Archive for July 26th, 2007

The first theme in the comments to the Thunderbird and mail post I want to address is the idea that this decision is somehow related to Google, Google products or Google revenue. I want to be as clear as possible about the complete lack of Google involvement.

I have no idea if Google thinks the Thunderbird announcement is a good idea, bad idea, irrelevant or if they even know of it.

To be more specific:

• Google and Google products had nothing to do with this decision.
• We did not ask Google about Thunderbird product planning, Thunderbird revenue, gmail product planning or gmail revenue.
• We did not ask Google’s opinion.
• Google’s plans for gmail — whatever they are, and they are unknown to me — are irrelevant to this decision.

There is a lot of content in the comments to my Thunderbird and email post. I’m going to try to respond to general themes, although not every post specifically. I’m going to start by addressing the themes in separate messages; I think that will make it easier to get to clarity.

The themes I see so far are:

1. Google is involved somehow.
2. Thunderbird and the Mozilla mission.
3. Feature thoughts about Thunderbird.
4. Why can’t Thunderbird and Firefox both prosper inside the Mozilla Corporation?
5. Is Mozilla exclusively focused on Firefox?
6. Revenue is the determining factor.

There may be other themes that appear or that I’ve missed with this first pass. Or two may show up as part of the same message, I’m not sure yet since I haven’t written them. But these are the topics I know now that I want to address.