I’ve previously speculated whether those running the mega-datacenters that deliver more and more of our applications–especially in the consumer space–might not also increasingly write their own platform software and construct their own hardware. In the general case, the jury is still out. And there are some counterexamples. For instance, Yahoo has largely shifted from running a FreeBSD variant that it supported internally to the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution.

But, however the general trend plays out, it’s clear that Google is increasingly going its own way. It already extensively customizes Linux and other open-source software for its internal use. Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center, among others, has been critical of what he sees as Google’s relatively stingy contributions back to open-source projects in general. And although Google doesn’t design its own processors, it does source custom motherboards from Intel that it uses to build many of its own servers.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen two more stories–one in hardware, one in software–that further highlight Google’s increasingly vertical integration. Read more »

Posted by Robert Vamosi

Mozilla on Monday released Firefox version 2.0.0.10. The update addresses three high-impact security vulnerabilities. Two concern cross-site request forgeries, which can be used to steal personal information while visiting certain sites, and one concerns memory corruption.

The first cross-site request forgery vulnerability could allow an attacker to generate a fake HTTP referer header by exploiting a timing condition when setting the window location property.

Mozilla says the referer header is supposed to reflect the address of the content that initiated the script. “Instead, the referer was set to the address of the window (or frame) in which the script was running, and this vulnerability arises from that tiny difference.” It credits Gregory Fleischer with reporting the issue. Read more »

The Firefox browser may not be as independent as previously thought. Mozilla essentially owns Firefox, and it proved so when it flexed its muscles last year in forcing Debian to rename its browser IceWeasel.

However, the open secret in the tech sector is that at the end of the day, Google calls the shots. As this blog post will explain, when a pro-user security feature in the browser threatens Google’s business model, it is the feature that is made to compromise–not the search engine.

Embrace Google Freedom (TM)

(Credit: Sgrah / flickr)

First, a few highlights of the Firefox-Google relationship.

Fact: $56 million of the $66 million that Mozilla made in 2006 came from Google. The vast majority of this was due to the fact that Google is the default search engine for queries entered into the Firefox search bar. Read more »

Tags: COMPUTER, MICROSOFT, INTERNET, SOFTWARE