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With Chrome, Google Busts a Move Right Out of Microsoft's PlaybookYesterday

Hmm, in all the talk I've seen about how Google will proceed with spreading Chrome out to new platforms, and to mobile devices, I haven't seen any discussion of the company pursuing the idea of getting its open source browser pre-installed on hardware platforms. Now, Google is confirming that it will probably do just that. It is likely to pursue deals with major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to put Chrome on their computers and devices. This is a move straight out of Microsoft's 1990s playbook. If Mozilla could get aggressive about this too, we could see Internet Explorer facing more serious competition than ever.

For millions of computer users around the world, a blue "e" means Internet. The "e" icon representing Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser stares right at them from their desktops when they buy new computers. That's how Internet Explorer gained what was once more than 95 percent share of the browser market, taking that market share directly from Netscape, which once had over 80 percent share. Microsoft's share now sits at 71 percent according to Net Applications, which provides this informative graphic, showing market share:

AOL Partners With Funambol For Mobile SyncingYesterday

AOL rolled out a beta for an interesting new syncing option for mobile phone users, aptly named AOL Sync. It's powered by the open source mobile push email and sync provider, Funambol. This free service looks like a good alternative to Apple's often-maligned MobileMe or as a convenient way to keep an online backup copy of your phone's contacts in case of data loss.

AOL Sync lets users sync their AOL calendar and address book with most mobile phones currently on the market, including the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile, and even syncs with the Microsoft Outlook mail client. AOL Sync uses Funambol's push technology to continuously update the users phone and AOL account in real-time fashion.

I took AOL Sync for a quick test drive and found it very easy to configure, both online and on my BlackBerry Curve. Online setup took about a minute, and the verification and link to the phone software arrived on my BlackBerry seconds after I requested it.

If you already use Funambol's software on your mobile phone, you'll still want to attempt to download it again during the AOL account setup process. If you already have the newest version of Funambol, you'll receive an alert telling you

Public Open Source Companies: Much Ado About Nothing?Yesterday

The other day, in the post How Low Can Public Open Source Companies Go? I mentioned that Red Hat, Novell and Sun Microsystems now have such incredibly low market capitalizations that the independent existence of these open source leaders is threatened. The situation is substantially worse a few days later, with Red Hat's share price more than 20 percent lower than it was when I wrote the original post, starting to look like a penny stock. Some readers have suggested that Red Hat, in particular, is a nebulous entity that represents "nothing in the end." Really?

All the way back in March, we did a post on The New York Times' portrait of Red Hat as an up and coming open source company with an unusual business model and a brand new CEO: Jim Whitehurst. In that Times article, the author noted that Red Hat employees viewed the rosy quarterly earnings and financial performance of the company as "a present" for the incoming Whitehurst.

Since then, Red Hat's stock has been broken and scarred far worse than the overall stock market. In my post the other day, I suggested that it, Novell, and Sun Microsystems could be easy acquisition targets at the prices they sell at, even if a competitor just wants to

Kubuntu Moves Forward: You Can't Please Everyone, All the TimeNovember 20

It's nearly a year since KDE released the KDE4 desktop. The initial roll-out was rocky for KDE, and while subsequent releases have brought ever increasing stability and enhancements, some KDE users feel it's not quite ready for daily use.

In the beginning the solution -- for the KDE project, and for distributions that ship with KDE, such as Kubuntu -- was fairly simple. Offer both the 3.5.x and 4.x versions, either as a installation option, or through repositories.

At some point, however, a disconnect has to come. Celeste Lyn Paul, a member of the KDE Human-Computer Interaction group, talks a bit about the decisions Kubuntu had to face as Hardy (and its 3.5 desktop option) gave way to Intrepid's 4.1.x only environment.

It's an unenviable position, both for KDE and the distributions that focus on it as the primary desktop. The differences between earlier KDE releases and the 4.0 release were so significant that the user interface (re-)learning curve understandably required more time. And as Paul states, the 4.0 release was more bleeding edge than usual. This meant that developers also had their own learning curve of sorts, and a

Mozilla's "What If..." SituationNovember 20

The Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker reported yesterday that Mozilla's revenues were up approximately 12% in 2007 over 2006. She also mentions a few matters that are worrisome. Though eWeek's Joe Wilcox's predictions of Firefox's demise are premature and without a doubt require a sizeable grain of salt, he makes a good point concerning revenues coming from Google versus Google's commitment to the Chrome browser.

If you happened to view the Wilcox link prior to Baker's revenue reports, it's not that dire. It's not that dire now, nor is it likely to be in the very near future, but he is correct that it is something Mozilla needs to concern itself with now, so that it never becomes the secenario he's describing.

Baker says Mozilla gets a significant amount of revenue from Google from searches performed through the Firefox/Google start page. Wilcox states it is 88% of the annual revenue. Without seeing the spreadsheet and doing the math, I can't verify that figure, but it seems within reason. He