Will Google's Browser Hurt Firefox?

The new Chrome Web browser will sharpen competition for all players. Mozilla CEO John Lilly shares his thoughts
by Om Malik

In response to the news that Google (GOOG) is releasing its own browser, code-named Chrome, I decide to call John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, the folks behind the fast-growing Firefox browser. My intention was to find out what Lilly thought about this development, especially since Mozilla has been viewed as a close personal partner of Google's.

The open-source browser maker depends heavily on a lucrative financial deal it has signed with the search company. The pair recently renewed the deal to last through 2011. Was Lilly worried about yet another browser in the market?

After all, the emergence of Linux has had an equally deflationary impact on the UNIX market. Can a Google browser, promoted on Google homepage and pushed through Google's mobile OS, become a sticky wicket for Mozilla Firefox?

"We collaborate with them on a bunch of things, and we have a financial relationship," Lilly says. "So there is another browser, and that makes for a more competitive world. Of course we would have to compete."

Necessary Weapon

Given that Microsoft (MSFT) still controls about 72% of the browser market, Google can't afford to leave that business to chance. Web is its business, and the browser is a necessary weapon for the company. "It is not surprising they are doing a browser. Google does many things (servers, energy) that touch their business," Lilly says. "They feel they can make a better browser by starting from scratch…advances in browsers are good."

Lilly points out that most of the other browser vendors—Microsoft, Apple (AAPL), and now Google—have other businesses and thus another agenda. For Mozilla, Firefox was the only thing. "Our only agenda is to make the Web better—it is our single mission," Lilly says. With more than 200 million users worldwide and a development team made up mostly of volunteers, Lilly says he isn't worried about Chrome just yet. "I really don't know how it will impact us," he says.

He is right to take a wait-and-see attitude. For one, browser market share doesn't change overnight. Google, despite its awesome reach, has a history of launching products that tend to lose steam. It has yet to hit home runs that rival its search and contextual advertising businesses.

Not having seen Chrome, I will withhold any final judgement myself, but I would look at the privacy implications of Chrome very, very carefully. I have long since stopped buying into the "do no evil" drivel the company keeps espousing.

This tussle between Mozilla and Google is going to get more gripping in coming years. Mozilla has a services strategy, Project Weave, that could eventually compete with Google's suite of services. Whatever it is, it seems Mozilla is ready for the challenge. And just when we thought the world of browsers was getting boring.

Provided by GigaOm—

Study: Certain e-mail addresses attract more Spam attacks

A new study has revealed that the unique user address chosen when creating a personal e-mail account can play a significant role in making that account more or less susceptible to Spam attacks.

The research study, which was carried out by University of Cambridge computer scientist Dr. Richard Clayton, found an interesting attack pattern after analysing more than 500 million Spam e-mail messages.

Dr. Clayton’s research discovered that the very first letter of a person’s e-mail address can influence how much Spam their inbox receives, with accounts beginning with the letters “A”, “M”, “S”, “R” or “P” attracting 40 percent junk mail while accounts beginning with the letters “Q”, “Y” or “Z” attract 20 percent or less.

“Measuring incoming email has shown that the first letter of email addresses makes a difference to the proportion of incoming spam,” explained Dr. Clayton at a recent Mountain View, California conference on e-mail and anti-Spam measures.

According to the study, the percentage discrepancy can be partly attributed to the execution of “dictionary” attacks, a process whereby spammers increase the probability of success by attaching live e-mail name prefixes (before the @ part of the address) to other popular domain addresses (after the @ part of the address).

For example, a known account called Michael@email-account.com would lead to the creation of mails for other accounts such as Michael@another-email-account.com, and so-on, which would likely garner a greater number of account hits for the attacker.

Of course, the amount of address names beginning with the letters “A”, “M”, “S”, “R” or “P” is obviously likely to be far greater than those beginning with “Q”, “Y” or “Z”, which is also likely a contributing factor.

However, that being said, Dr. Clayton suggested in his report that more pattern research is required -- not least because accounts beginning with “U”, a letter relatively uncommon at the start of e-mail addresses, were recorded as receiving 50 percent Spam mail.

The 550 million e-mail messages analysed by the study had been sent to customers of Internet service Demon between Feb 01 and March 27 of 2008, reports the BBC.

by Stevie Smith - Sep 2 2008, 13:00

E-book 'will not threaten paperback'

The traditional paper book is not in danger of being killed off by an electronic gadget, the British Library said.

Sony will launch an electronic book in Waterstone's stores across the country on Thursday.

The £199 slimline Sony Reader can hold up to 160 electronic books and the capacity can be increased using memory cards.

But Stephen Bury, head of European and American collections at the British Library, said the book lover and pleasure reader would not give up the traditional paper book for an electronic gadget.

He said: "How can you guarantee you are going to have access to the books on the Sony Reader in five or 10 years' time. If you've got a library of 100 hard copy books it's hard to lose them.

"We have books at the British Library that have been annotated by the authors or by famous people and people are still going to want to experience that."

Helen Fraser, managing director of Penguin, said the Sony Reader would compliment the paper book but did not threaten its existence.

She said: "If you're travelling and you want to take 20 or 30 books with you then the e-book will be really useful. It will appeal to younger readers who are used to doing things electronically.

"A traditional book you can drop in the bath, leave in the sand, kick across the room, lend to 20 friends and it will still be alive. It's indestructible.

"The two will lie alongside each other. Ultimately it's not the form that matters. It's the readers and writers meeting in a space."

Source :The Press Association

Global warming greatest in the past decade: Study

WASHINGTON: Surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1,300 years, according to a study.

If climate scientists include the somewhat controversial data derived from tree-ring records, the warming is anomalous (deviating from the normal or common order) for at least 1,700 years.

"Some have argued that tree-ring data is unacceptable for this type of study," said Michael Mann, associate professor of meteorology and geosciences and director of Penn State's Earth System Science Centre.

"Now we can eliminate tree rings and still have enough data from other so-called 'proxies' to derive a long-term Northern Hemisphere temperature record."

The proxies used by the researchers included information from marine and lake sediment cores, ice cores, coral cores and tree rings.

"We looked at a much expanded database and our methods are more sophisticated than those used previously," said Mann.

The researchers noted that "conclusions are less definitive for the Southern Hemisphere and globe, which we attribute to larger uncertainties arising from the sparser available proxy data in the Southern Hemisphere".

The research team included Mann, Ray Bradley, university distinguished professor, geosciences and director of Climate System Research Centre at the University of Massachusetts; Malcolm Hughes, regents' professor, and Fenbiao Ni, research associate at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona; Zhihua Zhang and Sonya Miller, research associates, meteorology, Penn State; and Scott Rutherford, assistant professor of environmental sciences at Roger Williams University.

Results of this study without tree-ring data show that for the Northern Hemisphere, the last 10 years are unusually warm for not just the past 1,000 as reported in the 1990s paper and others, but for at least another 300 years going back to about A.D. 700 without using tree-ring data. The same conclusion holds back to A.D. 300 if the researchers include tree-ring data.

"Ten years ago, we could not simply eliminate all the tree-ring data from our network because we did not have enough other proxy climate records to piece together a reliable global record," said Mann.

"With the considerably expanded networks of data now available, we can indeed obtain a reliable long-term record without using tree rings," he added.

The new study shows that, with caveats, tree-ring data can be used, but that even without including that data, it is clear that the anomalous nature of recent warmth, which most scientists believe to be a result of human impacts on climate, is a reality.
These findings were published on Tuesday's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .