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Two aspects of Mozilla’s close ties with Google over development
of the Firefox browser have Chris Soghoian concerned about a
conflict of interest in play.

People who adopt Firefox as a replacement for Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer think they are turning aside a monopolist
in favor of a more secure and open browsing alternative. It
may not be as open as we think.

I missed a little bit of semantic nuance back in May, when
Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler commented on my speculation that Mozilla
could be pressured via Google by a company like Verizon. As Asa
commented, and I’ve emphasized in bold:

“Can Google (or any one, for that matter) effectively pressure
Mozilla to change course on a Mozilla Labs project that they’re
not directly involved with? Absolutely not.”

Now look at the context Soghoian brings to the Mozilla and Google
topic, and how Dotzler’s choice of words appear to fit five months
later.

By David A. Utter

Firefox has just been updated to version 2.0.0.9.
This stability update corrects several problems that were found in the previous release, Firefox 2.0.0.8.

The 2.0.0.8 release fixed some 200 issues, but accidentally regressed a few things. Most users won’t see any difference or experience any problems, and those 200 fixes make the 2.0.0.8 update very valuable.

The specific problems are:  …

(more…)