As CEO and chairman of Mozilla, respectively, John Lilly and Mitchell Baker have overseen the huge growth of Firefox, the popular open-source browser.
The pair talk about this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.
Last Friday, BoomTown paid a visit to James Joaquin, who has just been officially appointed the new CEO of Foxmarks, the Mitch Kapor-backed start-up that makes a free bookmarking and password syncing add-on for the Firefox browser.
The San Francisco-based company had also has gotten $5 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures earlier this summer.
With the arrival of Joaquin, Foxmarks is trying to move into a mode of carving out a business with its assets, including using its data and expanding beyond the Firefox browser.
Here’s a video interview with Joaquin about it.
Finally, Google Co-Founder Larry Page takes the microphone and thanks the Chrome browser team and compliments them for their efforts.
This is, as anyone on the receiving end of Page’s sometimes pointed manner knows (and BoomTown has been), a big deal.
Page also starts to talk about how browser choice and innovation could make the planet a better place.
Of course! World peace through better browsing!
As was reported earlier today by BoomTown, Google confirmed on its blog that it will launch its new Chrome browser tomorrow.
Google said it would be launching Chrome in 100 countries, but but will only be available in beta in Windows (Google said Mac and Linux versions were coming soon).
The move by the search giant, although the blog does not say so, is clearly a direct shot over the bow of Microsoft, which dominates the browser market with 74 percent share.
Here is the full blog post by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management at Google, and Linus Upson, Engineering Director.
In its most frontal and aggressive attack on Microsoft yet, sources with knowledge of the project said Google is preparing to unveil a new browser–ready for download to users as early as tomorrow–to try to loosen Microsoft’s iron grip on the most important piece of software to navigate the Internet.
In addition, Google Blogoscoped has published a comic book that Google is apparently using to explain the technical aspects of its open-source browser, which is called Chrome.
Before John Lilly got the CEO job at Mozilla, I had visited the HQ of the the open-source software nonprofit foundation (and, at the same time, a for-profit startup)–famous for its increasingly popular Firefox browser and red dragon logo–on Landings Drive in Mountain View.
I toured the place and took video note of a freakishly large sculpture made of soda cans and the biggest couch I have ever seen. In other words, just another typical Silicon Valley company.
I like this piece on Gigaom.com by Kevin Kelleher, mostly because he uses the phrase “bat-shit insanity” to describe the $6 billion Microsoft is paying to acquire aQuantive (which I wrote about here) and compares the software giant to an aging movie star in this tasty way:
So aQuantive as an investment is kind of like [...]
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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