Ubuntu and Mozilla: The inevitable alliance.
by Ronnie Whisler
Speculation is a part of technical news as prophecy is to religion. Its only important, valid or genius if it turns out to be true. However, we dare not have technical news without any speculation at all since this will surely hinder the creativeness of individuals and corporations to explore avenues influenced by ideas expressed in speculation. If any of that made sense to you, good. Because this was the reasoning I used in order to explore and develop the idea to create this article. In other words I have no factual evidence that anything of the sort would occur.
First lets discuss some of the key players and situations involved in developing such an alliance. First we have Mozilla which showed the world that the browser wars were not over and that Microsoft can be hurt. Second is Ubuntu which showed the world that Linux can be viable, easy and popular desktop operating system. Finally lets look at Google who has been inspired by the previous two achievements mention and are currently working on their own Linux based browser OS called Chromium.
Some call this evolution. I call it swiping the feet out from under your competitors by combining their known strengths and insisting that this is a web based OS only for Netbooks. Which to me is a ploy to keep future competitors from forming alliances now before Chromium OS is truly off the ground.
Do I believe Google is evil? No. However with great power comes great responsibility and I have yet to see a company of that size not eventually give into temptation. In this case temptation is unfairly killing off competitors so money is easier to make and the profits are bigger. Only God himself knows how far behind the digital age is because of these types of egregious behaviors by the men and women who run these companies. Shame on all of you.
With that being said lets take a look at the possible choke hold scenarios that Google could have Mozilla and Ubuntu in if Chromium OS becomes popular. The first thought would probably be about Mozilla making most of its money from Google. Google could start paying less to Mozilla for searches and clicks. Google could add a few features to Google search and services that are browser specific forcing you to use Chrome etc. etc. The list could go on for hours. But who has that kind of time.
I feel that Google is to Ubuntu as Microsoft was to Sega. Does anyone remember what happened when Microsoft helped Sega make the Dreamcast? I do! Sega was dead soon after and Microsoft had the new Dreamcast 2 errrr I mean Xbox. I smell the same exact thing possibly happening here as well. Canonical should be helpful but cautious. There is of course always a possible buy out of Ubuntu/Canonical from Google. This would not be shocking considering this is what Mark Shuttleworth is really good at, which is starting up hot companies and selling big.
If Mozilla and Ubuntu/Canonical pulled together they should have enough combined resources to really compete in the market place with Google or anyone else. However they can not sit still and do nothing because other larger companies will push them out of the market they helped create. Now is not the time to “See what happens”. Its time to prepare for the future and make essential friends.
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