5 ms·

I'm.. at a loss. Please, if any Mozillers are on here, can you explain? I want Mozilla to be successful as a proponent of the open web. I've said before I'd

I'm.. at a loss. Please, if any Mozillers are on here, can you explain? I want Mozilla to be successful as a proponent of the open web. I've said before I'd gladly pay for it. With real, hard, proper money. My biggest concern is the unhealthy dependence on Google. I want a successful Mozilla precisely because I value the free web, not the contorted surveillance monster that Google, Facebook et al seem intent on. So in the absence of convincing rationale, I assume announcements like this to be nefarious intervention at Google's behest. Return on that $300M "contribution". Please, Mozilla. Don't give in to the dark side. There is a palpable increase in privacy awareness - you can be at the nexus of growing it, and grow yourself accordingly. Or you can side with the Emperor. Who will crush you once you've served your purpose. OK, maybe that's dubiously allegorical. Here's the brutal commercial interpretation. The _only_ way for you to reverse your declining market share is to have a differentiator. People need a reason to use Firefox. You can choose that path. Google isn't "supporting" you - it's adopted the "embrace, extend, extinguish" mantra so beloved of 90s/00s era Microsoft. To be clear: you're well into stage 3. Seems to me you have two choices. Find a differentiator and adopt a growth business plan for independence. Or remain at best Google's sop against anti-competitive accusations, and be fully extinguished when you're not needed any more.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
apostacy 7y ago
I have said this over and over again. Look back at the initial success when they were up against Internet Explorer 6. They offered users what Microsoft wouldn't. They didn't hamstring themselves with IE6 compatibility, and instead broke the rules of what a browser was supposed to be by only considering what was best for the user, and spurning harmful standards and technologies. Where Microsoft hid extensions away in the registry, and their extensions had degenerated to the point where most of them were malicious, Firefox did the revolutionary thing of offering direct access to them by users. There's a lot wrong with Chrome, like their draconian and invasive updater that sometimes damages people's computers and can not be easily turned off.[1] Or how Chrome's extensions, while safer, are also crippled and prone to abuse by their forced updates. Mozilla could easily leverage Google's weaknesses against them, as they did with Microsoft. Mozilla is not a for-profit platform, they can afford to make the things Google can not. They can have a powerful community driven extension architecture that empowers users to do things Google never would. So of course instead of improving and securing their old extension architecture, or replacing it with something just as powerful, they copied Chrome again. It may be hard to believe, but including a built in popup blocker was revolutionary. It was called "irresponsible" by advertisers, and forced everyone else to change. Could you ever imagine Mozilla undermining the big players like that today? Even though bold moves like that are what got them their success in the first place. It wasn't branding or PR or any of that crap! I think the only good thing they've done is containers. And containers are such a good thing for users that I am convinced that many in Mozilla were opposed to it and fought against it, and that it will be deprecated with a flimsy UX metrics justification. And toadies on HN will try to justify it because "why are you thinking about this so much? This is fine, stop complaining, jeez." One of the smartest things Mozilla used to do was not try to implement bad technologies. They didn't try to re-create the quirks of the Trident engine; they didn't let Micosoft dictate the standards, so Javascript could not eject the CD tray, and you could not change the color of the scroll bars! They didn't waste effort trying to copy Microsoft's Windows-first proprietary ActiveX model. A much better compromise was the community created IETab extension, which just ran an instance of Internet Explorer in one of the tabs for when you needed it.[3] Could you imagine the Mozilla of today saying that if you wanted to watch DRM'd Netflix, you should just use Chrome? Is Firefox even technically capable of having something like Chrome tab anymore? Think of the resources that would be freed up if they stopped trying to have feature parity with Microsoft/Apple/Google. They just need to have the courage to say "that technology is evil, we won't support it. Maybe someone will make an extension to support it". Instead, essential technologies like RSS are deprecated and left to the community to implement, while DRM and proprietary and problematic standards are given first class support. Mozilla has made all of the wrong moves in the last 10 years. Their priorities are completely misguided. And I am certain that if they just centered the user over the big platforms, they would experience more popularity than a billion dollars in marketing and PR. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041 [3]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/682975 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/682975
- sp332 7y ago
  It may be hard to believe, but including a built in popup blocker was revolutionary. It was called "irresponsible" by advertisers, and forced everyone else to change. Could you ever imagine Mozilla undermining the big players like that today? I mean yeah... they're doing that right now. https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter Edit: and Tracking Protection already launched https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
  - apostacy 7y ago
    That is not at all the same as when they first did it. When they did it, popups (that is, ads that would open a new browser window) were a staple of online advertizing, and they disrupted it. Google is also doing the same thing, including punishing websites that use abusive interstitials and popups[1]. It would not be all that disruptive at all, in fact it is actually helping Google and the big platforms by forcing ads to be more palatable. I doubt that any of Mozilla's underwriters have a problem with this. Something that would be disruptive would be if Firefox bundled uBlock by default, which Google is trying to prevent users of Chrome from using[2]. If Google wanted to, they have the means to remove and blacklist the extension from most users computers immediately, thanks to their updating mechanism. They could even push changes to Chrome that break the extension or any like it, immediately. Frankly I think the only thing that acts as a counter balance is Firefox, but they making themselves less relevant by the day. [1]: https://searchengineland.com/interstitialgeddon-google-warns-will-crack-intrusive-interstitials-next-january-257252 https://searchengineland.com/interstitialgeddon-google-warns... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041
- Klonoar 7y ago
  Nitpicking butt Trident is the IE engine you were thinking of, not Triton.
- Endy 7y ago
  Thank you. It's a relief to see someone else finally saying the same things I have ever since Australis was teased. We need more clear voices saying this.
vatueil 7y ago
That's jumping to conclusions, isn't it? It doesn't require a conspiracy for Mozilla to remove a feature. It wouldn't even make sense for this to be part of a conspiracy, since this doesn't affect the list of search engines included by default. According to the related forum discussion, it sounds like the blog post was imprecise and the change only affects search add-ons, not adding search engines via browser menus: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xml-add-ons-current-users/46868 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

apostacy 7y ago

I have said this over and over again. Look back at the initial success when they were up against Internet Explorer 6. They offered users what Microsoft wouldn't. They didn't hamstring themselves with IE6 compatibility, and instead broke the rules of what a browser was supposed to be by only considering what was best for the user, and spurning harmful standards and technologies. Where Microsoft hid extensions away in the registry, and their extensions had degenerated to the point where most of them were malicious, Firefox did the revolutionary thing of offering direct access to them by users. There's a lot wrong with Chrome, like their draconian and invasive updater that sometimes damages people's computers and can not be easily turned off.[1] Or how Chrome's extensions, while safer, are also crippled and prone to abuse by their forced updates. Mozilla could easily leverage Google's weaknesses against them, as they did with Microsoft. Mozilla is not a for-profit platform, they can afford to make the things Google can not. They can have a powerful community driven extension architecture that empowers users to do things Google never would. So of course instead of improving and securing their old extension architecture, or replacing it with something just as powerful, they copied Chrome again. It may be hard to believe, but including a built in popup blocker was revolutionary. It was called "irresponsible" by advertisers, and forced everyone else to change. Could you ever imagine Mozilla undermining the big players like that today? Even though bold moves like that are what got them their success in the first place. It wasn't branding or PR or any of that crap! I think the only good thing they've done is containers. And containers are such a good thing for users that I am convinced that many in Mozilla were opposed to it and fought against it, and that it will be deprecated with a flimsy UX metrics justification. And toadies on HN will try to justify it because "why are you thinking about this so much? This is fine, stop complaining, jeez." One of the smartest things Mozilla used to do was not try to implement bad technologies. They didn't try to re-create the quirks of the Trident engine; they didn't let Micosoft dictate the standards, so Javascript could not eject the CD tray, and you could not change the color of the scroll bars! They didn't waste effort trying to copy Microsoft's Windows-first proprietary ActiveX model. A much better compromise was the community created IETab extension, which just ran an instance of Internet Explorer in one of the tabs for when you needed it.[3] Could you imagine the Mozilla of today saying that if you wanted to watch DRM'd Netflix, you should just use Chrome? Is Firefox even technically capable of having something like Chrome tab anymore? Think of the resources that would be freed up if they stopped trying to have feature parity with Microsoft/Apple/Google. They just need to have the courage to say "that technology is evil, we won't support it. Maybe someone will make an extension to support it". Instead, essential technologies like RSS are deprecated and left to the community to implement, while DRM and proprietary and problematic standards are given first class support. Mozilla has made all of the wrong moves in the last 10 years. Their priorities are completely misguided. And I am certain that if they just centered the user over the big platforms, they would experience more popularity than a billion dollars in marketing and PR. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041 [3]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/682975 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/682975

sp332 7y ago
It may be hard to believe, but including a built in popup blocker was revolutionary. It was called "irresponsible" by advertisers, and forced everyone else to change. Could you ever imagine Mozilla undermining the big players like that today? I mean yeah... they're doing that right now. https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter Edit: and Tracking Protection already launched https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
- apostacy 7y ago
  That is not at all the same as when they first did it. When they did it, popups (that is, ads that would open a new browser window) were a staple of online advertizing, and they disrupted it. Google is also doing the same thing, including punishing websites that use abusive interstitials and popups[1]. It would not be all that disruptive at all, in fact it is actually helping Google and the big platforms by forcing ads to be more palatable. I doubt that any of Mozilla's underwriters have a problem with this. Something that would be disruptive would be if Firefox bundled uBlock by default, which Google is trying to prevent users of Chrome from using[2]. If Google wanted to, they have the means to remove and blacklist the extension from most users computers immediately, thanks to their updating mechanism. They could even push changes to Chrome that break the extension or any like it, immediately. Frankly I think the only thing that acts as a counter balance is Firefox, but they making themselves less relevant by the day. [1]: https://searchengineland.com/interstitialgeddon-google-warns-will-crack-intrusive-interstitials-next-january-257252 https://searchengineland.com/interstitialgeddon-google-warns... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041
Klonoar 7y ago
Nitpicking butt Trident is the IE engine you were thinking of, not Triton.
Endy 7y ago
Thank you. It's a relief to see someone else finally saying the same things I have ever since Australis was teased. We need more clear voices saying this.

vatueil 7y ago

That's jumping to conclusions, isn't it? It doesn't require a conspiracy for Mozilla to remove a feature. It wouldn't even make sense for this to be part of a conspiracy, since this doesn't affect the list of search engines included by default. According to the related forum discussion, it sounds like the blog post was imprecise and the change only affects search add-ons, not adding search engines via browser menus: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xml-add-ons-current-users/46868 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...