Despite the potential for a conflict of interest, Accuvant is a well-respected firm, and its researchers have performed a thorough and fair study, even making the tools they used to test the browsers publicly available [1]... Nor are Accuvant’s findings entirely positive for Google. It points out that Chrome fails to effectively blacklist malicious URLs, though neither of the other browsers fared better on that front.
...but as a journalist, I can't let that get in the way of my constructed narrative! Mozilla and Google are totally in a fight. Seriously guys, if you could argue a little in the comments section, that would be great for our page views.
more seriously, the chart forbes copied makes the report look seriously amateur hour (forbes's jpg of it doesn't help), but the report is pretty interesting.
long section in the front about why previous browser security studies have been pretty poor, then gets into what seem to be good details on testing JIT hardening on page 28 (34 in the scribd). Haven't read farther yet.
Google basically made Firefox. And they make money from them as well. I don't think they hate it that much. Maybe they just don't like being held back and want to pursue their stu..eh dart ideas.
Firefox existed before Google funded it through the deal. If anyone, Netscape made Firefox. Heck, they actually made it, with no ones help and they actually created one of the first successful, fully open browser.
They're also the reason you have even Chrome today. Let's not change history too much.
Now that's true Firefox today is sustained by Google's money primarily (but I'm sure it would be fine with Bing's money - its all about money for corporations, and Firefox still has a large user base).
I also doubt they hate Firefox. But Chrome's advertisement budget alone is 20 times higher than what they pay to Firefox. That's quite a bit.
Certainly there are interests in Firefox's demise for Chrome (and for IE). You'll notice IE's marketing study was _exactly_ the same at Chrome's one.
Put IE on top, Chrome behind (it would be make the study looks too fake if they're all put too low and Chrome is the cool kid right now), then Firefox last, and no one cares for Opera, Safari, etc.
Why? Because it has nothing to do with technical details. It has everything to do with advertisement (or FUD, like we called it back in the days.)
ugh, I hate this kind of post because it does exactly what I mentioned above: creates more divisions than it actually describes.
I'll just say your mention of FUD is ironic since last I checked, Mozilla's income from the google search referral contract was something like $80 million, which would make 20x that number $1.6 billion. I'd love to see your source on that one.
You also clearly didn't bother to actually read any of the report. There are in fact serious security issues brought up there, have been brought up before [1], and are an active and interesting area of research. Mozilla and the other browser vendors are actively working on the issues brought up there (for instance, [2]), which no one has solved completely.
But yes, please. Let's reduce this to soap opera and sound bites.
...but as a journalist, I can't let that get in the way of my constructed narrative! Mozilla and Google are totally in a fight. Seriously guys, if you could argue a little in the comments section, that would be great for our page views.
[1] http://www.accuvant.com/capability/accuvant-labs/security-re...