We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

The money that funds Firefox comes principally from all the clicks by Firefox users who use Google in the browser. Until this renewal deal was signed, people wondered about a disastrous scenario in which the Firefox product was essentially defunded. Now we know that won’t happen.

In its 2010 fiscal year, by the way, Mozilla made $123 million, mostly from search revenues from Google and other partners. That makes it a rather well-funded non-profit. Fodder for further discussion: How well is it translating that money into a better Firefox (and other products), better Web technologies, and a better Web, period?

Mozilla is considering slowing down its recent “let’s move as fast as Chrome” release schedule for Firefox. Sounds like a good idea to me.

The goal is to create a web-based operating system that includes all the core functions of a smartphone, including phone calls, text messages and photos. For now, Mozilla plans to build the OS from a low-level chunk of Android, but apps that run on the phone would ultimately be available in any web browser.

In typical Mozilla fashion, the company is laying out its intentions even as the project is in its rudimentary stages.

“We will do this work in the open, we will release the source in real-time, we will take all successful additions to an appropriate standards group, and we will track changes that come out of that process,” Mozilla wrote on its Boot to Gecko wiki. “We aren’t trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we’re trying to have them run on the web.”

The effort stands in contrast to Google’s Chrome OS for a couple reasons: First, Mozilla is initially focusing on smartphones, with the ultimate goal of displacing native apps on both mobile and desktop devices, whereas Chrome OS launched on notebooks and may eventually expand to desktops and tablets. Second, Mozilla clearly states that it wants the apps coming out of this project to be compatible with all browsers, whereas the Chrome Web Store is unique to Google’s web browser, and not all apps work in other browsers.

Mozilla may be onto something here. Web apps are nice in theory, because they don’t lock the user into any particular platform, but right now it’s in the interest of Apple, Google and Microsoft to their own create ecosystems of native mobile apps instead. Mozilla has little to lose by building a system of apps that can be accessed from any browser.

It’s a lofty goal, and building a mobile OS brings other headaches, like partnerships with hardware vendors and wireless carriers. We’re obviously a long, long way from seeing a finished product out of Boot to Gecko, but I’m interested to see where it goes.

For all the rapid improvement that both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have seen, one thing about both mobile operating systems hasn’t changed much at all: their browsers. True, their technical underpinnings have been refined. But featurewise, they haven’t evolved at anywhere near the pace of their counterparts on PCs, where the competition among browsers is never-ending.

That’s one reason why I’m in favor of browser competition being as healthy on smartphones and tablets as it is on computers. On iOS, that’s not going to happen anytime soon–Apple doesn’t permit full-blown browsers with their own rendering engines in the App Store. (Ones that use the Safari engine, such as the excellent Atomic Web Browser, are permissible; so is Opera Mini, which does most of its work on Opera’s servers, not on your phone.) On Android, however, there’s nothing stopping other companies from competing with the OS’s built-in browser. Opera announced new versions of both Opera Mini and Opera Mobile for Android a couple of weeks ago. And now Mozilla has released the final version of Firefox 4 for Android.

I first wrote about the Android incarnation of Firefox last April, when it was known as Fennec and was a very rough draft. (In the interim, Mozilla decided to call it Firefox 4; that’s more straightforward but should not be interpreted as evidence that the mobile browser is a carbon copy of its recently-released PC cousin.) It’s come a long way–this finished version has a decidedly Firefoxy feel and is among the most feature-rich mobile browsers to date.

Some highlights:

• It has a clever interface that lets you swipe to the right to see thumbnails of tabls, and swipe to the left to get navigational tools and settings, thereby letting you bypass your phone’s menu button (always a plus in my book);
• It has a mobilized version of Firefox’s Awesome Bar that lets you type into the address bar to search your history, Google, Amazon, and other sources;
• It has Add-ons! Just as with the browser I know think of as Traditional Firefox, this one lets third-party developers build extensions that add new features and change stuff around. Among the ones already available: one that lets you change the browser user agent screen to fool sites into thinking you’re using another browser, a mobile version of Adblock Plus, a text-zooming utility, and one that lets you tweet from the address bar;
• You can sync your history, bookmarks, tabs, and other settings with other copies of Firefox on other devices;
• It sports a rendering engine which Mozilla touts as being much faster than the one used by Google’s browser. It did feel pretty darn snappy to me, although the browser launched slowly on an HTC Evo 4G, with a splash screen and a “please wait” message;
• You can save any page as a PDF, which is useful for salting away information you’ll want to refer to later.

Firefox for Android doesn’t render Google’s standard browser obsolete overnight. For me, the biggest catch is that so many mobile Web sites are designed to work best on the Webkit-based browsers used by iOS and Android. If you go to Google Docs in Firefox and try to edit a file, for instance, you get a warning that your browser isn’t supported. (I tried changing Firefox’s agent string to claim that the browser was iOS, but that only made maters worse.)

The browser runs on Android 2.0 and above, but it’s a phone app, not a tablet one; it’ll work on tablets, but just scales up the interface to fit the larger screen. Mozilla says it might build a tablet-specific Firefox eventually.

Oh, and Firefox for Android doesn’t support Flash, even when it’s on a phone that has Flash installed. This doesn’t strike me as a major downside, but you might feel differently; Mozilla says it might enable Flash later, but it’s mostly focusing on making HTML5 work as well as possible.

I like Firefox for Android. I like the fact that it gives Google some incentive to add more features to Android’s default browser. And maybe I’m a nutty optimist, but I think that the better browsing gets on Android phones, the more likely it is that Apple will beef up iOS’s Safari. (I’m not so optimistic that I believe Apple will permit other full-fledged browsers such as Firefox onto iOS anytime soon, but you never know.)

In short, I’m glad that Firefox has finally landed on Android in a version that’s ready for prime time. If you’ve tried it, let us know what you think…

Release Date:

Google Chrome (Beta): Beta version available; Those using Chrome will be updated soon.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0: Web and mobile browser expected mid-to-late March. [NOTE: A beta version is available.]

Point Goes To: Chrome. It’s available now, and we all know what happens with tentative dates.

Speed:

Google Chrome (Beta): The new browser is 66 percent faster than the previous version using the V8 Benchmark Suite tests.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0: Firefox counters with a six times faster browser than their previous iteration, meaning a 6oo percent faster speed using the V8 Benchmark Suite tests.

Point Goes To: Firefox. Just look at the stats.

User Interface:

Google Chrome (Beta): The browser has been revamped to help the user customize their experience and get to what they need faster. This means:

- The settings interface is a tab in the browser. This makes it look cleaner.

- A search box so you can quickly find whatever you’re trying to fix/manage. Finally, you can search for your settings instead of clicking through and reading through each option.

- Each option page has a URL so you can help others find the same setting.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0: Lots of new stuff here including:

- Top navigation buttons have disappeared, making it look very similar to Chrome. Tabs are right on top now. Bookmarks are now a button on the top right of the page.

- Introducing App Tabs: If you’re someone who uses the same websites (such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.), you might want to try this option. You have the option to make a frequently used website an app tab, which appears as a small square to the left of your normal tabs. The app tabs light up when there is updated content.

- Switch To Tab: Now when you go to type in a new URL, you will have the option to “Switch To Tab.” No more forgetting that you already have that website open in a different window.

- Panorama: Instead of having multiple windows open, each with their own purpose, you can organize your tabs into different groups. Panorama gives you the option to click on that set of tabs and hide the rest (even though they are in the same browser window). This is best for people who use a ton of tabs daily.

Point: Firefox. I like all the new features Firefox has added – especially since I’m a tab freak. Even though a lot of it is just updating to be more like Chrome, there are some added features that Chrome hasn’t implemented. However, Chrome does get props for making searching for settings easier and helping us customize.

Synchronization:

Google Chrome (Beta): You can synchronize passwords across all the internet-capable devices you use that use Google Chrome and encrypt them for added security. Search through Chrome’s now-easy-to-use settings. It should be under the heading “Personal Stuff.” You can also import data from your other browsers with ease.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0: Not only can you synchronize passwords and auto-fill data across your internet-capable devices, you can access the same website that you were looking at on any of your devices.

For example, if you open Yelp.com on your computer and need that information on the go, you can open the Firefox browser on your Android device and opt to look at the sites you were browsing on your computer and vice versa. The new Firefox browser will ship out with new Android devices when it is ready. (iOS users need to download a separate app for this functionality since separate browsers are not allowed.)

Point goes to: Firefox. I do enjoy how easy it is to upload settings into Chrome, but being able to see the same web browser across devices? Very cool.

Updates:

Google Chrome (Beta): It’s so advanced it updates itself and most of its apps (eventually). You can also force an update at any time under the “About Chrome” section.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0: You no longer need to restart Firefox when you update with a new add-on: It automatically installs it for you. This feature only works for new apps, although older add-ons have the option to upgrade to fit this new feature.

Point: Tie. I hate updating and like it when the program can figure it out for itself, but now Firefox is on an almost even playing field with the “no restart necessary” update.

Final Score: Advantage Firefox

I like what Chrome has done, but the new Firefox updates seem to take the best of what the browser can do and improve on it. Which do you prefer?

(This post is republished from our partner Techland.)

The Firefox maker has announced the first developer release for the Mozilla Web Apps Project. Unlike Google’s Chrome Web Store, which launched in December with apps from big names like the New York Times, Sports Illustrated and NPR, Mozilla’s project is off to a modest start, with a series of disparate parts that will eventually coalesce into a full-blown platform.

For now, you can mess around with all the individual pieces. The first step is to install the Mozilla Web App extension, which places an app launcher in the browser’s toolbar, for either Firefox or Chrome. Yes, as opposed to the Chrome Web Store, Mozilla’s approach is browser-agnostic. Once the extension is installed, you can check out some demo apps. There’s also a gallery of user interface concepts, as well as a concept web app dashboard that looks promising; some apps are capable of displaying live information from the launcher, kind of like Windows Phone 7′s live tiles.

But don’t expect to get much use out of the existing 17 demo apps. They’re all just links to other websites, and while that’s technically true of any web app, the demos don’t include any fresh takes on web design to make the sites feel more app-like. And without a storefront for discovery and a proper launcher, this is all just show and tell.

In time, Mozilla plans to add native browser controls, OS integration, mobile device syncing and — I’ll use Mozilla’s description because I can’t think of a better one — a “deeply integrated ‘in browser’ experience that spans the entire find, install, launch, use and manage flow.” Developers will also be able to create their own individual app stores.

In general, I like the web app concept because it helps you discover new services and provides an easy way to launch and manage them. I’m excited to see whether Mozilla can raise the bar over what Google has created with Chrome.

Mozilla Labs’ solution? Chromeless, an experiment that will let people with knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript create their own browser interfaces.

Introducing the idea, Mozilla developer Marcio Galli asks, “What kinds of wild-eyed experimentation would we see if a new conception of browser UI could be prototyped in about the same time it takes to write a web page?” To illustrate his point, Galli posted a simple example that uses page screenshot thumbnails instead of tabs (pictured here).

I really like the idea of Chromeless. While browser interfaces have become highly-evolved, trimming unused menu space and consolidating clutter is not the same as introducing revolutionary new features. If the web browser has any more major leaps in store — something on par with tabs and omnibars — their chances of being discovered will greatly improve if lots of people can easily make their own prototypes. I doubt that any one remix would become popular on its own, but successful experiments could certainly find their way into major browser releases.

Chromeless is still in pre-alpha, and over the next few months, Mozilla will add APIs, security features, and eventually a software development kit for putting together genuine browser remixes. I’m excited to see what people come up with.