Mozilla Weave to blur the distinction between web and browser

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Mozilla

Mozilla Weave to blur the distinction between web and browser

by Brad Linder Dec 23rd 2007

Mozilla has just announced a new initiative that on its face sounds a lot like Google Browser Sync. The project aim's to give Firefox users increased "user control over personal information." In other words, you'll be able to store your browser data including bookmarks, history, and customizations on a Mozilla Server. That way you can synchronize your preferences across the browsers on your work and home PCs and any others you have lying around. You know, exactly the way you can with Google Browser Sync.

It sounds like there's a chance the project (known for now as "Mozilla Weave") will do more than let you synchronize your data though. Mozilla mentions that another goal is to allow "developers to build innovative online experiences." It's not yet clear exactly what kind of experiences Mozilla is talking about. But once your personal data is stored online, there could be all sorts of ways to interact with it. Like maybe a Mozilla-backed online office suite. Oh right, Google's got that covered. How about email? Oh right.

Mozilla Weave is still in its infancy over at Mozilla Labs, so it'll be interesting to see how the concept evolves. At the very least, it'd be nice to have a browser sync feature built by the folks who designed the browser in the first place.

[via Mozilla Links]

Tags: google-browser-sync, mozilla-weave

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jonathan Harford said 9:45AM on 12-23-2007

Is "Mozilla Server" an open source piece of software for us to run on our servers? Or is Mozilla saying "Nah, baby, we'll hold onto all your data for you... and maybe show you a few ads."

I hope it's the first (with, probably, the option of the second).

I wonder if one could make a decentralized Facebook/Myspace with the fruits of this... initiative?

Brandon said 1:55PM on 12-23-2007

Opera is also working on this in beta 9.5. In the interim, I will keep using foxmarks for Firefox though. It works great.

joescmoe said 1:55PM on 12-23-2007

Right, I want to send all my private data and passwords to some freakin cloud to share with the world. Great idea!

John M said 9:43PM on 12-23-2007

Isn't this what del.icio.us does in part? Granted, maybe you could store your selected plugins, but I wouldn't want to store the data

Milan said 9:55AM on 12-24-2007

Check it out: https://services.mozilla.com/

jd said 7:59PM on 12-24-2007

I came back to DownloadSquad.com after a several months, this article reminded me why I left.
Half of your post about a Mozilla product is about Google software (which by the way is a Firefox extension) that debuted in June '06 and has been poorly supported by Google itself (as evidenced by it's spam-filled discussion boards http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Firefox-Extensions )
Get over your obsession with Google DLS, try writing unbiased articles for a change.

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