, snatching it away from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. “Having said that, I think it is uncomfortable, because our rivals have 2-3 times the magnitude of people and resources, and they are relentless.” (Techcrunch has a post about recent market share changes, based on statistics from Statscounter.)

It’s quite understandable why everyone is so obsessed with the browser. As guest columnist Rohit Sharma had previously noted, “Today, browsers have lent their structure, chassis and struts to network-connected applications that devour user time and attention away from the browser itself.” But going forward, things are going to be vastly different. To understand the potential, look no further than the iPhone and its many applications. “Many iPhone users may have already forgotten that the rendering engine used underneath them all is a Webkit,” wrote Sharma, “the same underlying layout/display engine used in Safari and Google Chrome as well as Android and Palm Pre webOS.” What that means is that now browser-based network-aware applications can exist on any platform — be it the desktop or the mobile. This makes controlling a browser wildly important for companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple.

“Super-interactive browser that sits atop a super-fast connection…now interesting things will happen over the next 5-10 years,” remarked Marc Andressen, whose first startup, Netscape Communications, introduced the consumer web to millions by way of its Netscape browser, at a gathering last year.

Lilly is betting on a few things that will keep Firefox ahead of its rivals. First of all, it’s built by a vibrant community of Firefox developers. Secondly, it has garnered the support of folks who develop browser add-ons such as extensions and themes, which allows the browser to adapt to the needs of a diverse user base. Most importantly, Lilly said that Firefox supports the open web, whereas his competitors have their own agendas. “It is premature to put the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner on the open web,” he said. “Microsoft is still a big player.” Apple, meanwhile, won’t be supporting open video codecs such as Ogg Theora, according to Lilly. Even Google is ambivalent about certain things, though the search giant is “better than” the others, he added.

When I asked Lilly if the emergence of Google Chrome had shifted the focus toward a browser’s speed and performance, he acknowledged that there is competitive pressure and said that as a result, the Mozilla team is looking to “keep the browser fast and slim and still be highly customizable.” So while the version 3.5 of Firefox might be out, Mozilla is working hard on the release of the next version of the browser (3.6), due out either late this year or in 2010. “You should look at what is in Mozilla Labs and see those features making it to the browser,” Lilly said.

Mozilla Weave (which blends web services with the desktop) and Personas, a lightweight theming system are two recent efforts that will likely end up in the next generation of Firefox browsers. Mozilla is excited about Ubiquity, an in-browser command line utility and another new recent effort. JetPack is an API that allows developers to write extensions for Firefox using standard technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. A common theme that unites these four major areas of push: they allow Mozilla to keep the browser slim and fast, but at the same time make it super customizable. “It is about making the browser faster and increasing its performance,” Lilly said.

When I asked Lilly about Mozilla’s mobile efforts, he said that they were working hard to extend Firefox to the mobile. “It is something the whole company is paying attention to,” he said. He pointed out that a beta version of Firefox for Mobiles (code named Fennec) is available for Nokia-backed mobile-focused Linux distribution, Mameo, and that another version is available as second alpha for Windows Mobile.

I don’t think that’s going to be enough, however. Mobile is Mozilla’s Achilles heel — it’s losing mobile platforms to WebKit. As we pointed out earlier, “Today’s browser competition is less about who renders HTML properly, and more about what the incumbent browser is and how well it accommodates whatever new applications the Internet throws its way.” These days, many of these applications are popping up on mobile phones, thanks to the emergence of platforms such as Google’s Android, Palm’s Pre and Apple’s iPhone. These platforms are attracting developers, who will work with WebKit and not Firefox. In other words, Mozilla runs the risk of losing developer interest.

But Mozilla has been here before, with its back to the wall. The good news is that Lilly and his crew realize that and are working on it. Well let’s hope they succeed — for if they do, it will mean consumers get better technology.

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The open-source browser maker depends heavily on a lucrative financial deal it has signed with the search company. The pair recently renewed the deal to last through 2011. Was Lilly worried about yet another browser in the market?

After all, the emergence of Linux has had an equally deflationary impact on the UNIX market. Can a Google browser, promoted on Google homepage and pushed through Google’s mobile OS, become a sticky wicket for Mozilla Firefox?

“We collaborate with them on a bunch of things and we have a financial relationship,” Lilly says. “So there is another browser and that makes for a more competitive world. Of course we would have to compete.”

Given that Microsoft still controls about 72 percent of the browser market, Google can’t afford to leave that business to chance. Web is its business, and the browser is a necessary weapon for the company. “It is not surprising that they are doing a browser. Google does many things (servers, energy) that touch their business,” he said. “They feel that they can make a better browser by starting from scratch…advances in browsers are good.”

Lilly pointed out that most of the other browser vendors — Microsoft, Apple and now Google — have other businesses and thus another agenda. For Mozilla, Firefox was the only agenda. “Our only agenda is to make web better — it is our single mission,” Lilly says. With over 200 million users worldwide and a development team made up mostly of volunteers, Lilly says he isn’t worried about Chrome just yet. “I really don’t know how it will impact us,” he says.

He is right to take a wait-and-see attitude. For one, browser market share doesn’t change overnight. Google, despite its awesome reach, has a history of launching products that tend to lose steam. It has yet to hit home runs that rival its search and contextual advertising businesses.

Not having seen Chrome, I will withhold any final judgement myself, but I would look at the privacy implications of Chrome very, very carefully. I have long since stopped buying into the “do no evil” drivel the company keeps espousing.

This tussle between Mozilla and Google is going to get more gripping in coming years. Mozilla has a services strategy — Project Weave – that could eventually compete with Google’s suite of services. Whatever it is, it seems like Mozilla is ready for the challenge. And just when we thought the world of browsers was getting boring.

You can download Google Chrome from here when it becomes available.

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Touch, and Raskin’s realization that fingers are fat and so buttons need to be big, are what makes the demo so compelling. However, even as touch spreads as a user interface, plenty of people may never have such an advanced device at all. Jay Sullivan, VP of Firefox Mobile, said the company is developing for other interfaces as well, but it’s difficult. “The non-touch devices present a super design challenge, especially those without QWERTY keyboards. No existing browsers are very usable on those devices, so there’s a lot of room for innovation there,” Sullivan said.

Still, it’s hard to hear Mozilla CEO John Lilly talk about the value of bringing an open web to mobile users, rather than a web experience filtered through carriers to cell phone subscribers, and not hope for success. But even aside from the relative dearth of touch phones out there, Firefox mobile has several barriers to overcome.

The mobile browsers using WebKit as their platform are farther along, and as Om points out, WebKit (unlike Firefox on the desktop) results in a smaller footprint when compared with other mobile browsers. There’s also the grand champion of mobile browsers in Opera Mini, which had 11.9 million users as of March, to fight off. And let’s not forget startup browsers such as Skyfire for Windows Mobile devices. I think Firefox would be well-advised to get the lead out and start wowing with innovations beyond touch.

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Still, the two of us always wanted to chat. And that’s what we finally did, discussing everything from shortcomings of today’s browsers, Mozilla’s late entry into the world of mobiles and Firefox 3.0, which according to Lilly will go final and be ready to download in June 2008. (Mozilla just released the RC 1, which our sister site, OStatic, reviewed.) One of a few things we agreed on was that browsers need to find a better way of handling media – not just photos but the video clips that are becoming prevalent all over the net. He took a little swipe at iPhone as well, which was kinda cool.

Now this isn’t a produced video segment, and I captured the chat using my Macbook Pro’s built-in camera using the PhotoBooth. There are a whole bunch of people walking around in the background, and there are moments of questionable audio quality. Nevertheless, it is still fun and edited down to a consumable time length. Check it out.

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