Flock Dumps Mozilla’s Firefox, Welcomes Google Chrome

TechCrunch is reporting that the upcoming version of social browser Flock will be built on Google’s Chrome platform.

Why they are dumping Mozilla’s Firefox? While there are no official statements on this decision, TechCrunch writes:

“Sources say that they’ve become frustrated with Mozilla’s lack of attention to Flock’s needs. One source says Flock felt like the “red headed step child of the Mozilla development community.” Sources are also saying that Flock feels that Google Chrome is far easier to work with than Firefox.”

Although Chrome doesn’t yet work with Mac or Linux platforms, Google is working hard on that and first cross platform releases should be ready by the end of Q2, 2009.

Flock CEO has also replied:

“We haven’t ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform. Our upcoming release of Flock 2.1 is built on the Mozilla platform. Having said that, the browser space is heating up, and we’ve seen a variety of exciting technologies emerge over the last several months that are appealing.

We always have and will continue to make architectural decisions that balance what’s best for our users and what’s best for Flock as a business. This has resulted in a healthy, growing user base and business for Flock, and we expect this to continue in 2009. In fact, with over seven million downloads almost entirely from word of mouth, Flock enjoys a highly satisfied user base with consistently over 92% customer satisfaction, very strong net promoter scores, and an average of four hours of usage per day.

With a continuing focus on user-centered browser innovation, our team is in active research and development on a range of exciting new enhancements to Flock. It is still far too early to comment on anything specific, but we are very excited about this design phase…”