Firefox is dead on Windows Phone 7

Christopher Blizzard, Director of Developer Relations and Open Source Evangelist at Mozilla spoke to Gizmodo about the future of their browser in the new order, where they are facing competition from Google on the desktop and mobile, and are also seemingly excluded from many mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and Windows Phone 7. While the interview only touches on Windows Phone 7, it is clear the open source browser project has no love lost for the new OS.

Noting that they were going to do Windows Mobile because it “really needed a good browser”, he felt the restrictions related to Windows Phone 7 was too cumbersome to make it worthwhile.

“They’re gonna ship some version of IE, which is gonna be terrible.” He went on “The wonderful thing about the mobile web is the people like being able to use modern browser platforms and Microsoft’s gonna single-handedly gonna drag that back.”

Of course the slow progress of the browser on Windows Mobile has meant Mozilla lost any fanbase they may have had rooting for a Windows Phone 7 port, but it is still disappointing that they are not even expressing any desire to be on the platform, especially given Microsoft’s expressed willingness to bend the rules regarding native applications for significant players.