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Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share, please consider doing the following: 1. Evangelize Firefox to people you know an

Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share, please consider doing the following: 1. Evangelize Firefox to people you know any chance you get and show them all the reasons why its better than Chrome (focus on privacy as an important point). Show them how great browsing can be with a few key extensions (like uBlock Origin, Containers, Privacy Possum, etc.). This does not imply that Mozilla is beyond criticism or that Firefox should not be held to a higher standard. 2. If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. As long as this remains true, Google will only tolerate Firefox being a viable competitor while Firefox still remains as small to moderately sized competition (to avoid antitrust action). If/when Firefox gains a much larger piece of the market, Google will (as it has been doing all these years) even more forcefully use its money and marketing muscle on all its properties as well as add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition. IMO, there needs to be a lot more individual funding of Mozilla while keeping it accountable to users and as per its own manifesto. The level of competition among browsers right now leaves us all vulnerable. Edit: After seeing a reply to this comment, I did a quick search and found that donating money to Mozilla means donating to the Mozilla Foundation, and that the money may not go to funding Firefox development, which is part of Mozilla Corporation. See this discussion from December 2018 on reddit. [2] It may be desirable for at least part of the donation (as decided by Mozilla Corporation) to go to Firefox development. Does it already happen that way or is there a way to get this result, like in the case of Mozilla Thunderbird where donations go to that project (alone)? [1]: https://donate.mozilla.org https://donate.mozilla.org [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...

3xblah 7y ago
"... add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition." I must say, it's great to see this brought to light in HN comments. It may be a small minority of users, but clearly some can see through this nonsense. Although, having been a web user before there was Google, I think it is more than just Google that created this atmosphere where some browser is portrayed as being inferior to another. I think it started before Google. Think about the influence of web developers. In the earlier days of the web, they wanted to make money by making websites. To sell those services they needed the web to have more than just basic functionality. They wanted complex browsers loaded with features that could "wow" the user, which enabled marketing and ideally commercial transactions over the web. Why would any web developer be interested in a browser that is not optimised for marketing? Then think about the growth of websites. Today, every company has one, every organization has one. No web developer has to convince anyone anymore that they "need a website". Web developers today probably have better employment prospects than ever before. Many website owners want to make money directly or indirectly from their websites. Often they are sold on the promise of a return from advertising. Would those websites be interested in "supporting" browsers that are not optimised for web marketing? We could create a browser for users that had all the features users needed to retrieve and view information and various media types, but which lacked features that enable easy web marketing, ads, tracking, etc. A browser that catered to users' interests above all others. This is possible. However, what would web developers and commercial websites think of such a browser? Perhaps they would not be interested in designing websites that "worked" with such a browser. For one, they would probably argue that the market share of such a browser is too low to warrant their attention. I have seen this argument made many times on HN. The point of this comment, which I am probably not getting across very well, is to suggest that developers themsleves are in the best position to control the market share of browsers, not users: I have used command line TCP/HTTP clients and text-only browser for many years to retrieve information from the web. It has always worked flawlessly for my purposes and continues to do so. One of the amusing side effects of accessing websites this way is that I see all manner of messaging from web developers on websites that tries to persuade users to use one browser or another, and to make sure some browser feature is enabled. Much of it has become increasingly didactic. Developers increasingly are not asking users to comply, they are telling them they "must" do something, or else. The vast majority of web users follow those instructions. If they are told to use some browser or else a website "will not work", then they will comply. Truthfully, it is almost always still possible to retrieve the information without the preferred browser or without the "necessary" feature. However, most users will follow the path of least resistance. They will do as the web developers tell them to do. Users cannot be expected to simply switch to some other browser that better protects their interests. Not without cooperation from web developers and their clients, website owners.
novaRom 7y ago
Since I cancelled Netflix subscription, every month I donate 5 Euro to Ubuntu and 5 Euro to Mozilla. These are two most important Open Source systems for me.
ohithereyou 7y ago
>If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. This is also likely a smokescreen on Google's part to defend against allegations that they are abusing an arguable monopoly decision in the browser market. 'We're not abusing our monopoly position! We give money to The Mozilla Foundation that produces a competing browser!'
skocznymroczny 7y ago
Is there some way to ensure the donation money will actually go to Firefox and not to some sort of "diversity" campaign?
- interactivecode 7y ago
  Yikes why would you not want companies investing in diversity? Especially if they are the interface to our online world?
  - lordgrenville 7y ago
    Ignoring the specific case, it's totally reasonable to say "I want to donate to nonprofit X because of thing Y that they do that I value, but I'd like the money earmarked for that thing only, not for all their other activities, which I may or may not support". (Quickly googled example: https://www.nonprofitissues.com/to-the-point/can-earmarked-contributions-be-used-general-funds-purposes-permissible https://www.nonprofitissues.com/to-the-point/can-earmarked-c... )
    - nulbyte 7y ago
      In the US, where Mozulla Foundation is organized, the organization often does not have a legal obligation to honor an unsolicited restriction. Mozilla would first have to solicit donations specifically for Firefox before a donor should reasonably expect donated funds to be used solely for Firefox.
  - martin_a 7y ago
    While wording could be improved, the point stands. I want my money to be used for working on Firefox (the core browser) and for that exclusively. Not something like Pocket or whatever Mozilla thinks it should bring out that nobody asked for. There is no way to ensure this, so I will not give any money at all.
    - sakisv 7y ago
      > There is no way to ensure this, so I will not give any money at all. Please keep in mind that this is not a personal attack as I don't know you and I don't find it particularly constructive to engage in this kind of attacks, so please only focus on my argument: I cannot understand this way of thinking. On one hand we have the option to give Mozilla some money to use them however they see fit. This means that from the sum of the donations they can use whatever percentage they see fit to fund different products/aspects, e.g. the engineering department so that they can keep working on Firefox, the marketing department to increase the awareness and drive adoption, the user researchers to better understand their user needs etc. On the other hand we have the "default" stance where we don't support what Mozilla is doing. This means that the development of Firefox, the marketing to raise awareness etc, are depended on Google and on Pocket which is something that we want to get away from. I think it mostly boils down to some simple questions and how we feel about the answers: - Do I prefer to know that all my money go to hire more engineers and improve Firefox? Probably (tbh personally I would focus a bit more on user research, it's the everyday people that they should be after, not us) - Do I prefer to allow Mozilla to be depended on Google? Definitely not. - Can my donations be used to make the current situation worse (i.e. tie them tighter on Google's business)? No. So for me, although I don't control where my money goes, I think that they can only be used to improve things.
iforgotpassword 7y ago
I've given up trying to convince people of taking privacy serious. It's usually just the "but I've got nothing to hide" debate that goes nowhere. Even half of my tech friends still use chrome, got Alexa at home and whatnot. So instead with my non-techsavvy friends I usually just set up Firefox with ublock and tell them to give it a try. You don't have to mention ublock is available on chrome too, right?
- umanwizard 7y ago
  What is the privacy difference between having an Alexa device at home vs. having a smartphone or anything else with an embedded microphone?
  - kgwxd 7y ago
    While it's possible a cell phone (smart or dumb) might be transmitting audio without user knowledge, it's unlikely and, if discovered, would cause a huge PR nightmare for whoever was involved in making it happen. Voice assistants have been shown to transmit audio unexpectedly, humans are listening, nothing has been done to fix it, and no one is apologizing for it.
- green-eclipse 7y ago
  My hunch is that maybe 0.1% to 1% of people truly care about privacy. People love to talk about it and sound shocked about lack of privacy. But when it comes to actually changing behavior based on privacy, very few people actually do.
  - mikro2nd 7y ago
    They may or may not care about privacy, but they do love an internet that's largely ad-free. Most of them never knew it was possible, but I love to see how wide their eyes get when they see it. "Holy hells! you mean I don't have to look at all that crap?"
    - godelski 7y ago
ecmascript 7y ago
> Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share I used to be one of these people but I am no longer. I have switched my default browser from Firefox to Brave since I cannot withstand Mozillas bullshit anymore. Not only is it a complete joke that firefox put Google Analytics on their privacy pages but their actions of "wokeness" in which they fired Brendan Eich and all their diversity shit has left me very unhappy with Mozilla as an organisation. I stopped my monthly donation a while back and I do not recommend Firefox anymore, only Brave. Why should I donate money towards Firefox when I know it's probably not going to fund Firefox but rather some woke campaign that I am against? They even fired their own CEO when he privately used his own money to fund a political campaign. That is not ok according to Mozilla since diversity of opinion is not something they believe in. https://www.reddit.com/r/MozillaInAction/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/MozillaInAction/top/?t=all (there is a lot of other crap in there as well, but mainly about Mozilla and other tech companies)
- roca 7y ago
  If you care about privacy then you have ETP turned on which means Google Analytics would be blocked for you.
- Joakal 7y ago
  One of your points is that Mozilla is using Google Analytics on privacy pages so you switched to a browser powered by Google? Where will your donation go now if not to Mozilla?
  - ecmascript 7y ago
    Can't say I am particular fond of Google either. Brave uses chromium sources but they do not send any data to Google without washing it through their servers first with a default installation. So even if they actually use tech from Google, as a company they are a much better alternative and is much more in line with something I want to support. Probably I will just save the money for now, but perhaps in the near future I will increase donations to some open source contributors via Open Collective (where I know it will fund the developers directly).
pmlnr 7y ago
20 years ago we had to do the same for FF, but that time against IE6. Everything goes in cycles.
brianpgordon 7y ago
I would suggest that Mozilla has enough money already- they just don't spend it on Firefox. Donating only validates their current budget and gives them a mandate to keep building their sprawling portfolio of side projects. There was some discussion about this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20850950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20850950
iCarrot 7y ago
One feature I miss having on Chrome is their full page translation for foreign language. I couldn't find an addons that provide the same functionality. (For the record, full page translate with translate.google.com doesn't work in many cases. Ex: Amazon Japan product page)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
benologist 7y ago
With 100s of millions in revenue every year for the last decade plus through their corporate entity aren't they already funded pretty much in perpetuity? On Wikipedia it says they get 2% of their corporation's revenue, which they own in its entirety, they can increase their funding more just by increasing the 2% they assign themselves from their own revenue. Not even a third of their funding is donations according to a dated IRS audit so they look pretty much secured financially and will appreciate, but otherwise not notice your money hitting the pile. I think a more important thing we can do to help is make our work exclusively dependent on open technologies instead of Chrome APIs, which might one day be open technologies but till they are they promote not using Firefox.
- newscracker 7y ago
  Most of that money is coming from the search partnership with Google, and that's what's paying the bills for Firefox and other direct development work (as I understand it). The donations from people go to Mozilla Foundation, which works on initiatives and campaigns. So whenever Google decides that the search partnership is not worth it, Mozilla Corporation (the entity that pays for Firefox, and is different from Mozilla Foundation) would have only a few tens of millions from other revenue sources (just guessing).
  - benologist 7y ago
    The way I understand it is the Foundation created and owns the Corporation so they would have a legal construct to receive their profits, and a ton of profits still comes in annually, and it's all their money regardless of which account it landed in or what % is assigned to Firefox. They're sitting on half a billion in assets - https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-2017-fs-short-form-final-0927.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201...
dblohm7 7y ago
Not that the donations are not going to a good cause (they are [1]), but donations do not go to funding Firefox development. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
- _-david-_ 7y ago
  This is pretty much the only reason I don't donate to Mozilla. As far as I can tell there is no way to only donate for Firefox development.
te 7y ago
Privacy Possum? You mean Privacy Badger?
- _-david-_ 7y ago
  Privacy Possum is a rewrite by a former Privacy Badger dev and goes beyond what Privacy Badger does. https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum#why-not-privacy-badger https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum#why-not-privacy-ba...
emayljames 7y ago
The norel link modifier extension is great to. Stops sites you open from links changeing pages of the previous tabs.

3xblah 7y ago

"... add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition." I must say, it's great to see this brought to light in HN comments. It may be a small minority of users, but clearly some can see through this nonsense. Although, having been a web user before there was Google, I think it is more than just Google that created this atmosphere where some browser is portrayed as being inferior to another. I think it started before Google. Think about the influence of web developers. In the earlier days of the web, they wanted to make money by making websites. To sell those services they needed the web to have more than just basic functionality. They wanted complex browsers loaded with features that could "wow" the user, which enabled marketing and ideally commercial transactions over the web. Why would any web developer be interested in a browser that is not optimised for marketing? Then think about the growth of websites. Today, every company has one, every organization has one. No web developer has to convince anyone anymore that they "need a website". Web developers today probably have better employment prospects than ever before. Many website owners want to make money directly or indirectly from their websites. Often they are sold on the promise of a return from advertising. Would those websites be interested in "supporting" browsers that are not optimised for web marketing? We could create a browser for users that had all the features users needed to retrieve and view information and various media types, but which lacked features that enable easy web marketing, ads, tracking, etc. A browser that catered to users' interests above all others. This is possible. However, what would web developers and commercial websites think of such a browser? Perhaps they would not be interested in designing websites that "worked" with such a browser. For one, they would probably argue that the market share of such a browser is too low to warrant their attention. I have seen this argument made many times on HN. The point of this comment, which I am probably not getting across very well, is to suggest that developers themsleves are in the best position to control the market share of browsers, not users: I have used command line TCP/HTTP clients and text-only browser for many years to retrieve information from the web. It has always worked flawlessly for my purposes and continues to do so. One of the amusing side effects of accessing websites this way is that I see all manner of messaging from web developers on websites that tries to persuade users to use one browser or another, and to make sure some browser feature is enabled. Much of it has become increasingly didactic. Developers increasingly are not asking users to comply, they are telling them they "must" do something, or else. The vast majority of web users follow those instructions. If they are told to use some browser or else a website "will not work", then they will comply. Truthfully, it is almost always still possible to retrieve the information without the preferred browser or without the "necessary" feature. However, most users will follow the path of least resistance. They will do as the web developers tell them to do. Users cannot be expected to simply switch to some other browser that better protects their interests. Not without cooperation from web developers and their clients, website owners.

novaRom 7y ago

Since I cancelled Netflix subscription, every month I donate 5 Euro to Ubuntu and 5 Euro to Mozilla. These are two most important Open Source systems for me.

ohithereyou 7y ago

>If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. This is also likely a smokescreen on Google's part to defend against allegations that they are abusing an arguable monopoly decision in the browser market. 'We're not abusing our monopoly position! We give money to The Mozilla Foundation that produces a competing browser!'

skocznymroczny 7y ago

Is there some way to ensure the donation money will actually go to Firefox and not to some sort of "diversity" campaign?

interactivecode 7y ago
Yikes why would you not want companies investing in diversity? Especially if they are the interface to our online world?
- lordgrenville 7y ago
  Ignoring the specific case, it's totally reasonable to say "I want to donate to nonprofit X because of thing Y that they do that I value, but I'd like the money earmarked for that thing only, not for all their other activities, which I may or may not support". (Quickly googled example: https://www.nonprofitissues.com/to-the-point/can-earmarked-contributions-be-used-general-funds-purposes-permissible https://www.nonprofitissues.com/to-the-point/can-earmarked-c... )
  - nulbyte 7y ago
    In the US, where Mozulla Foundation is organized, the organization often does not have a legal obligation to honor an unsolicited restriction. Mozilla would first have to solicit donations specifically for Firefox before a donor should reasonably expect donated funds to be used solely for Firefox.
- martin_a 7y ago
  While wording could be improved, the point stands. I want my money to be used for working on Firefox (the core browser) and for that exclusively. Not something like Pocket or whatever Mozilla thinks it should bring out that nobody asked for. There is no way to ensure this, so I will not give any money at all.
  - sakisv 7y ago
    > There is no way to ensure this, so I will not give any money at all. Please keep in mind that this is not a personal attack as I don't know you and I don't find it particularly constructive to engage in this kind of attacks, so please only focus on my argument: I cannot understand this way of thinking. On one hand we have the option to give Mozilla some money to use them however they see fit. This means that from the sum of the donations they can use whatever percentage they see fit to fund different products/aspects, e.g. the engineering department so that they can keep working on Firefox, the marketing department to increase the awareness and drive adoption, the user researchers to better understand their user needs etc. On the other hand we have the "default" stance where we don't support what Mozilla is doing. This means that the development of Firefox, the marketing to raise awareness etc, are depended on Google and on Pocket which is something that we want to get away from. I think it mostly boils down to some simple questions and how we feel about the answers: - Do I prefer to know that all my money go to hire more engineers and improve Firefox? Probably (tbh personally I would focus a bit more on user research, it's the everyday people that they should be after, not us) - Do I prefer to allow Mozilla to be depended on Google? Definitely not. - Can my donations be used to make the current situation worse (i.e. tie them tighter on Google's business)? No. So for me, although I don't control where my money goes, I think that they can only be used to improve things.

iforgotpassword 7y ago

I've given up trying to convince people of taking privacy serious. It's usually just the "but I've got nothing to hide" debate that goes nowhere. Even half of my tech friends still use chrome, got Alexa at home and whatnot. So instead with my non-techsavvy friends I usually just set up Firefox with ublock and tell them to give it a try. You don't have to mention ublock is available on chrome too, right?

umanwizard 7y ago
What is the privacy difference between having an Alexa device at home vs. having a smartphone or anything else with an embedded microphone?
- kgwxd 7y ago
  While it's possible a cell phone (smart or dumb) might be transmitting audio without user knowledge, it's unlikely and, if discovered, would cause a huge PR nightmare for whoever was involved in making it happen. Voice assistants have been shown to transmit audio unexpectedly, humans are listening, nothing has been done to fix it, and no one is apologizing for it.
green-eclipse 7y ago
My hunch is that maybe 0.1% to 1% of people truly care about privacy. People love to talk about it and sound shocked about lack of privacy. But when it comes to actually changing behavior based on privacy, very few people actually do.
- mikro2nd 7y ago
  They may or may not care about privacy, but they do love an internet that's largely ad-free. Most of them never knew it was possible, but I love to see how wide their eyes get when they see it. "Holy hells! you mean I don't have to look at all that crap?"
  - godelski 7y ago

ecmascript 7y ago

> Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share I used to be one of these people but I am no longer. I have switched my default browser from Firefox to Brave since I cannot withstand Mozillas bullshit anymore. Not only is it a complete joke that firefox put Google Analytics on their privacy pages but their actions of "wokeness" in which they fired Brendan Eich and all their diversity shit has left me very unhappy with Mozilla as an organisation. I stopped my monthly donation a while back and I do not recommend Firefox anymore, only Brave. Why should I donate money towards Firefox when I know it's probably not going to fund Firefox but rather some woke campaign that I am against? They even fired their own CEO when he privately used his own money to fund a political campaign. That is not ok according to Mozilla since diversity of opinion is not something they believe in. https://www.reddit.com/r/MozillaInAction/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/MozillaInAction/top/?t=all (there is a lot of other crap in there as well, but mainly about Mozilla and other tech companies)

roca 7y ago
If you care about privacy then you have ETP turned on which means Google Analytics would be blocked for you.
Joakal 7y ago
One of your points is that Mozilla is using Google Analytics on privacy pages so you switched to a browser powered by Google? Where will your donation go now if not to Mozilla?
- ecmascript 7y ago
  Can't say I am particular fond of Google either. Brave uses chromium sources but they do not send any data to Google without washing it through their servers first with a default installation. So even if they actually use tech from Google, as a company they are a much better alternative and is much more in line with something I want to support. Probably I will just save the money for now, but perhaps in the near future I will increase donations to some open source contributors via Open Collective (where I know it will fund the developers directly).

pmlnr 7y ago

20 years ago we had to do the same for FF, but that time against IE6. Everything goes in cycles.

brianpgordon 7y ago

I would suggest that Mozilla has enough money already- they just don't spend it on Firefox. Donating only validates their current budget and gives them a mandate to keep building their sprawling portfolio of side projects. There was some discussion about this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20850950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20850950

iCarrot 7y ago

One feature I miss having on Chrome is their full page translation for foreign language. I couldn't find an addons that provide the same functionality. (For the record, full page translate with translate.google.com doesn't work in many cases. Ex: Amazon Japan product page)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

benologist 7y ago

With 100s of millions in revenue every year for the last decade plus through their corporate entity aren't they already funded pretty much in perpetuity? On Wikipedia it says they get 2% of their corporation's revenue, which they own in its entirety, they can increase their funding more just by increasing the 2% they assign themselves from their own revenue. Not even a third of their funding is donations according to a dated IRS audit so they look pretty much secured financially and will appreciate, but otherwise not notice your money hitting the pile. I think a more important thing we can do to help is make our work exclusively dependent on open technologies instead of Chrome APIs, which might one day be open technologies but till they are they promote not using Firefox.

newscracker 7y ago
Most of that money is coming from the search partnership with Google, and that's what's paying the bills for Firefox and other direct development work (as I understand it). The donations from people go to Mozilla Foundation, which works on initiatives and campaigns. So whenever Google decides that the search partnership is not worth it, Mozilla Corporation (the entity that pays for Firefox, and is different from Mozilla Foundation) would have only a few tens of millions from other revenue sources (just guessing).
- benologist 7y ago
  The way I understand it is the Foundation created and owns the Corporation so they would have a legal construct to receive their profits, and a ton of profits still comes in annually, and it's all their money regardless of which account it landed in or what % is assigned to Firefox. They're sitting on half a billion in assets - https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-2017-fs-short-form-final-0927.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201...

dblohm7 7y ago

Not that the donations are not going to a good cause (they are [1]), but donations do not go to funding Firefox development. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

_-david-_ 7y ago
This is pretty much the only reason I don't donate to Mozilla. As far as I can tell there is no way to only donate for Firefox development.

te 7y ago

Privacy Possum? You mean Privacy Badger?

_-david-_ 7y ago
Privacy Possum is a rewrite by a former Privacy Badger dev and goes beyond what Privacy Badger does. https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum#why-not-privacy-badger https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum#why-not-privacy-ba...

emayljames 7y ago

The norel link modifier extension is great to. Stops sites you open from links changeing pages of the previous tabs.