Firefox’s fight for the future of the web
Firefox’s fight for the future of the web
With Google’s Chrome dominating the
market, not-for-profit rival Mozilla is staking a comeback on its dedication to
privacy
Alex Hern Sun 17 Nov
2019 04.00 EST
Last modified on Sun 17 Nov
2019 06.08 EST Why do you choose
the browser you use? Maybe you think it loads pages more quickly. Maybe it’s
made by the same firm as your device and you think it’s more compatible in some
way. You prefer the graphics, perhaps, or it just happened to be pre-installed
on your machine. Maybe you’re not even aware that there’s a choice.
In reality,
two-thirds of us have been funnelled into using Google’s Chrome, but browser
choice also hides a contest about the openness of the web and how data is
collected about users. One organisation that has always put such issues to the
forefront is Mozilla.
The
not-for-profit foundation, which has as its aim the promotion of “openness,
innovation and participation on the internet”, is best known for the Firefox browser,
which it started developing in 2003. But the foundation was set up to shepherd
the Mozilla organisation, which was formed in 1998 to oversee the development
of a suite of web tools developed from another browser – Netscape Communicator.
Communicator was
Netscape’s fourth browser; the first came out in 1994, making it the first
commercial web browser the world had ever seen.
All of which
makes Mozilla the web’s oldest company or at least “the oldest thing on the
consumer internet”, as the foundation’s chair, Mitchell Baker, put it when I
met her in London recently.
Mozilla has had
its ups and downs over the years: making a hugely popular web browser twice
over, before succumbing each time to crushing competition from a well-funded
tech behemoth. In the mid-90s, Netscape was killed by Microsoft with its Internet Explorer.
Then, in the late 2000s, a resurgent Firefox faced near-fatal competition from
Google’s Chrome. Now, hopefully, it is on another upswing.
“For the last – I
don’t know – three or four years, I’d say Mozilla has been remaking the
organisation itself,” Baker says. The Firefox browser, which had resisted the
dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, found itself faced with a far
hardier opponent in the shape of Google Chrome.
However, the rise
of the potentially monopolistic web platform also creates a new opportunity –
in fact, an urgent new mission. Mozilla is no longer fighting for market share
of its browser: it is fighting for the future of the web.
“In the early
days, we thought all companies and social networks cared about us and cared for
us,” says Baker, speaking for web users as a whole. “And increasingly it has
become clear that, no, you need someone looking out for you.”
Chrome, the
world’s most popular browser, is made by the world’s fourth-most valuable
company, Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The world’s second-most
popular browser, Safari, is made by the world’s second-most valuable company –
Apple. In
third place is Firefox.
Baker’s pitch is
that only Mozilla is motivated, first and foremost, to make using the web a
pleasurable experience. Google’s main priority is to funnel user data into the
enormous advertising engine that accounts for most of its revenue. Apple’s
motivation is to ensure that customers continue to buy a new iPhone every
couple of years and don’t switch to Android.
“Google wants the
web to go through Google,” Aral Balkan, the activist and founder of the
internet democracy campaign site ind.ie, tweeted earlier this month. “It already mostly
does: with eyes on 70% to 80% of the web.”
The company has
been accused of using its control of Chrome and of Google search
to warp the very fabric of the internet.
Take “accelerated
mobile pages”, or AMP. The project saw Google hosting websites on its own
servers, warping the web addresses so they all began with “google.com”.
Why would any
independent company allow Google to do that? Because the page loads marginally
faster on mobile devices – and in so doing pushes them higher up the Google
search results. Today, even the Guardian and Observer’s mobile
content is served this way.
Baker’s concern
about Google’s control of the web browser is that it leaves no one able to
fight Google’s control of the web. It is perfectly possible to build a browser
that prevents advertising companies from aggregating user data. But it is
unlikely that any browser made by an advertising company would offer such a
feature.
If you go on
Facebook and contribute a post, a like or whatever, you're giving information
to Facebook Mitchell Baker, Mozilla
It’s not just
Google that benefits. It may treat Facebook as a bitter rival, but both
companies have a shared interest in limiting the ability of users to shape how
the web works.
“It’s clear that
if you go on Facebook and contribute information in some way – a post, a like
or whatever – you’re giving information to Facebook,” Baker says. “What’s not
as obvious is that there are a lot of times when you’re on some other site,
doing something unrelated and, behind the scenes, Facebook is still gathering
information – especially if you’ve signed in with Facebook.”
So Firefox now
runs sites such as Facebook in “containers”, effectively hiving the social
network off into its own little sandboxed world, where it can’t see what’s
happening on other sites. Baker says: “It reduces Facebook’s ability to follow
you around the web and track you when you’re not on Facebook and just living
your life.”
Baker insists
solutions such as this are important, saying: “The dystopian future is a risk
for all of us. For those of us who remember Nineteen Eighty-Four,
is that one possible future in front of us? For sure.”
The fight takes
place on several fronts and Mozilla is hoping to use its framing as “your pal
on the internet” to branch out from being just a browser provider. (An email
client, Thunderbird, has survived alongside Firefox,
but is demoted to the status of community project.)
Mozilla has
launched Monitor,
a data-breach reporting service; Lockwise,
a password manager; and Send, a privacy-focused alternative to
services such as WeSendit. It’s also beta-testing a VPN (virtual private
network) service, which it hopes to market to privacy-conscious users.
Such a suite is
an impressive sales pitch to a certain type of user – one who hopes for a
better outcome than the one Baker fears. She says: “One thing that we’ve
learned from our past is that it’s hard to imagine a different future until you
can somehow see or touch the promise of it. Before Firefox, everyone ‘knew’
what the internet was going to look like. And that was Microsoft.
“It seems funny
today – there’s a generation today who can’t imagine that – but until 2005, it
was 100% known that Microsoft was going to control the internet.”
If only it were
so simple this time around. If Mozilla could be the David to Chrome’s Goliath,
the company would have an easy pitch. But there is a third player in the
mix: Apple.
On the surface,
the two companies share goals – and features. Where Firefox has “enhanced
tracking protection”, Apple’s Safari browser has “intelligent tracking
prevention”. Where Firefox takes a swipe at Google by swearing that by contrast
it “protects your privacy in every product”, Apple’s Tim Cook knocks Facebook
by saying: “Privacy to us is a human right, a civil liberty.”
Those
similarities make Apple harder for Firefox to square off against. Yet in some
ways, it is the more dangerous competitor.
For all the
leverage that Google puts into making Chrome succeed, it leaves space for Firefox.
Desktop computers can always download another browser. Android phones may be
shipped out with Chrome pre-installed – a fact that has put Google in hot water
with EU regulators – but those phones allow users to install Firefox instead.
Chrome OS, Google’s operating system, which effectively wraps a thin layer
around an always-open browser window, is more locked down, but ultimately just
a thin slice of the market.
Things are
different in Apple’s section of the world. Macs remain a fairly open system,
although the increasing focus on the Mac app store, which Firefox isn’t on,
bodes ill for the browser’s future. And Apple’s iOS (mobile operating system)
is an acknowledged disaster for Mozilla. Safari is the default and, while users
can install other browsers, they come doubly hindered: they can never be set as
the default, meaning any link clicked in other applications will open in
Safari; and they must use Safari’s “rendering engine”, a technical limitation
that means that even the browsers that Firefox does have on the platform are
technically just fancy wrappers for Apple’s own browser, rather than full
versions of the service that Mozilla has built over the decades.
“Apple’s stance
is ‘you should trust us and we’re different and better,’” says Baker. “I
believe that’s a serious commitment right now at Apple. And that works – as
long as everything that you want and need is OK coming through Apple and you
can pay for it all. But the minute there’s something heterogeneous, or there’s
something that doesn’t fit with Apple, or there’s something new, then you’re
out of luck.
“Even if you do
download a replacement, iOS drops you back into the default. I don’t know why
that’s acceptable. Every link you open on a phone is the choice of the phone
maker, even if you, as a user, want something else.
“I don’t see
Apple listening at all. We make a huge technical investment in this obscure
layer, called the rendering engine, because it turns out that’s where there’s a
lot of power. In some systems, you can see the powerful thing right up front.
But often the real power of the system is under the hood. And that’s true of
how you see content on the web. So we invest a lot in it and Apple simply
prohibits it. We just can’t use that technology. So I don’t see that changing.”
Ultimately,
Firefox’s future is as much down to the decisions of a few regulators as it is
about anything Mozilla can do. Baker won’t be drawn on regulatory discussions,
other than to note that “it would certainly be helpful to be able to offer the
product that you think does the most for people”.
Investigations of
abuse of monopoly positions continue on both sides of the Atlantic and the
humble web browser is such an important engine of innovation and control that
it seems likely that it will get drawn in to the fray.
But before that,
Mozilla as an organisation needs to make its own success. And being the scrappy
underdog of Silicon Valley feels like a natural place for the team. The oldest
thing on the internet didn’t get there by being unafraid of a few reinventions
over the years. What’s another one under the belt?
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