Mozilla CEO on Chrome: It’s “Complicated”

Mozilla and Google used to be the bestest friends. Mozilla defaults to Google’s search engine, Google includes and recommends Firefox as the safest way to surf the net, and their CEO’s are often seen on play dates together. Suddenly, all that is changing.

Now, I don’t expect there to be an all out war, but the days of Google recommending Firefox are pretty much over. Mozilla CEO went with the word “complicated” to describe the relationship between the two companies these days:

“We have a fine and reasonable relationship,” John Lilly, Mozilla’s CEO, said in an interview last week. “But I’d be lying if I said that things weren’t more complicated than they used to be.”

Google’s size puts them in a very good position. They can easily stop promoting Firefox if they’d like, and yet Firefox would almost certainly be publicly derided if they chose to default to Yahoo! as the search engine of choice on install.

Firefox 3 is simply the best web browser made all things considered. According to Net Applications, Firefox’s market share is at around 20% worldwide, which is really impressive. How much do you think was because of the advertising that Google put forth? Remember, there was a time Firefox received a link on the Google search front page!

For Firefox, it’s certainly not the end of the world. Their market share has risen over 5% over the past year. If that trend continues, Mozilla won’t need Google. “Complicated” sure does make it interesting. What do you think?