Can Mozilla escape a premature endgame for Firefox?

It's an undeniable fact that most businesses that transact with their customers through the Internet are wrestling with how to build a viable business model for themselves. Even the most successful enterprises are frankly struggling to ensure their long-term survival, and Mozilla is certainly among them. Its principal product is given away for free, and Firefox's lifeline stems from a percentage of revenues from searches generated though -- all of a sudden -- its own hottest competitor in the Web browser field today, Google.

Yesterday's release by Microsoft of Internet Explorer 8, with its visibly demonstrable speed and performance boosts, is bringing speed and performance back into the public discussion of what a Web browser can be. And there, Web users are likely to discover that while Firefox still outperforms IE8, it's chasing competition on the forward end of the racetrack. Google Chrome -- a browser created by many of the same individuals who are also working on Firefox -- will probably lead Firefox 3.5 in performance even as performance becomes the main value proposition for the new edition of Mozilla's browser.