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Flock abandons Firefox for Google Chrome (according to Arrington’s Sources)

By Zee
March 3, 2009
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Flock abandons Firefox for Google Chrome (according to Arringtons Sources)Flock, the social-media esque browser is abandoning it’s Firefox background for Google’s open source Chrome browser platform according to sources of Mike Arrington’s at Techcrunch.

The browser has raised $30 million dollars to date, releasing their latest build in October 2008.  Although the browser received some levels of uptake amongst the tech crowd, not enough to see common usage or any infiltration into mainstream.

According to Arrington, sources have claimed Flock have decided to abandon Firefox as they  have “become frustrated with Mozilla’s lack of attention to Flock’s needs”…hence, the move to Chrome.

Chrome however is still only a Windows based browser, although linux and mac versions are in (early stage) development. It is highly likely that all versions of Chrome, Windows or otherwise, will still lag behind the years of development which have gone into Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer…undoubtedly all this will have an impact on Flock’s own browser ambitions. Is this a brave move or a silly one?

I can’t help but feel this is very much like starting from scratch, or pre-scratch even.

**Update from Flock CEO Shawn Hardin**

It’s important to clarify a couple of things. We haven’t ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform. Our upcoming release of Flock 2.1 is built on the Mozilla platform. Having said that, the browser space is heating up, and we’ve seen a variety of exciting technologies emerge over the last several months that are appealing.

We always have and will continue to make architectural decisions that balance what’s best for our users and what’s best for Flock as a business. This has resulted in a healthy, growing user base and business for Flock, and we expect this to continue in 2009. In fact, with over seven million downloads almost entirely from word of mouth, Flock enjoys a highly satisfied user base with consistently over 92% customer satisfaction, very strong net promoter scores, and an average of four hours of usage per day.

With a continuing focus on user-centered browser innovation, our team is in active research and development on a range of exciting new enhancements to Flock. It is still far too early to comment on anything specific, but we are very excited about this design phase…

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  • Hey, what about the Mac users then ???, cause Chrome is Windows only yet.
  • Are you 100% sure? That seems like a very desperate move! But again, they might be in a very desperate position: 30M and nothing to really show for but 2 or 3 radical strategy changes. This is the big problem with start ups which get massive cash infusion before they find their market fit. What a waste! And blaming it on Firefox make it even worse. Booooo
  • Oh dear...that means I'll have to give up Flock and go back to Firefox.
  • Flock abandons Firefox for Chrome http://tinyurl.com/an8lnd !flockstars !flock :-(
  • It doesn't *at all* mean that they're going to be tied to technology that is years behind anything. Chrome is built on WebKit, the same HTML rendering engine that powers Safari. It uses different graphics and JavaScript engines (Skia for graphics, which is a dud, and V8 for JavaScript, which is actually really innovative).

    If anything, I think this is a good move for Flock. WebKit is the browser in the iPhone as well, so there could be some synergies between a desktop Flock and a mobile Flock (perhaps on the Android platform).
  • I don't know...how much do we need another web browser?
  • Flock...say it ain't so!
  • Flock abandons FF for Chrome? http://tinyurl.com/an8lnd
  • RT @boris: Flock abandons FF for Chrome? http://tinyurl.com/an8lnd
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  • Switching to Google Chrome's codebase in the short term doesn't make much sense. They'd lose support for plugins and Mac. Considering their still relatively small userbase, those are not minor features to drop, without having big impact.

    It's possible however, that they know something, that we don't. Chrome on the Mac might be closer to release, or Google has some radical plans in regards to plugins (dare we say monetization), which might be very appealing to a browser developer.
  • Switching to Google Chrome's codebase in the short term doesn't make much sense. They'd lose support for plugins and Mac. Considering their still relatively small userbase, those are not minor features to drop, without having big impact.

    It's possible however, that they know something, that we don't. Chrome on the Mac might be closer to release, or Google has some radical plans in regards to plugins (dare we say monetization), which might be very appealing to a browser developer.
    BTW I love your blog!
  • Shaun
    Surely the report is wrong. Flock doesn't use Firefox - it uses parts of the Mozilla platform, eg. the Gecko rendering engine. They wrote their own interface on top of those.

    In a similar way, I'd doubt Flock would take the Chrome interface code. They'd use Webkit as used in Chrome and Safari for the engine, and potentially Chrome or Webkit's Javascript implementation. There's advantages there in that Webkit is more standards compliant than Gecko and supports CSS3 more fully.

    And it's not like they're starting from scratch - Webkit has been in development almost as long as Gecko. Don't confuse Mozilla with Firefox and Webkit with Chrome/Safari.
  • @flocker got chrome? http://tinyurl.com/an8lnd will this switch coincide with Mac release? :)
  • Flock abandons Firefox for Google Chrome http://tinyurl.com/an8lnd #feedly
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