That's the conclusion made by Chris Soghoian in his article on cnet.com. He makes several points including that Google provides the Firefox project with 85% of it's revenue, that Google provides all of the blacklist info for sites (and can potentially leave out it's own sites) and that several addons such as Adblock, or especially CustomizeGoogle threaten Google's advertising income streams.

I find all of this very interesting although a bit scary too. I'm a loyal Firefox fan - I prefer it to Safari and other browsers even now as I use a Mac. I'm also keen to promote it as a web developer since it's way more standards compliant than IE6 and also more than IE7. It's sad that Firefox is basically under Google's command.

I'm not sure I would say FireFox is under Google's command, if AdBlock Plus (which is wonderful, by the way) threatens their income? If they had the ability, I would think they'd quash that in a heart beat?

Did you actually read the entire article? It's not just Adblock plus or the Open Source movement but that they have security flaws in their own products which mean people can bypass the blacklisting stuff (if I read correctly).

I fully recommend reading the article

No, I haven't. I need to, by the sound of it, but today I haven't had a long enough peroid of sitting on my hands. Normally 70 % of the work I do is in SQL and lots of queries I need to run take 45 mins or more, so while I'm waiting for them to finish is when I normally zip around the forums, and the greator internet to find new stuff and report on it. Today, I'm working in VB 6, and getting more like 5 to 10 minutes at a time. I'm a slow reader, and I absorb things best wehn I can do it in one sitting. Otherwise the stops and starts derail my train of thought.

I'm working in VB 6,

Welcome to my world

Ok, I read the article, but I can't say it persuaded me. I've got my own objections, but this last comment sums things up too

Also, your linked article about Google people being paid to work on Fireox is from January, 2005. This is in the Firefox 1.0 timeframe. Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 have shipped since then and 3.0 is going into beta soon. Can you point to a current article or information that shows that anyone from Google is currently being paid to work on Firefox or has in, oh, the last year or two?

The fact checking seems a bit weak here.

What really got me to think less of this article was

This begs the question: why doesn't Firefox adopt the features of AdBlock Plus and CustomizeGoogle? <Guesswork Cut>
why else would the Firefox team not roll in the features of two extensions that are widely popular

There are any number of popular add ons that aren't in the core FireFox. That's the definition of add on. Some people love FireBug, others don't really use it and would complain how it slows their browsing down. The beautiful thing is we can pick and choose which add ons we want.

But that AdBlock and GoogleCustomizer and the validator and FireFTP aren't built into the browser itself in a default install doesn't signal any collusion to me. It might be why FF is a 5 MB download instead of 120 MB like IE 7 is? But I don't think it makes any sense at all as an indictment of Google that any particular add on is an add on and not a core feature.

And Chris, you have my sincerist condolences out there in VB 6 land! I don't know how you manage?

Don't you think though that Google has sufficient power over Firefox that it could use the browser to it's own ends?

Dan the article is really interesting.

John I was thinking the same thing about why the extensions don't become part of the browser. The main idea of Firefox is to keep it as light as possible and let people customize it as they see fit.

But it does beg the question why

Two key features of the Google Toolbar for Firefox were rolled into the Firefox 2.0 browser and are turned on by default: Google Browse By Name and Google Safe Browsing for Firefox (now the Phishing Protection feature in Firefox 2.0). These two features, while useful, are more than just the application of a useful patch. They result in millions of Firefox browsers regularly polling Google servers for core information.

John did you see the comment that starts

Ben's wikipedia page says he is the project lead - which, after reading it in 3 articles, was the last place I verified the info.

It's the third one down. I didn't want to grab the whole thing and copy it here. The comment would seem to indicate that Google engineers are working on Firefox. I don't think the issue is really whether or not they're paid specifically to work on it, though they are paid by Google and Google and Firefox have a very tight relationship with each making money from the other.

Now I do think there's a lot of speculation going on in that article. The facts don't automatically lead to the conclusions. If true it is somewhat scary, but I don't think the article has proven anything to me.

On the other hand I have been questioning many things about Google over the last few months and if everything in the article turned out to be true it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Dan I do think Google has a lot of power over Firefox and I think they wouldn't hesitate to use it for their own ends if it aligned with their business model. I also don't think they would hesitate to use the browser to hurt the business model of one of its competitors.

Does anyone know if Firefox extensions work on Flock?

Well...article is quite interesting to read but I think Google is powerful enough to use the browser to it's own ends.