Mozilla

Reinventing the Web

November 15th, 2012

The Web has become fundamental infrastructure of modern life in just 20 years. Today, we see how the Web can make yet another leap in its usefulness, fun, business opportunities and social benefit.

Imagine the richness and freedoms of the Web seamlessly integrated with mobile devices. Imagine that experience is awesome and it’s awesome whether you use an app for a special task or use the browser to find your own path.

Imagine acquiring an app and having it run across multiple devices, whether or not all these devices come from the same vendor. Imagine being able to choose when it makes sense to interact with the app provider directly or instead through Apple, Google or Microsoft.

Imagine having a choice about who controls your identity. Log into a site and have everything you’ve done on the web available to the world? Or log in and have information you consider public to be available to the world?

Imagine have a sense of security about your online environment — who’s watching you, who’s selling information about you, who’s protecting you and how you can protect yourself.

Imagine understanding the Web, feeling competent to make things, to change what exists and create things that meet your particular needs. Imagine where Web literacy is fun, and extends beyond to citizens as well as hard-core programmers.

Mozilla is building this world. We have the vision of this world, the architecture, the technology and the product plans. We’re building these products now. We have the financial resources to support these efforts. This is an exciting and very productive period. Please explore this year’s Annual Report to see what we’ve done and what’s on the horizon. Please join us in building this world.

3 comments for “Reinventing the Web”

  1. 1

    Max Krichana said on November 19th, 2012 at 11:32 am:

    Hello Mrs Baker,

    it is amazing how, in my country, we have disparities concerning the use of the web. I mean, there are a lot of people who can’t even read — not to mention writing and having sound opinions on nowaday’s political and economical issues. In this matter, I have managed in 1998 to create a psychopedagogic project on getting people (of any age) to read and write (and draw, and learn how to produce a script etc) using comic books. But WHO CARES? I couldn’t find my public yet. So I am still trying to convince investors to help me with this initiative (if you’re interested I’ll give more details). And now, with integrated platforms and gadgets, with the integration of mobile devices, we see the opportunity of maybe taking a further step on that direction: basic education. What matters the most, it seems, is that INFORMATION circulates freely, so people can improve theirs skills and their knowledge about what’s going on and on what is important for their everyday lives. I’m writing this after having read your interview on Veja magazine, launched this week in Brasil and Portugal. So congratulations on your thoughts and deeds, and thanks for your time. I’m a Brazilian journalist who works with the indigenous people and see the huge gap ahead… things are getting worse for many of our citizens, in spite of all the rumours spread on the web and the presss. Thank you for your time.
    Max Krichanã

  2. 2

    Tomomi Kosaka said on January 28th, 2013 at 1:52 pm:

    Dear Ms. Mitchell Baker,

    Please allow me to write this to your blog’s comment. I wanted to reach you in person.

    My name is Tomomi. I’m from Osaka, Japan. We are two individuals. We have a dream and have started to realize it.
    Telling about our idea briefly, we want to create a global identification platform in the real (physical) world.

    We need someone whom we can share our idea, get some advice and hopefully support (in future). As I tried to find the one, I found this blog post.
    First I would like you to know who we are and what we are going to do. Could you please read our project summary?
    You will find it at https://kosakas.jp/smile/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/summary.pdf

    Thank you so much for your time. I am hoping to hear from you.

    Best wishes,
    Tomomi Kosaka

  3. 3

    Gene Vayngrib said on July 28th, 2013 at 3:03 pm:

    Imagine web apps network, where any app can connect to any other apps. As the Berlin walls of server-side WebAPIs crumble, the user-curated data flows freely, like signals between neurons in our brains. As the need for each app to hoard its data and repeat the functionality of other apps subsides, much simpler specialized apps emerge and assemble in complex ways, as musicians in the orchestra.

    Imagine native apps joining this ever growing app network, initially via their existing WebAPIs and then more and more by migrating to native web technologies, redefining the very notion of native.

    Imagine devices joining this app network and communicating to any other app as an equal peer. Smartwatches or health monitors, cars or environmental sensors mash up into this universal app network with the unified communications mechanism.

    Imagine Web servers relegated to the role of a cloud database, cloud storage, and cloud backup, letting the app functionality move to the network’s edge, to mobile devices. As apps live and work locally and operate together, they learn to anticipate and satisfy every need of their users.

    Imagine the founding father of the web, the ‘view source’, fully restored, so that the newbie can again observe all app assets and fork them individually like gists on github. And even further, imagine many open apps that can be forked and tweaked, so that any citizen can start a new app with just one click and grow it in unexpected ways, slowly becoming a real web programmer.

    Inspired by Mozilla’s bold vision, this is what we at Urbien are building, both on FirefoxOS and beyond. Fork it at http://github.com/urbien/urbini

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