Il futuro incerto di Firefox senza il contributo economico di Google

Via ZDnet

It hasn’t been a good year for Mozilla and its flagship product, the Firefox browser. Firefox continues to lose share to Google Chrome. Statistics from Net Market Share show the decline, with Firefox plunging from 25% to 22% and Chrome rising from under 5% to more than 18% during the last two years.

Firefox is now on an accelerated development schedule that has alienated enterprise customers. One of its key managers, Mike Shaver, left in September. How important was he to the developers? The current version of the Firefox road map still includes a big bold TODO item under the “How to ship faster” heading:

And the deal with Mozilla’s biggest financial backer is in question. A search partnership with Google has historically been Mozilla’s greatest source of income. In its most recent financial statement, prepared in August and published recently online, the Mozilla Foundation won’t even mention Google’s name:

The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2011. Approximately 84% and 86% of royalty revenue for 2010 and 2009, respectively, was derived from this contract.