incrediBILL - 6:33 am on May 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

[news.cnet.com...]

Today, Mozilla's top lawyer warned that Microsoft's behavior threatens a repeat of history, because it's telling Mozilla that it's barring Firefox from forthcoming Windows 8 machines that use ARM processors.

Overall, it looks like Microsoft is taking pages from the Apple playbook. On iOS, Apple permits only its WebKit browser engine to be used for Web apps and Web pages. That can simplify life for Web developers racing to adapt to mobile browsing -- but other browsers suffer.

I think Firefox misses the point that phones are mostly turnkey appliances and there's an issue with battery life. But the flip side is if someone decides to install an aftermarket browser that compromises the battery life, why should MS really care?

I don't think the real battle will be over browsers specifically, but it will be how much total control users are going to get over their mobile devices. This will be kind of like how Nook tries to stop you from using anything outside of their Nook marketplace and the war B&N is currently waging with customers that root the device.

Then again, once MS starts clamping down on browsers on mobile devices, what's to stop them from attempting to do the same nonsense on the desktop?

Give them an inch...