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