It
is time for Microsoft and Mozilla to make peace and together face their common enemy:
Google.

For Mozilla, Google is both sole patron and
now direct
competitor, which is at best strategically awkward.  Firefox market share has plateaued. 
They’re losing their status as the browser of choice amongst the cool kids to Chrome. 
It is no longer
the svelte and solid product it once was as lobbying seems increasingly prized
at Mozilla above software development.  The idealistic fire burns low as the
dog is not sure what to do after catching the car.

While Mozilla drifts, Microsoft, meanwhile, has a tremendous need to change the browser
game.  Internet Explorer is getting bigger faster than it is getting better. 
Attenuating market share loss does not constitute a winning strategy.  Instead
of inflicting yet another column on the compatibility test matrix with a new rendering
engine, why not just embrace Firefox?  At this point, Microsoft has acquiesced
to the idea of cross-platform browser compatibility.  The browser anyway is just
a container for Silverlight which is the real presentation strategy.  Mozilla
can help propagate Silverlight as well as help with browser search defaults. 
Mozilla executives are publicly expressing a
preference for Bing despite their Google-funded paychecks, so cultivating Firefox
users and the open source community more broadly is not nearly as crazy as it might
have sounded even six months ago.

Microsoft has already paid almost $2.5
billion for the privilege of being required to ship Firefox and other browsers
with Windows in Europe (who knew there were 12 “popular” browsers?).  And the
company has gotten nothing out of strategic control of IE all the while butting heads
with the EU.  Now that the (Fire)fox’s nose is through the Windows’ window (to
butcher a metaphor badly), the renowned software designers of Brussels and their various
friends (aka “Other” in most market share reports) are now hard at work trying to expand that
toehold (and the scariest part of this for Microsoft should be the regulations starting entangle Office
as part of this).

In yet another eerie Richard
Nixon parallel, Microsoft has a history of surprise rapprochements with once bitter
foes (Apple, Novell, Sun, arguably China and they’ll probably end up bailing IBM out
one of these days…).  Why not add Mozilla to the list?  It not only costs
little to let the wookie win, but it helps on multiple fronts of the new competitive
landscape.  And maybe more importantly, is a powerful demonstration to the world
just how much that landscape has shifted, all to Microsoft’s advantage amidst its
metamorphosis from Evil Empire to benign-by-comparison former Evil Empire.

Just a thought.