As they've done some bartering with the search engine stuff I could see them protect each other. Microsoft doesn't need any bad PR in the mobile market (remember the KIN? No? QED), and on top of that WP7 isn't that ooh-la-la either (a day late and a dollar short). Flaws like these could turn away the most loyal fans.

Yahoo has had its fair share of lambasting after the whole delicious affair and probably doesn't need another PR disaster.

Why else would this be an 'unnamed third party'?

Well I'm sure Chrome would benefit from a buggy, rushed and half-assed release of FF 4.0. It would be free PR if they bungled it.

I still have FF 3.6 atm and it's been crashing quite a lot in the past few days (about once a day) and I'm having this weird "unfocusable address bar" bug, which requires me to minimize the window and maximize it again every so often, otherwise I can't enter anything at all. Chrome has its share of bad days too, but that's mostly because I'm a taboholic or if Flash shits itself (happens in FF as well). But Chrome is FAST, not just in booting, but also in fetching. The minimal use of screen estate is a big Chrome plus in my opinion, it even adds to the psychological experience of its lightness and agility.

JavaScript never was that much of an issue in the browser wars, but Google surely played it out well. Who else could use more horsepower there? Google directly benefits from migrating software away from the local system to a more web-based approach. If the experience is to be as rich as local software even more so. Chrome's very cunning as well, as it's been incrementing it's version number quite rapidly, and it will overtake IE '9' in weeks figuratively. Auto-updating is a killer feature as well, no need to wait for the rest of the world to finally upgrade away from stone age browsers.

I don't get all the rejoicing. This lawsuit is far from over. The jurisdiction thing seems too silly to be a serious attempt at anything. I can't understand why they tried that silly twitter/youtube thing, perhaps they want to win time? Or did they pick the court closest to their HQ? When this gets filed in New Jersey (and I don't see why it won't) the real suit will start. BTW: Could it be I just read something about the 'root key' not being so unique and holy-grail like after all? http://www.ps3news.com/PS3-Hacks/hermes-and-naima-on-ps3-npdrm-selfs-encryption-differs/page-2 Anyone knows what it's about, and what the implications are?