Image via Wikipedia

Firefox is my favorite browser. It has been for years. Now, Mozilla is preparing to release Firefox 3.0, according to a story in the New York Times, which details how Microsoft, Apple (through its controversial push of Safari through the Apple Downloads application), and Mozilla are in browser wars again.

Firefox is by far the fleetest of the three, and 3.0 promises to be faster and less consumptive than ever before. It also promises something they are calling the “awesome bar,” a tool that remembers and predicts things you want to visit in what apparently amounts to an awesome manner.

How do browsers make money? Mozilla generates $65 million per year through a deal with Google around that little search box in the upper-right corner. Other insertions in other browsers generate revenues. And controlling the sandbox to a greater extent increases the amount you can demand for what amounts to product placements.

As Mitch Kapor says in the Times story, “The browser is just extraordinarily strategic.”