The Native Google products are far and few between. They are the Mountain View Raiders. Sometimes they buy a company, other times they buy the developers. For example even Chrome was created by ex FireFox developers. It's just that Mozilla is too weak and too dependent on Google's revenue to put up a fight.
In the payment business it's often the relationship with the merchants and processors, understanding how they work is even more important than the code or even the hardware. People are key in that business.
Forget about the industrial espionage, just hire a person who knows all the trade secrets. If PayPal and Google were a country there would be dead bodies on the streets of San Francisco.
It's not just Blake Ross and Chrome - Apple's Safari/WebKit team is led by Firefox co-creator David Hyatt. And long-time IE platform architect Chris Wilson left Microsoft to work on web platform stuff for the Google TV team...
(BCM43 is right that none of us at Mozilla have any reason to complain about ex-Mozillians and others helping to increase competition on the web.)
FYI, it's the other Firefox guy, Ben Goodger, who now leads the Chrome team at Google[1]. Blake Ross is apparently doing things unrelated to browser development, at Facebook[2].
Even when there is a competition, the web mostly have been a winner take all medium. Google being the prime example. It's not even about the usage but all about the technological leadership. If usage was accounted for, IE6 would be a very impressive product.
> It's just that Mozilla is too weak and too dependent on Google's revenue to put up a fight.
Why would Mozilla want to put up a fight? It seems to me that One of Mozilla's biggest goals is working towards a better web, and that chrome as done quite a bit for innovation in the browser market.
Imagine in 8 years ago someone said "And so Mozilla has to compete with IE6 which will eventually make Firefox better and in the end the web wins". Just because there is another browser that is significant competition doesn't necessarily mean good things. It's especially true if any one browser becomes too dominant, then all the other browsers have to conform to that browsers decisions.
I'm not saying that Chrome is going to become the IE6 of 2015, but if there is ever a point where Chrome can either do what is best for the web/user or be better for Google's bottom line they will always be choosing the latter.
Look at the state of flashblock and adblock in Chrome. It may have changed, but when I last looked at them they were both complete crap compared to their firefox equivalents. Google has very little incentive to improve their plugin system to make them more effective, but that would be counterproductive to what they are trying to achieve. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there comes a point when they are trying to push alternate formats for streaming video over Flash and it will suddenly become very easy to block Flash effectively and efficiently in Chrome.
I use Chrome and I like it, but I generally trust Mozilla to push for the best things on the web than any for-profit company, even Google.
"And so Mozilla has to compete with IE6 which will eventually make Firefox better and in the end the web wins"
That is exactly what happened. That's how Firefox was born if you remember. IE6 was dominant and Firefox rose from Netscape's ashes to challenge it and it turned out to be a very good thing.
Indeed and has lead to much greater cross browser support for standards, it ain't perfect but it's a lot better now. Even IE7 was a breath of fresh air and that was practically forced by the competition from FF, Op and the like.
I mean, if you follow the money trail, it's just as important to Mozilla that Google does given that's where a large chunk of their funding comes from.
In the payment business it's often the relationship with the merchants and processors, understanding how they work is even more important than the code or even the hardware. People are key in that business.
Forget about the industrial espionage, just hire a person who knows all the trade secrets. If PayPal and Google were a country there would be dead bodies on the streets of San Francisco.