Flock may be losing its steam to Firefox

Recently both Flock and Firefox released a new version of their browser product, namely Flock 2.5 and Firefox 3.5. While both browsers are based the Gecko engine, Firefox 3.5 is certainly beating Flock 2.5 in terms of performance.

My default browser used to be Flock, a social web browser that has built-in support for many popular web sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Del.icio.us. But, when Firefox 3.5 becomes available, with its latest support for HTML 5, a faster JavaScript engine, the awesome bar and the Personas extension,  I immediately switched.

Before I had switched, I was worried that I will missed the integrated social web browsing experience provided by Flock. But, after I had installed various Firefox plugins for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Blogger, I didn't feel losing much functionality. A faster browsing experience is what I loved about Firefox.

I'm worried about the future of Flock. I wonder if it has become a bloatware.

Flock's OpenID extension

OpenID is a technology that attempts to solve the login problem on the web. Recently Flock, my favorite social web browser, published a browser extension that adds OpenID support in the browser. The idea is simple but significant. Once you have the extension installed, the Flock browser will prompt you for OpenID login if you come to a web site that supports OpenID.

Here is an intro video of the OpenID extension.

Although it's exciting to see this new extension, but the current implementation is not without issue. The most critical issue: not all OpenID sites allow login using OpenID's created from third-party providers (e.g., you can't currently use your WordPress OpenID to login to your Google account).

For this reason, I find the Flock extension is less useful than it should be. The problem is rooted in the business model and politics behind an one-click signon web architecture. The problem is not in which of the extension design.

The whole purpose of OpenID is that users should have one or two OpenID, and use which to authenticate themselves on the web. If all web sites require login use only OpenID from their own providers, then we are back to "square zero" -- multiple login for multiple sites.

The battle for web authentication is still in progress. With the emergence of Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, OpenID must convince more web sites to allow third-party ID login.

Wired On The Current Browser War

This Wired News article reviews the status of the current browser war -- IE7, Firefox, Flock, Opera etc. Here is a quick summary:

• IE continues to lose its market share, down to 90% from 97% in two years.


• Firefox's share has steadily increased to 9 percent.


• While Opera tries hard to come out with new features, it's share hasn't really increased (Opera, who?)


• Flock is a new kid on the block. It's a Web 2.0 browser. Built on the Firefox source code, its target customers are commercial companies who want to bundle technologies in a for-profit version of the Firefox browser (podcast).

I don't think there will be an end to the browser war. The war will continue until the end of Internet (if there is a such day). I also believe that there will never be one browser for everyone. It's a competitive market. New browsers will be developed because someone spotted a niche in the market.