Firefox tell Flock to Flock Off?

Now this is an interesting piece of news. Flock is a browser that uses Firefox as the underlying code. What Flock adds is lots of social networking bits and pieces on top of the browser platform, such as the ability to post to blogs and to do things with your pictures via Flickr and Photobucket. I have been using it on and off, the main reason for not using it is that it is still very much beta software, although the version I currently have is very stable and works a treat - therefore using it is becoming more frequent.

However, the guys at Mozilla, who put Firefox together seem to be wanting to create their own version of Flock. I have a couple of questions/ points relating to this.

1. Why create a new 'browser' when the functionality can be obtained by using plug-ins. This is the best thing about Firefox, if you want some added functionality simply find the plug-in that offers it, there are plenty out there
2. The same question should, and has, been levelled at Flock
3. The market is getting crowded
4. Is the winner from all of this diversity IE7?

For more info, and better tech info and understanding take the following link.

http://mashable.com/2007/04/03/mozilla-labs-the-coop/