By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
Mozilla CEO John Lilly on Friday lashed out at Apple for turning its software updating mechanism into a self-serving distribution channel for its Safari Web browser.
Mozilla makes the Firefox Web browser, which competes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari.
On Tuesday, Apple released Safari 3.1, a new version of its Web browser. It made Safari available for Mac OS X and Windows through its Software Update control panel and as a download from its Web site.
What Lilly objects to is the fact that while Safari comes pre-installed on Apple's Macintosh computers, making version 3.1 an update, Apple's browser isn't standard issue on Windows machines. Apple has thus converted a channel previously used for patching existing software into a channel for distributing new software.
It's not yet clear whether recent market share gains on the part of Apple's Safari browser pose a threat to the usage of Mozilla's Firefox. Since the first quarter of 2006, both Safari and Firefox have gained market share, at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, according to figures from TheCounter and Net Applications. But Lilly's comments suggest worries about that possibility.
According to Net Applications, Microsoft Internet Explorer held 75.1% of Web browser market share in the first quarter of 2008, Mozilla's Firefox held 17.3%, and Apple's Safari held 5.8%.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
See original article on InformationWeek
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