Blake Ross, who turned 21 last month, continues his involvement in Firefox initiatives. But he is also working now with software developer Joe Hewitt, who he met while working at Netscape, on a secretive new venture. In Seattle last week for the Gnomedex technology conference, Ross sat down for an interview on subjects including Firefox's future, its relationship with Google, Microsoft's practices in the browser market and his own plans. Here's an excerpt:

Q: I know you're asked frequently about Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's next Web browser. How much have you used the test version, and what do you think of it?

Ross: I've used it a little bit. The truth is that it actually looks pretty good. People don't expect me to say that; they expect me to say that it's terrible. They did exactly what we were expecting them to do, which was take a bunch of time and get IE7 up to feature parity with Firefox. I haven't seen any real innovation above and beyond what we delivered in Firefox. I think that it's a solid product, but I think that by the time it comes out, we're going to be another world ahead of them again, so I think it's kind of a step or two behind us.

Q: Microsoft essentially allowed Internet Explorer to go dormant for several years, until Firefox started coming along and chipping away at its market share. What do you think about that, and what does that say about the state of competition?

Ross: That makes me furious, to be completely honest with you. That, more than anything, is why we really had to start Firefox in the first place. People think that we started Firefox just to take down Microsoft, just to win some kind of competition. Why would we want to win? There's no money involved for us. There's no (initial public offering) for this company; it's a non-profit. Why would we want to do this unless there's a real need?

The truth is I think Microsoft is very directly responsible for spyware and adware and the pop-up ads in general that proliferated across the Web after they abandoned their product. I mean, this is the world's most-used software application ever ... and I just think it's irresponsible for a company to abandon it simply because they can't find a financial incentive to continue development on it.

People ask me, "Well, gee, if IE7 is starting to catch up to Firefox, and if they've got their hand back in development right now, and eventually they might actually catch up to Firefox in terms of features, what's the benefit of using Firefox? Why are you guys still around if you say that your only goal is just to make the Web a better place?"

My answer to that is, how much can you really trust a company that five years ago completely left you abandoned? If they do, in fact, succeed in taking back some of the market share that Firefox has gotten back from them, who's to say that they're not going to disappear again? My issue is not so much at a product level; it's at a company level. How do you trust a company that left everyone out in the cold for five years?