Introducing Weave
As the Web continues to evolve and more of our lives move online, we believe that Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information. — One important area for exploration …
Context & Ripple Effects
Mozilla Labs is opening a new front in a browser war it has been winning incrementally: a January 2007 research report put Firefox at 14% U.S. share with three straight months of growth while Internet Explorer bled users despite 100M IE 7 installs, continuing erosion first documented back in 2005. With share momentum established, Mozilla's argument today is that Firefox should stop being just a page renderer and start brokering rich web experiences on the user's behalf.
The framing matters as much as the code: Mozilla explicitly ties the experiment to increasing user control over personal data as more of life moves online, positioning the browser — not individual web services — as the trust anchor. The pickup by ZDNet's Between the Lines shows the platform framing, not just the feature list, is what traveled.
First-order effects
- Firefox users get an experimental framework in which the browser itself mediates their data and identity across sites, rather than each web service holding that relationship exclusively.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft, already losing U.S. share to Firefox per the January 2007 market data, faces pressure to answer on the browser-as-platform layer rather than compete only on rendering speed and standards support.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, competition among browsers shifts from the rendering engine up the stack to who controls the user-data and identity layer — making browser vendors, not site operators, the default custodians of personal information online.
The trend: Browsers are evolving from document viewers into platforms that broker user data and identity, with Mozilla staking Firefox's differentiation on user control rather than raw market mechanics.