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Mozilla Businesses The Internet Apple

Mozilla Exec Claims Apple is Hunting OSS Browsers 539

Rob writes with a link to a Computer Business Review article on the negative impact Mozilla COO John Lilly sees Apple is having on Open Source. Lilly claims that Jobs' recent discussion of Safari on Windows is an attempt to create a duopoly of browsers (IE and Safari), with Firefox and the rest on the outside looking in. "The graph 'betrays the way that Apple, so often looks at the world,' Lilly said. 'But make no mistake: this wasn't a careless presentation, or an accidental omission of all the other browsers out there, or even a crummy marketing trick,' he said. 'Lots of words describe Steve and his Stevenotes, but 'careless' and 'accidental' do not. This is, essentially, the way they're thinking about the problem, and shows the users they want to pick up.'" We discussed an analyst's opinion on this subject this past Friday.
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Mozilla Exec Claims Apple is Hunting OSS Browsers

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  • Instead of Microsoft following Apple's lead, Apple is following Microsoft. What a concept!
    • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:39PM (#19568317)

      Lilly claims that Jobs' recent discussion of Safari on Windows is an attempt to create a duopoly of browsers (IE and Safari), with Firefox and the rest on the outside looking in.
      I feel that Mozilla is trying to do the same thing to Lynx [browser.org].
  • Apple on Windows (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:11PM (#19566945) Homepage Journal
    Gee, I hope its as user friendly as iTunes. I simply live to see the message "You cannot use iTunes because another user is running a copy". That's user friendliness right there.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
      When does iTunes do that?
  • Great, that was fun (and completely useless). Can we have one talk about the internal motivations of Microsoft next?
  • On not being #3 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:12PM (#19566953) Homepage

    In computing, you can be successful as #2, but the #3 player usually loses out and disappears. (Remember Amiga? Commodore? DEC? Ask Jeeves?) If Apple wants their browser to have any commercial significance, they have to pass Firefox.

    • Re:On not being #3 (Score:5, Informative)

      by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:29PM (#19567215)
      Yeah, like Gateway, Opera, XBox...wait a minute...
    • by Sciros ( 986030 )
      Ask Jeeves was #3? Isn't there Google, MSN Live Search, and Yahoo? Ask Jeeves was probably #23508 or something. But yes I do remember it because of that funny butler in the commercials. He was awesome and made me want a butler named Jeeves.
    • Competition (Score:3, Interesting)

      by simpl3x ( 238301 )
      I take it as more of a focus on competition, but YMMV. There are lots of browsers, and while I do wish that Safari would get kicked to the curb, how exactly is Apple supposed to work with a project that reacts to a presentation in such a manner? My opinion is that they would like to peel away some Windows/IE users, rather than peel away FF users. What's wrong with that? They sell hardware.

      I use FireFox on my MacBook. I wish it were a bit more stable at times. I like WebKit. Opera was nice, but not always us
  • by morari ( 1080535 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:13PM (#19566971) Journal
    Safari is even less enticing on Windows than it is in its native environment.
  • by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:13PM (#19566979)
    I find it hard to believe that Apple, which from time to time is king of marketing, seriously believes that the browser battle is between just itself and IE. It's no doubt well aware FireFox is number 2, and Safari is close to last, in terms of market share. Instead, this is Apple trying to create the illusion that it really is the big dangerous new browser on the block, and create the perception of market dominance and leadership. I don't think it will work, and this is likely to make Apple look foolish in the eyes of the non-default to IE market, but that's what Apple is trying to do with these silly charts and pronouncements.
    • Or maybe they were most concerned with taking out IE, so they didn't make a comparison to other browsers which they weren't trying to take out.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      I don't think it was even that - it was more like trying to show the relative market shares of the two browsers, without complicating the chart by introducing other elements (Opera, Firefox, IceWeasel, Konq, Lynx, Links, etc ...).

      In other words, this is a tempest in a teacup.

    • by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:56PM (#19567617) Homepage Journal
      That's not at all how Apple operates. You're completely ignoring their real motives. They don't care if they own the dominant web browser. They know it's basically irrelevant to their business.

      What Apple sells is a particular computing experience. To have people develop web apps for the iPhone they need the browser platform it runs on: Safari. So Safari on Windows lets non-Mac users develop iPhone applications (similar to OS X's Dashboard).

      Apple does not care if only developers use Safari on Windows. As long as there's a lot of iPhone apps to download. Having people browse the web with Safari on Windows does nothing for Apple's bottom line. But as a development platform it's critical to their latest product.
    • by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:10PM (#19568791)
      Instead, this is Apple trying to create the illusion that it really is the big dangerous new browser on the block, and create the perception of market dominance and leadership. I don't think it will work, and this is likely to make Apple look foolish in the eyes of the non-default to IE market, but that's what Apple is trying to do with these silly charts and pronouncements.

      Apple's marketing was always extreme, and that is their style for as long as Jobs is on top.

      This achieves few things:

      - The core of Mac users become even more devoted to the Apple brand (it's sort of like a cult, it doesn't matter sometimes Jobs says ridiculous things).

      - The rest of the world sees Apple as arrogant, sometimes foolish, but always and always interesting nonetheless.

      - Which on the other hand makes Apple a great news material, and gains it a huge media coverage.

      So the bottomline: they're doing what they have to, to survive. The "reality distortion field" of Jobs isn't a myth - it's very real, and the guy's doing it to get the exact effects he gets.

      Apple always tries to create its own bubble where it competes with mythical collective enemies such as "The PC", "Microsoft", "The rest of the Phones", "The rest of the browsers". To support this bubble, you need the extreme kind of marketing Jobs does, otherwise it falls a apart and Apple will have to compete in the real market like any other company.

      Jobs uses bubbles in his own company as well. Many people know that he would separate his employees in "buubles" and let them "fight" each other (in their work) to full exhaustion (such was the case with Apple II and Lisa teams). The other team is the enemy, and you gotta do everything humanly possible to support your own bubble.
      • by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @05:48PM (#19572095)

        Apple's marketing was always extreme, and that is their style for as long as Jobs is on top.

        What do you mean by extreme? It's always seemed fairly sedate and understated to me, with the exception of the raucous iPod ads. Remember the Mac ads when Jobs came back? They were all elegant, and barely even dared to "sell" the products - they were mostly just sparse shots of the product on a white background, with little elaboration.

        I think the marketing of Microsoft and Dell are much more extreme. The Windows Vista ad is ridiculous - as if people actually say "Wow!" at a new version of Windows. Or there's the Microsoft ads that talk about how they empower people to conquer the universe. Or the Dell ads, with their SUPER COOL!! CHEAP!! BUY NOW!!! AMAZING FEATURES!!!!

        All of those examples seem much more extreme that the comparatively quiet and friendly Apple advertising.

        it's sort of like a cult, it doesn't matter sometimes Jobs says ridiculous things

        Why should it matter? I use Apple products because they work well. Should I use something different just because Jobs occassionally puts his foot in his mouth? I don't understand why anyone would choose a computer or software based on the personality of the CEO, rather than the usefulness of the hardware and software.

        Apple always tries to create its own bubble where it competes with mythical collective enemies such as "The PC", "Microsoft",

        Geeee, that's all a fabrication. It's not like Dell or Microsoft have ever acted antagonistically towards Apple, or "declared war" on them. Oh wait, they have. The other players have just as much, or more, of a problem with this mentality than Apple. Just look at all the big-noting over companies trying to create an "iPod killer," for example. If anything, Apple is happy surviving alongside the other players, where the likes of Microsoft and Dell aren't happy until they crush all the competition. To them, being in second place means losing. Apple's definition of victory is totally different.

  • I have a MBP... (Score:3, Informative)

    by imperio ( 1044250 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:13PM (#19566985) Homepage
    and installed both Firefox and Thunderbird after about a week of owning the thing. The MBP is great, but iMail & Safari are pretty weak. I don't think Mozilla has anything to worry about.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Mattintosh ( 758112 )
      What the heck is "iMail"? I googled for it, but the first two or three links were either parked domains or 404's.

      Perhaps you meant Mail(.app). In that case, I'd have to rate your opinion-making skills as "weak". Mail is way better than Thunderbird. It has everything T-bird has, but with polish and proper system integration. And a handy "bounce message" function that essentially tells automated spam systems to sod off. Thunderbird still has a ways to go before it's at the level of flexibility and polish of F
      • 1996 called (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:53PM (#19567577)
        It wants its bounce message back. Most spam these days comes from faked, and sometimes legitimate, email addresses, so you're basically bouncing the spam back to an innocent person and possibly spamming them if the original message is included.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by pebs ( 654334 )
        Perhaps you meant Mail(.app). In that case, I'd have to rate your opinion-making skills as "weak". Mail is way better than Thunderbird.

        Ever use Mail.app for IMAP? For multiple IMAP accounts? If you didn't have problems with IMAP you are lucky.

        I've used Mail.app for a while with IMAP. There were workarounds I had to do to get it to work with 1 account and that was problematic enough even after the workaround. With 2 accounts it was unusable.

        I switched back to Thunderbird as well, at least it has working
  • "Public company aggressively pursues marketshare!"

    Film at 11.
  • Obviously, they're targeting the browser that most people are familiar with. Even with the progress that FF has made, IE still has the overwhelming percentage of the market, so that's what Apple was comparing themselves to. It would be like Creative complaining that the Zune isn't marketed as a Zen-killer.

    Get over it, take close to 50% marketshare, and then you'll be in the comparison.

    It's really all pretty pointless, though, because I don't think the point of Safari on Windows is really to gain mar
  • by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:16PM (#19567039) Homepage
    Meanwhile, Abraxor has taken available data and projected [abraxor.com] that Firefox will overtake IE in August...
  • by syntap ( 242090 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:24PM (#19567125)
    We're on a Safari and we're hunting OSS browsers. (slaps self) I mean we're developing Safari and HURTING OSS browsers.
  • Unfounded (Score:3, Informative)

    by TheBearBear ( 1103771 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:30PM (#19567223)
    From the TFA

    The exec also highlighted Mozilla's attitude about market share: "We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource,"

    I don't see how Safari and IE will be causing problems. The nature of the web/internet is that it's open (except in extreme cases, of course). If Apple/MS does something nasty, the community will cry foul and move to an alternative, or make one themselves. Isn't that how mozilla got started?

    Personally, I'm more worried about careless legislation and government regulation, and politicians who may still refer to the web as the Information Superhighway. yeah, I'd trust those guys to be in charge :P
  • Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by beavis88 ( 25983 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:34PM (#19567269)
    If Safari turns out to be better than Firefox, they deserve to take their marketshare. If not, well, Apple deserves to see this fall flat on its face. But I guess "OMG teh evils corporashuns!!11!" is likely to attract more readers...
  • Lots of words describe Steve and his Stevenotes, but 'careless' and 'accidental' do not.
    I'll bet after reading that he got into his SteveCar, drove to the nearest SteveBar, and ordered a SteveScotchAndSoda. I mean, wtf? Doesn't this sound kinda childish and whiny?
  • Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:38PM (#19567309) Homepage
    This is all a tempest in a teapot. Safari on Windows is not going to harm OSS browsers any more than Opera does. There is no reason to think that Safari is going to displace Firefox (or Konqueror or whatever). The users of those apps use them because they had a choice and found a product they liked.

    Remember: more competition is always a good thing.

    By the way, Safari isn't even the best browser on OS X (that honour goes to Camino) so I really can't see how it will have much impact on Windows.
  • by dedazo ( 737510 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:39PM (#19567319) Journal
    I'm certainly going to enjoy seeing the Firefox "it's the extensions!" and Apple "It looks fine, what's your problem!?" fanboys duke it out.

    If the Linux and Microsoft fanboys want to join me in the Asbestos Lounge, the popcorn and beer are on me.


  • Shhhh... be werry werry quiet... im hunting bwowsers
  • by Protonk ( 599901 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:42PM (#19567393) Homepage
    Apple (Read Jobs and handlers) left out lynx, Opera, FF, tinybrowser, etc out of the presentation because the end result would have looked much more visually confusing that they wanted, IMO.

    TFS/TFA make a critical logical error. They state that nothing Jobs does in these presentations is accidental, because we all know how meticulously planned they are. Therefore, if nothing is accidental, then the omission must be a sign of Apple's malevolence toward open source. QED!

    Bullshit. The graph doesn't necessarily 'betray the way Apple looks at the world', it betrays they way apple wants the shareholders, newspapermen and fans to look at the world. Their ongoing conceit (diff than deceit) has always (From the late 90's on) been, we are competing against this giant monopoly, here we are, the valiant underdogs. True or not, this is the image (RDF) that has been provided. Apple's recent success may cause people to forget this, to assume that the marketing message is different now. An assumtpion like that would have to come butressed with facts, not shoddy logic.

    Does this mean that Apples wants to make nie with open source, or acknowledge the contributions of open source, etc? Of course not. But that doesn't mean that a graph is really a coded browser battle plan to get rid of FF. Apple would be perfectly happy competing for a plurality in browser market share, especially if it meant that users would/could be intimately familiar w/ the iphone interface out of the gate.
  • Negative? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greg_barton ( 5551 ) * <greg_barton&yahoo,com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:42PM (#19567397) Homepage Journal
    Using BSD as the basis for OSX basically gave FOSS credibility in the consumer market.

    It's like a decade of free positive publicity.

    Mozilla can take the competition. If it can't it shouldn't be in the game.
  • by ZombieRoboNinja ( 905329 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:42PM (#19567401)
    Are they honestly crying in public because a competitor wants to... compete with them?

    Firefox has managed to get a 25% marketshare against Microsoft, on their own OS. Hell, I'm typing this from Firefox on a Mac right now, because I like the addons. If Safari is trying to "edge out" Firefox, they just need to make sure Firefox is a significantly better browser. If it's not, well, you can hardly blame Apple for making a better product.
  • Um (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <<ten.niwdlab-eoj> <ta> <eoj>> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:48PM (#19567493) Homepage Journal
    Apple is gunning for open source software...and he bases this on a pie chart?

    Apple's main target by releasing Safari on Windows is Internet Explorer; they want to basically get newbies who have tried iTunes or have iPods and liked it, and might be willing to try other Apple stuff. They aren't going after Firefox users, so a comparison of Safari v IE v Firefox makes no sense. Hell, why not include Opera as well, and OmniWeb, and Lynx! It'll be one confusing motherfucker of a pie chart, but by god Norwegians, both the people using OmniWeb and text-mode fetishists need representation too!

    To me, this smacks of "Yoo hoo! Over here! Firefox still exists! Yes! Wooooo! Give us publicity too!". And he's somehow extrapolated a simple omission from a pie chart into a hatred of open source software in general. Very nice.

    (Not that I think Safari for Windows is there yet, it's nice but not wonderful. I still use Firefox if I'm use Windows, but prefer Safari under OSX.)
  • by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <hiland.gmail@com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:48PM (#19567495)
    I don't think Apple's interested in the browser market as it exists, I think they are interested in having cross-platform "client" to run a new generation of web-based content that they will release over the next few years- things like a Safari-based Word Processor, or perhaps photo editor- a remote connection client so you can always get to your Mac. I think Apple wants / need certain features to make this work, and it's easier all around if they use their browser rather than IE or FF. Watch Safari turn into a client for Safari apps, not a new entrant into the browser war. They want it cross-platform so PC users will also be able to take advantage of it, possibly selling more Macs in the process.
  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:50PM (#19567531) Journal
    IMHO, this is ridiculous! Safari gets released for Windows, and the Mozilla team immediately has an outcry against it?

    The more competition, the better, I say! May the best man win, and all that. I didn't realize Firefox was being strictly worked on as a project with a goal of defeating IE, and no other players were ever supposed to "interfere" with that mission!?

    This isn't even a scenario that's real comparable to iTunes - despite that getting thrown around as a comparison. With iTunes, Apple was releasing it as a vehicle to sell music on their store. In that regard, the whole thing was a commercial venture - and it simply made sense to allow the vast number of Windows users a "front end" to be able to purchase Apple's music, instead of keeping it just for the 5-7% of the marketplace that uses Macs.

    With Safari, on the other hand, it may become useful or required as a development tool aiding in building apps for the iPhone ... but that won't directly add to Apple's bottom line. They aren't likely to make anything SELLING Safari for Windows either - so it's more or less going to remain a freebie you can opt to use or not use, as you see fit.
  • who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nanosquid ( 1074949 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:51PM (#19567551)
    Actually, I think Safari was a bad decision for Apple but a good decision for everybody else. The easy solution for Apple would have been to put Gecko inside a Cocoa app, which would have given them much more compatibility with Web 2.0 sites. By struggling to establish a third standard, they are actually helping everybody else. And if they manage to establish Safari as the #2 browser on the web, all the better: FOSS will simply take the Safari rendering engine (which is open source) and wrap it in a Gtk+ UI.
  • by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy@nosPAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:53PM (#19567575) Journal
    Considering the slide Firefox has been in in my personal satisfaction index, I find myself not giving a damn that they're afraid of a little competition.

    I use OSS because I like the way it works. If it doesn't work well enough, I use something else. Firefox isn't going to stay my browser of choice if there is something out there that does the job better.

    Now I'm not really fond of Safari, but if it runs fast, loads fast, doesn't hog system memory, I'm going to start using it. End of fricking story.
  • by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @12:55PM (#19567599) Homepage
    Honestly, Firefox is supported by the geek movement towards superior and sometimes, open source solutions. Geeks are geeks before they are Apple fanboys in most cases, so I see them supporting their geek roots over brand loyalty. I would content that Apple users are much more prone to installing and running Firefox than a Windows user is. I do not have the numbers, or if anyone does, but I bet the % of Apple users running FF is higher than the % of Windows users running it.

    Geeks spawned the Firefox movement and they will support it as long as it is the best.
  • Darwinism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:16PM (#19567947) Homepage
    If the only way that Mozilla can survive is for Apple (and whoever else wants to toss their hat in the ring) to refrain from building a browser, then Mozilla doesn't deserve to survive.

    But the good news is, Mozilla can survive, and it will, if it is good enough to compete against Safari and IE and Opera (and whoever else wants to toss their hat into the ring.) And presently, it is that good. I don't foresee that changing anytime soon. And if and when it does, I'll gladly adopt whatever the best browser is on that day, just as I've ditched Netscape 1.x through 4.7, IE 3 through 6, and all the rest I've tried over the years. Right now I like Firefox.
  • Oh come off it! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dr.badass ( 25287 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:28PM (#19568135) Homepage
    Can we please kill this meme? As I wrote the other day: "There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference."

    That's it. There's no story. Safari on Windows doesn't hurt anyone except maybe Microsoft. Just because Jobs didn't take time out of his keynote to stroke the collective Firefox ego does not mean Apple is "hunting" Mozilla.

    The exec also highlighted Mozilla's attitude about market share: "We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource," he said.

    The subtext being that Apple somehow is contrary to this. As if releasing a browser (based on an open source rendering engine) which actually has better adherence to standards than Mozilla browsers is going to make the web less open and public. Sorry folks, but that is a dead end.
  • Good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:33PM (#19568215)
    Apple gunning for the OSS browser market is a great thing. Mozilla spent years going nowhere before the Firefox developers finally made something sane out of it. Now the Firefox developers are busy playing with the interface, piling on features, and rambling about web standards while the browser is still not able to pass Acid2.

    What Apple brings to the table is competition. Opera gave up on Windows and is busy in the embedded market. Konqueror is great, going nowhere in the Windows world. IE 7 showed the world that the IE team still have their heads up their butts, so without another great browser on Windows there's no serious competition for the Firefox team, and thus nothing to keep them from going the way of Mozilla. Now that Firefox actually has a decent browser with a big name behind it to compete with, maybe we'll see Firefox development focus on fixing bugs quickly, becoming Acid2 compliant, etc.
  • OSS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ceeam ( 39911 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @03:56PM (#19570545)
    WebKit is not OSS now? Hm...

    Anyway - how is Safari-the-WebKit-engine worse than Firefox-the-Gecko-engine? If anything I'd like to see more standards compatible browsers and then there's a chance we can defeat evil MSIE. Gecko-is-the-standard did not play well last time when Netscape gone under and Microsoft won the first browser war, right?
  • by Steve Cowan ( 525271 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @04:09PM (#19570723) Journal
    Apple doesn't really stand to gain by edging Firefox out of the market. It's also been suggested a few times that Safari for Windows makes iPhone development more accessible, which is true, but even that assertion misses the big picture:

    By releasing Safari for Windows, Apple is investing in Safari's relevance. The smart Windows users have it easy: run FF most of the time, until you come across a really dumb or poorly-authored website, then just use IE when you really need to load that page. Mac users don't really have that option. If it doesn't render properly in Camino/Firefox, try it in Safari - if that doesn't work, maybe try OmniWeb, but chances are you just aren't gonna view that site on a Mac.

    Apple doesn't make money from Safari. It was developed for OS X because its then-default browser, IE, sucked. And they based Safari on KHTML, an open-source engine totally separate from Mozilla's. This is great stuff! Two separate OSS teams coding for standards-compliant browsing!

    But back to my original point about relevance: I still have the Tiger version of Safari, but I mainly use Camino because it seems to generally be a bit zippier, and it works with the new Yahoo! mail UI while Safari doesn't.

    --- what??? you heard me right - a major web player like Yahoo! is developing web apps and putting more priority on Gecko than OS X's, and iPhone's, default browser. Sure, Firefox has more marketshare than Safari, but for iPhone users who can't change their browser, and for OS X users who are not inclined to change their browser, this is a huge problem that undermines the value of Apple's products.

    Apple's strategy: push Safari out to everybody who might be downloading iTunes. Include it on CD with every iPod sold. Make it install on Windows by default unless the user unchecks a box. Suddenly, Safari is in the hands of zillions of Windows users, and companies like Yahoo! take notice: "We'd better make our apps work with Safari!"

    Mozilla should not feel threatened, excepting that Firefox will now have to compete on its merits, instead of just being "the alternative browser". Users who have installed Firefox on Windows already know how to choose their own browser, and they won't go to Safari without a reason.

    Lilly's comments are ABSOLUTELY sour grapes, because he doesn't want to compete with another free (as in beer) product. When he sayd that the web is owned by people and not companies, he fails to mention that Safari's web rendering component is standards-compliant and open-source.

    So, to summarize:

    - Apple NEEDS Safari to be recognized as a major browser.
    - Safari will likely continue what Firefox has been doing: chipping away at IE's dominance.
    - Those who have switched from IE will choose between Safari/Firefox (and KHTML/Gecko) based on product merits. Plus some people will just use Safari because iTunes told them to.

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