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Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web

571 points by inception44 7y ago

chappi42 7y ago
The article once more reiterates the fact that Apple doesn't allow other browser engines. You cannot even fight, there is no future ;-) on iOS.
- radarsat1 7y ago
  How is it technically enforced though, I am curious. I mean, if I wrote an application that downloaded text files and rendered the text to the screen, I am sure that would be possible. If I wanted to add images to draw next to the text I am sure it is feasible. So how can one technically prohibit doing that? Implementation-wise, how is a web browser really that different from e.g. a video game? Or is it only policy-enforced? Reviewers see something in an app that resembles a "browser" too much and take you down?
  - sharpneli 7y ago
    One cannot have writeable executable memory on iOS (apple can, we cannot). Thus one cannot make a JIT compiler for js and thus pages are slow. Game engines such as Unity use il2cpp to go from the C# stuff into C++ that can be statically compiled as running the C# as bytecode would be too slow without a jitter.
    - radarsat1 7y ago
      Ah, so it is all about the javascript engine? Ok I can see how that might put up some major technical barriers, but still it should be technically feasible to have the firefox rendering engine make use of the iOS javascript engine, no? Maybe it's not worth the effort of course. I am just trying to get a feel for what the barriers are.
      - sharpneli 7y ago
        Not via public apis. So cannot be placed into app store.
      - vbezhenar 7y ago
        I think that iOS JS engine is tied to WebView and it would be hard to re-use it with other rendering engine.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        JavaScriptCore can be used can be used independently from the rest of WebKit, but I’d expect it to be slow.
      - KonkeyDong69 7y ago
        In addition to what the other replies said, feel free to eyeball the code required to embed SpiderMonkey in Firefox at https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/master/dom/bindings https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/master/dom/binding.... It's rather large and complex.
        padenot 7y ago
        This is not at all the code to embed SpiderMonkey in Firefox, those are the bindings from DOM APIs to the implementation of those APIs in Firefox. Above that, calling into this layer, is another layer that transforms JS calls into C++ calls (roughly). The interface between SpiderMonkey and the rest of Firefox is here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/js/src/jsapi.h https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/js/src/jsapi.h.
    - zzzcpan 7y ago
      > One cannot have writeable executable memory on iOS (apple can, we cannot). > Thus one cannot make a JIT compiler for js and thus pages are slow. Lack of JIT doesn't slow down pages much. I believe the difference is so small that it might even be possible to be faster without JIT for most pages, especially on low power devices, it's only computation heavy pages that are going to suffer and even then it's not like you can't optimize common patterns statically ahead of time. It doesn't mean that it's a good idea to invest into it, you are still under Apple's mercy and they clearly don't want competing browser engines.
      - sharpneli 7y ago
        If I have understood correctly (I’m a C++ graphics programmer. So don’t know too much about what’s flashy in the web world) V8 only jits. As in it can only produce machine code and there is not even an option to run it as an interpreter.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        V8 has a high performance, JIT-less interpreter that disables TurboFan and relies exclusively on Ignition: https://v8.dev/blog/jitless https://v8.dev/blog/jitless
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        > Lack of JIT doesn't slow down pages much. So why do you think so many major companies invest such a huge amount of money in JS JITs? Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Mozilla all maintain JS JITs and spend what I guess is hundreds of millions of dollars a year on it.
        notacoward 7y ago
        A budget of $100M, with 50% devoted to salary and a median salary of $250K, would be 200 developers. I seriously doubt any of the companies you name are devoting even a quarter of that to JS JIT development. Yes, they each make significant investments, but let's not weaken the argument by indulging a penchant for hyperbole.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > One cannot have writeable executable memory on iOS (apple can, we cannot). Nitpick: you can but you cannot ship it via the App Store.
      - shkkmo 7y ago
        Apple as does not allow side-loading, so wouldn't a jailbreak be required?
        least 7y ago
        Jailbreak, enterprise certificate, testflight, or a developer account would be required to sideload an app. You can technically sideload an app without a paid developer account, but the certificate only lasts seven days, at which point you'd have to reload the application.
  - capableweb 7y ago
    My guess would be that it's policy-enforced and what Apple really has problems with is not browsers as a concept (dynamically loading and rendering data) but rather the execution engine that websites usually use (JavaScript) and seeing that as a too-large-to-review area where they want to avoid having vulnerabilities in applications published on App Store. Or it's a anti-competitive move disguised as a "avoid vulnerabilities" but in reality they just really want to make sure iOS users keep using the one and only browser (Safari).
    - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
      interesting. But I can’t help but think by that logic Facebook should be too large to review.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - extropy 7y ago
        Facebook does have code that dynamically compiles arbitrary input to machine code. That's the part Apple is not allowing in third party apps.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        > Facebook does have code that dynamically compiles arbitrary input to machine code. Not outside of JavaScriptCore they don’t.
    - marcthe12 7y ago
      Apple uses no Turing complete policy. So you also can't bundle a python or ruby interpreter in iOS. Its still anti-competitive but in a different area which is language and api. They are basically trying to push devs to use their native OS apis. PWA are also screwed up in Safari for a reason.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
  - reubenmorais 7y ago
    I don't know the details first hand, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is what I remember from talking to engineers who explored this possibility over the years: You can't ship a native JIT (execute native code from the heap), I think it's enforced automatically by the App Store. So shipping your own JavaScript engine is out. You can't download and interpret third-party code, I think this is enforced by human reviews, so shipping your own Web rendering stack is out. You can use your own network stack with WebKit on top, which would let you offer some value to users like more advanced ad/tracker blocking.
    - robin_reala 7y ago
      This is exactly what Chrome on iOS did: they embedded their own networking stack, but reused WebKit and JSC.
    - thekingofh 7y ago
      Thanks for the information. That part about disallowing third-party code interpreting is particularly painful to hear. They shut down any possibility of another browser. Could see that they do this for security reasons because a badly implemented interpreter could open up holes, but I'd imagine the sandbox is sufficient to allow at least interpreters.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Web content must be rendered through WebKit as per the App Store Review Guidelines (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/). This is supposed to be enforced by App Store Review by inspection. In addition to this, there are technical reasons why your “browser” will be inferior to Apple’s web view performance-wise, mainly having to do with apps that generate code dynamically in-process needing entitlements that prevent submission to the review process.
  - Yoric 7y ago
    Policy-enforced. Mozilla ported the true Firefox to iOS many, many years ago and Apple just rejected it from the store.
- decasteve 7y ago
  Anti-trust? Or have the lawyers for Apple (and Google) found the legalese to prevent this possibility?
  - Macha 7y ago
    Apple is only a monopoly if the market is iOS devices so they're quick to point out the market is all mobile devices. Google allows sideloading, and allows competitors on the play store
    - anoncake 7y ago
      > they're quick to point out the market is all mobile devices. It is not. The market is stores for Ios devices, Apple does have monopoly.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  Yes, however, even as a Firefox advocate, I think in this case it's actually a good thing, since the majority of people would probably switch to Chrome then, contributing to the Blink monoculture.
  - jraph 7y ago
    It's not a good thing, only a bad thing with a good side effect ;-)
- nfriedly 7y ago
  If Apple allowed Firefox on iOS - real Firefox with the rendering engine and extensions and everything, just like Android - I probably would have switched already. As it stands, I stay on Android mostly for Firefox.
  - notduncansmith 7y ago
    Just curious, why does using “real Firefox” hold so much weight for you? Also, what steps have you taken to secure your device? One reason I haven’t switched from iPhone is that I’m not confident in my ability to secure an Android, and I’d rather trust Apple than Google.
    - Transfinity 7y ago
      One big thing is that you can't change the default browser, so any time you click a link you end up on safari. In my experience (I tried iPhone for 2 weeks after my previous phone died, before returning it and switching back to Android) that makes installing a different browser effectively useless. The rendering engine restriction is less obvious to the average user. And, frankly, if you don't trust Apple with your data then what are you doing using their network stack?
    - nfriedly 7y ago
      A big part of it is extensions, I have a handful of extensions that I use on a regular basis, and Firefox is the only mobile browser that actually supports extensions. Another part of it is that I just trust Mozilla more. Both in terms of conflicts of interest, and just plain fixing bugs. For example, Safari on iPod touch has been unable to access the microphone for years, even though Safari on iPhones can. I will concede your point about security. I think that iPhones are probably more secure than Androids. But, I feel that the security of my Android phone is sufficient for my needs.
      - Zak 7y ago
        Extensions don't get enough attention in this discussion. They're the main reason I prefer Firefox on Android. Anything that's missing or not to my liking, I can usually find an extension to provide or change. If something annoyed me enough and there wasn't an existing extension, I could look up the API docs and write one myself.
- krzyk 7y ago
  I wonder why no antimonopolist issue was raised there by e.g. EU. Like they did for NFC in Germany - they forced all phones with NFC to be open to use by different apps, which might finally bring other pay solutions to iOS (or non NFC capable iphones to Germany).
  - Despegar 7y ago
    The NFC issue isn't related to antitrust. If they thought they could make an antitrust case against Apple they would. But their market share is so low in Germany, and the EU, that they just passed a law instead (specifically an amendment to an anti-money laundering law). It remains to be seen if it's even constitutional.
- sebazzz 7y ago
  Technically I think you are free to build have other browser engines on iOS. However, JIT or other dynamically compiled code is not allowed because that's a security risk. You can't have a browser in 2019 with interpreted javascript.
  - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    But why is JavaScript JIT compilation tied to the rendering engine?
    - andrewl-hn 7y ago
      Yep. technically, Apple doesn't force Firefox to use WebKit. They could still use their Gecko WebRenderer and use Apple's JavaScriptCore to run page scripts. Same goes to Chrome: Blink + JSC instead of Blink + V8. In practice in seems like both Chrome and Firefox have their renderers and JavaScript runtimes so tightly integrated that it's very hard to replace the later.
      - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
        Elsewhere in this debate sharpneli says that there is no public API to call into JavaScriptCore and using non-public APIs violates the App Store rules. So that would explain it.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        There is API to use JavaScriptCore in your apps: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/javascriptcore https://developer.apple.com/documentation/javascriptcore. No JIT, though, so it’s slow.
  - thekingofh 7y ago
    I think you mean that you can have interpreted javascript, just not JIT compilers. They don't allow you to mark memory as executable. That syscall is completely disabled on their systems.
- jrs95 7y ago
  It would be a lot more difficult than it sounds for Apple to allow 3rd party browsers and allow them to be good. Even on macOS now, Chrome depends on internal OS APIs which prevent it (or Electron apps) from being in the Mac App Store -- and for good reason, those things could break at any time. So in order to allow 3rd party browser engines that can compete with Safari in terms of performance etc they would need to make the APIs that are used to optimize them public.
  - EvanAnderson 7y ago
    If these non-public APIs are so useful it feels to me that Apple is acting in an anti-competitive manner. They're allowed to use them for their own applications but deny third-parties the right to sell in the "Store" if they use the APIs. Sounds a lot like MSFT in the 90's...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- ken 7y ago
  That's a convenient excuse on iOS, but Firefox is doing poorly on macOS, too, where no such restriction exists. According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows -- and it's still under 10% there, too. Privacy-compromising systems aren't winning today because people seek out systems that compromise their privacy. They're winning because these companies focused on making the user interface good. Firefox will win big again when they stop talking about privacy and start making a UI that isn't lousy. True, Apple is talking about privacy a lot these days, but they've been focusing on UX first for decades. You can't start with "here is an abstract principle that's good for you, and you should use our systems because of it". The Free Software Foundation tried that for years. It doesn't work. Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product.
  - ragequitta 7y ago
    I'm trying to think of a UI difference in chrome or safari that is meaningful, can't come up with one. Can you elaborate?
    - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
      i have way too many tabs open at all times, and chrome makes it way way easier to see what I have open and get to the tab I want quickly.(it just shows more tabs than Firefox, this is my main complaint) The top bar uses less vertical real estate and is just much cleaner overall. I can see more if not all of the url. Chromes next tab left, next tab right, and close tab, automatically map to the keyboard shortcut I set in macOS, and I still haven’t even found the menu option for next and previous tab in Firefox. (I’m sure it’s there and I just haven’t found it yet, but if it’s not there, that’s a deal breaker for me) I very badly want to use Firefox as my main browser, and I have it installed and give it a go every now and then, but it’s just not all the way there yet for me.
      - kilburn 7y ago
        The vertical space you can easily fix by opening the hamburguer menu > customize > density (bottom left) > compact. It then uses less space than chrome. You can also add/remove items from the top bar there, making your address bar larger if you want to. The default hotkeys for next/prev tab are cmd+option+left/right arrow. I don't know how to change those...
- Chirael 7y ago
  It’s nowhere as good or fine-grained as uBlock origin, but I’m surprised no one ever seems to mention (or use?) Firefox Focus and it’s associated Safari content blocker. Seems to work really well for me on my iPad and iPhone, at least for general ad blocking.
- alwillis 7y ago
  As Apple has reiterated, browser engines require low-level access and for security reasons, other rendering engines aren’t allowed. You can see from Apple’s updates that keeping up with the vulnerabilities for WebKit and iOS, etc. is already keeping them plenty busy: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210725 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210725 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210721 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210721 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210624 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210624 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210603 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210603
  - alwillis 7y ago
    My point is this gets dramatically worse if every browser engine has low-level access to iOS.
- mr__y 7y ago
  You could run the browser on other machine and use VNC to access this from a iphone (or any other mobile device). While this is rather complicated and probably less reliable solution, the bonus points would be (almost) perfect isolation of the browser process.
ppfrc 7y ago
Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web, severely cramped by their complete economic dependency on Google and their inability to allocate their funds intelligently
- phatfish 7y ago
  But they get shouted down whenever they try to monetise independently, can't have it both ways. Either more users start donating $5-10 a month (seems worth it to me given the time I spend with their product) or they take the Google money and deal with the conflict of interest best they can. A Shuttelworth style billionaire benefactor would work as well, but I doubt one will come from the tech community as Firefox is working against the anti-privacy data collection model that made them (or their friends) rich.
  - rpastuszak 7y ago
    This. Bear in mind that Mozilla is experimenting with different monetisation models, be it subs, donations, relying on Google for search as well as partnerships with companies such as Scroll (publisher content monetisation platforms). Also, if you follow the discourse on anything published by Mozilla in the past 2-3 years—there's been a shift when it comes to how they speak about Googe. It's a marketing move, of course, but I think it's also a sign of the direction they are following. I believe something will change here, for better, in the next couple of years. I'd sign for a Mozilla subscription if it included services such as better VPN, supporting those who cannot afford to pay directly, but pay with they data instead. The move towards paid vs. non-paid services creates a risk that we'd end up with two types of internet users, with privacy being the currency of those who cannot afford an expensive mobile phone or a browser not trying to sell you things whether you want it or not. The history of Guardian (in the past 5 years or so) shows that people are happy to pay for a valuable service just to allow the others to have access to it. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic here, but I shudder every time I think about the alternatives.
    - just_observing 7y ago
      The Guardian has gone downhill in the last few years, just like the rest of UK mainstream news reporting. They have rolled over to do whatever the Government wants not reporting - take Assange for example. Their coverage is practically non-existent. I used to buy The Guardian every day, then I subscribed digitally. And then when their reporting slid downhill, I stopped subscribing. I still read it - but block their data scraping scripts and all ads. They are not worth supporting IMO.
edpichler 7y ago
Mozilla really has a big challenge. It is hard to compete with such powerful companies, creating a sustainable business with their mission without succumbing to ads or stopping to protect user privacy. It looks like an unfair game. I like the Brave business model. I wish to have the same with Firefox.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  Too bad they built Brave on Chromium instead of Firefox. Which of course given that the company is run by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich is a bit of a shame. Firefox is showing that they are more than technically competent to keep up with Chromium and deliver great performance and functionality. With the work they are doing rewriting Firefox component by component in Rust, Google will have their work cut out keeping up in terms of performance using their C++ implementation. Competition is good.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    Nobody would fork Firefox today, as they are just following Google reimplementing Chromium and as a consequence always behind and catching up, just burning resources. While they could fork Chromium themselves and focus instead on features that create an advantage and attract users.
    - martius 7y ago
      While I agree that a lot of features from Chrome appear later in Firefox, I don't think it's true for the engine. As an example, asm.js, the technology which became Web Assembly has been invented by Mozilla folks.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > With the work they are doing rewriting Firefox component by component in Rust, Google will have their work cut out keeping up in terms of performance using their C++ implementation. I would expect Blink’s C++ implementation to perform comparably; wouldn’t the main benefits would be security-related?
miklax 7y ago
Viva la Firefox :)
k1m 7y ago
The Guardian website is horrible when it comes to tracking. They don't tend to mention that in their privacy-focused articles. Here's a tweet that sums it up: 'The irony is real... @Guardian headline, "The Guardian view on privacy online: a human right", while allowing trackers to spy on their readers.' https://twitter.com/Ghostery/status/989543132349034499 https://twitter.com/Ghostery/status/989543132349034499
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  Isn't Ghostery the tracker-blocker that sold its users' data?
  - k1m 7y ago
    It is. I don't use them and recommend uBlock Origin to anyone who asks. But they are correct on this.
    - nullc 7y ago
      The Meta-irony is real... @Ghostery tweet about Guardian "allowing trackers to spy on their readers" while themselves selling their user's data.
      - k1m 7y ago
        That's why I find uBlock Origin so refreshing. The entire ad-blocking universe is so tainted with business interests it's hard to trust any of them. The uBlock Origin developer is genuinely principled from what I've seen.
        yborg 7y ago
        Who should be getting a MacArthur grant or equivalent. I mean, it's literally gorhill or nothing, it's terrifying. Someone could walk up to him with $10M dollars and say 'Here. Stop making your thing and you can have this money." It would be a fraction of the revenue he's blocking and who could turn it down? Wladimir Palant suddenly became a big fan of whitelisting when he realized how much Google would pay for it. Everyone has a price.
lllr_finger 7y ago
On a free and open platform like OpenBSD, Firefox isn't even really an option due to performance issues. More than anything else, being forced to use Chromium for a decent browsing experience turned me away from using OpenBSD on a daily driver laptop.
- danilocesar 7y ago
  How's that? Firefox is way better nowadays than it was a few years ago. I have been using as my main work browser for some time and I don't face any performance issues with it.
  - lllr_finger 7y ago
    On a BSD? It's great for me in Windows or Linux, but it's really choppy scrolling or watching videos in OpenBSD. There was a post on the mailing list somewhere that blamed excessive mallocs. This was with version 69, so not some ancient version either.
    - mikem170 7y ago
      I've been running Firefox on OpenBSD on a Thinkpad X260, for about a year, and it's been working great, including videos and scrolling.
acd 7y ago
Mozilla is right to fight for a brighter future of the web! First Internet was started as academic network with little to no advertisements. Then came the adtech model, personal data are sold for profit. News Papers does not fully get funded and totally free when they are founded by ads. Thus we should fight to keep an open democratic internet where quality journalism gets paid by end users not ads. I thinks its important with an free open Internet for our democracy to work. We have to somehow get away from adtech and attentiontech towards a user funded internet. Attentiontech is were personal attention span is what corporations fight to keep. We should have content which is good for end users.
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  I don't understand what subscriptions vs adverts has to do with being more or less democratic. I also don't understand how subscriptions are compatible with privacy. There is currently no widely used facility for making anonymous electronic payments. If there was, then governments (including democratic ones) would crack down on it hard. Journalism has always been funded through advertising.
hellofunk 7y ago
It would seem that the Brave browser and Firefox share similar goals on privacy. It’s hard to navigate the differences in their perspectives on this, why would one choose one of these browsers over the other if concerned about online tracking?
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  Brave still contributes to a chrome monoculture, and it still shows ads, so it has a different vision of privacy.
  - hellofunk 7y ago
    From the standpoint of privacy itself, I’m not sure how it’s different. The browser does not transmit any browsing behavior or history to any servers anywhere, which seems consistent with anyone’s vision of privacy. That they figured out a way to still offer advertising despite this restriction, that’s just an orthogonal feature that doesn’t affect the stance of privacy.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- doomlaser 7y ago
  Firefox has more power user features and a robust plugin system. One of my must-have features for a browser is the ability to define search engine macros for the address bar, to quickly and directly search sites like Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Google Image Search, IMDB, Metacritic, RottenTomatoes, etc. It's a lot faster to type command-L t whatever - to do a search of Twitter than navigating in any other way. So far, Brave doesn't have this as a user-definable option, so Firefox is my main browser across platforms.
  - anonymousab 7y ago
    Chrome seems to have this - that is, you define a domain+query string and a keyword that, when typed, indicated that it should be used on that domain query. Did Brave remove that feature?
neiman 7y ago
I see a problem, though I have no alternative to offer, with the current model of organizations. It seems you are either for-profit, and then you have no ethics and do everything you can to centralize the world around you with no concern for users or their benefits. Or you're a not-for-profit foundation or the Internet Archive, where you do good things but are destined to be "poor". Are there are any "shades" between those two organization models?
- beefield 7y ago
  Co-ops.
- Despegar 7y ago
  Profit or non-profit doesn't really have anything to do with it. The issue is market power. Chrome has 70-80% market share according to this article. That's monopoly levels of market power and it's maintained through Android, which also has 80% market share. It's up to regulators to restore some semblance of balance to the market. If the browser market were less concentrated and there was more equal distribution, it wouldn't really matter whether you were a non-profit or not. In fact the web would be better off with competing interests jockeying over each other.
- nine_k 7y ago
  If you don't plan to be poor, then you need many paying customers. For a browser, the customers could be either end users, corporations with many end users, or marketers who want to sell to the end users. The latter case is Chrome, which works through a long chain of Google services. The corporate case used to be IE, geared towards deep windows integration. The case of the paying end users used to be the original Netscape. It did not work well for a number of reasons. Paying for a product when free-as-beer alternatives are available takes understanding, which is sorely lacking outside some segments of tech circles. I personally buy Mozilla a figurative pizza by a yearly donation. I do it because I understand their importance and feel grateful for their products. If more people did that it would help, but most people who are to benefit from Mozilla's efforts are not technical.
- mistrial9 7y ago
dgudkov 7y ago
I'd like to point out that it's still not possible to support the Firefox browser with donations directly, in a crowdsourcing fashion. Donations to Mozilla Foundation don't go to Firefox which is supported only by search/sponsorship payouts from large corporations.
- carapace 7y ago
  Part of the problem is that the web has become so complicated that making a new web browser requires such resources. Imagine a world where two or three people working for a couple of months could come up with a new browser?
freediver 7y ago
Perhaps the fight should start with: - Not sending data to Google - Finding a different business model that does not almost entirely rely on Google - Not collecting user data Source: https://firefoxvschrome.com https://firefoxvschrome.com
- mthoms 7y ago
  Wow. This is so misleading that it borders on outright lying. What's your agenda?
  - freediver 7y ago
    Truth? I can understand 'unpopular', but 'misleading' without probably even looking at it? 1) This can be easilly reproduced. https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... 2) Over 95% of Mozilla revenue comes from Google for using Google as default search engine https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-2017-fs-short-form-final-0927.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201... 3) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report - see first item
    - kbrosnan 7y ago
      1) GA was removed from the first run page https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/pull/7621 https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/pull/7621
    - mthoms 7y ago
      Your link implies that Chrome is more respecting of privacy than Firefox. Can you show me a single reputable tech journalist or online privacy expert that agrees with this premise? No, you can't. Your bulleted points are widely known. Could Firefox be even more private? Of course. Would it be better if it didn't rely on Google for the vast majority of it's revenue? Obviously! Heck, even Mozilla itself freely admits that. Is Firefox worse than Chrome at respecting your privacy as your link implies? That's plainly ridiculous. Even Google itself has never made such a claim.
mscasts 7y ago
Firefox is unfortunately becoming unrelevant. They have pretty much less than 5% global usage and it's not exactly increasing. Mozilla needs to sharpen up in my view. I use Brave because I like Brendan Eich and I am not exactly a fan of Mozilla as an org. There is no way to fund Firefox development as a user and it seems like they have focused more on side products / services lately.
- amiga_500 7y ago
  Firefox works great. I have to use chrome af work, so use both. Firefox lacks nothing.
googthwy123 7y ago
I think people are sometimes forgetting that Firefox is an ad-supported product. Firefox monetizes by sending people to Google. In some sense, Chrome is less directly funded by ads than Firefox, because Google (like Microsoft and Apple) has a reason to fund the development of a web browser even if it wasn't directly leading to ad revenue. On the other hand, Google is only paying for Firefox to the extent that Firefox users bring ad revenue to Google.
aledthemathguy 7y ago
One new model Firefox can adopt (try) is being made possible by cryptocurrencies. Mozilla can follow Brave's path and "pay" clients in cryptocurrency for viewing ads (although I am not sure this is in line with Mozilla's interests or goals or even ethics). This might be able to create a new incentive layer for the web. Most users really don't care about their browser (you'd be surprised how many downloaded Chrome because it was just "simpler" than Explorer and stuck with it for no prominent reason). Introducing an incentive to use Firefox might tilt the choice (why not use a browser that pays me a few bucks - which I will put back in the web). I'll stop at this.
j-pb 7y ago
Never forget that mozilla puts meta bulls* before solving problems. Their "spec hackers" decided to kill WebSQL, because of they feared that the available implementation was so HIGH quality that there wouldn't be any implementation diversity. Instead they gave us the indexedDB garbage dump. Firefox and Mozilla can go straight to oblivion for all I care.
- detaro 7y ago
  No, because the spec did not actually specify enough to allow implementation diversity or even just the available implementation be updated to a new version that breaks backwards compatibility, and apparently none of the proposers cared enough about the spec to do the work of documenting the intended behavior. WebSQL implementations later proved to be insecure by not limiting the kind of queries allowed, and strictly speaking any fix of that would have broken the proposed specification.
  - j-pb 7y ago
    Just use the SQLite implementation and documentation everywhere. SQLite is arguably the most well tested piece of software on the planet. It would have been the only piece of every browser that 'just works'. But hey having a "spec" on top to all the available documentation is super necessary so that some bloke on twitter can put it into their bio. Even HTML doesn't have specs anymore, because they don't matter. They are a means to get all browsers to be compatible not the goal. And Safari and Chrome still ship with WebSQL, so I don't think that "security issue" is actually there.
    - detaro 7y ago
      I'm not sure where you get the idea that HTML does not have a specification? It has a very extensive one.
      - j-pb 7y ago
        Its not a specification though, its a "living standard" a.k.a. we document the stuff we build as we go.
lcall 7y ago
I hope Firefox succeeds, as I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power in few hands, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chromium derivative), so I see these benefits, and am wondering what Firefox would add for me, privacy- and security-wise: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea); 2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception list or temporary exception, and easy to manage it without a mouse once the tab is open; separately, I do change the search engine also, and create search keywords), and 3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know), 4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties, more than what Firefox has done (ie, the security track record of each, frequency of major holes over, say, the last 1-3 years). I don't really know but I'm glad they try. Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).
- gst 7y ago
  > Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? Iridium seems to be quite outdated - the latest release that's listed on the website is from April. Given that there have been multiple critical security issues fixed since then - with some of them allowing for arbitrary code execution (https://www.cisecurity.org/advisory/multiple-vulnerabilities-in-google-chrome-could-allow-for-arbitrary-code-execution_2019-114/ https://www.cisecurity.org/advisory/multiple-vulnerabilities...) - I personally would consider using Iridium too risky.
  - lcall 7y ago
    I currently limit its use to an account on my computer that doesn't do the things where I care as much about security (and limit JS use), and the pledge/unveil OBSD stuff prevent it from reading or writing in directories not explicitly named as allowed. Still, you make a good point and I plan to think about it. Maybe the question is which is more risk: a local and limited compromise to a low-privilege account on OBSD, or sharing more info with Google (sounds like Google is the lower risk maybe -- hard to say...). (On the other hand, it is becoming easier to upgrade packages on OBSD between releases and so if Iridium started releasing more often it could take advantage of that--but that is just speculative.)
Karrot_Kream 7y ago
These articles always seem to elide over the WHATWG/W3C fight. Firefox and other browser vendors chose a living, implementable HTML spec over a consensus-based standards body (with its own deep problems), and now we lament the lack of alternatives. If you let browsers create the standards and change them unchecked, the natural conclusion is to own the entire stack for yourself.
OrgNet 7y ago
It needs to fight for the present of the web, because it is getting worst.
madenine 7y ago
Is there even a fight left? Chrome was the newer, faster, better working option when the average user was acclimating to the web as a constant part of their lives. To a degree, Chrome became a status symbol - knowing to ditch IE and download chrome was a mark that you were minimally web and computer savvy. For the average person to switch away from Chrome, FF would need to have an overwhelming advantage - and I'm not sure privacy is the place where the average user will register that advantage. With 100 other companies stealing and selling their data at any given time, why should they worry about their web browser?
- Zealotux 7y ago
  For a long time, it was installing Firefox over IE that was regarded as the proof of being "computer savvy". I'll even admit that back in the days, I took great pride in introducing it to my whole family when most of them didn't even know there could be an alternative to IE. And back then, it was Firefox that was the fastest, safest, coolest kid in town. Up until recently, I was sharing your pessimism over the crushing success of Chrome and how Firefox would never get back in the heart of people. This is why it amazed me when people – non-techies – around me not only did notice but were more than eager to know why I had stopped using Chrome. Small talk was enough, in many cases, to convert them back into Firefox, which isn't is what I wanted to as I never specifically advocate for personal software solutions. It appears regular people are more aware of these issues than we, in the tech field, might think. Maybe it's because I live in Europe and we're being constantly bombarded with cookie compliance notices – which are obvious dark patterns 90% of the time – that acts as a systematic reminder that almost no website we ever visit "respect your privacy". I'll admit it's nothing more than empirical, biased observation, but maybe something's happening here, I believe we should at least try.
auslander 7y ago
> Macs remain a fairly open system, although the increasing focus on the Mac app store, which Firefox isn’t on, bodes ill for the browser’s future. Why not put FF in App Store? I'd even pay for clean, no "integrations", version.
- barryvan 7y ago
  I suspect that it's because Firefox makes extensive use of "private" Apple APIs to be able to efficiently render on the platform, and Apple doesn't allow such uses for apps distributed through the app store. Similar issues apply to electron apps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255
alwillis 7y ago
Not only does Firefox have to worry about Chrome and Safari, now there’s Brave on Mac/Windows/Linux/iOS/Android. Brave is co-founded by Brendan Eich, who co-founded Mozilla. Brave is doing all the things Firefox should have done: create a new ecosystem for a secure and private web, while Mozilla is still taking millions from Google in exchange for making Google the default search engine. Although the invasive ads are blocked by default, users can opt-in to privacy preserving ads and get paid in Basic Attention Token, which can be used to support the over 300,000 and growing registered content creators. On the desktop, Brave has Tor, IPFS and WebTorrent built-in—no additional plugins needed. Yes, it’s based on Chromium, which feeds into the monoculture narrative. But there’s the irony of the guy who started Firefox using Chrome’s engine to attempt to kill Google’s surveillance capitalism system.

571 points by inception44 7y ago

The article once more reiterates the fact that Apple doesn't allow other browser engines. You cannot even fight, there is no future ;-) on iOS.

radarsat1 7y ago
How is it technically enforced though, I am curious. I mean, if I wrote an application that downloaded text files and rendered the text to the screen, I am sure that would be possible. If I wanted to add images to draw next to the text I am sure it is feasible. So how can one technically prohibit doing that? Implementation-wise, how is a web browser really that different from e.g. a video game? Or is it only policy-enforced? Reviewers see something in an app that resembles a "browser" too much and take you down?
- sharpneli 7y ago
  One cannot have writeable executable memory on iOS (apple can, we cannot). Thus one cannot make a JIT compiler for js and thus pages are slow. Game engines such as Unity use il2cpp to go from the C# stuff into C++ that can be statically compiled as running the C# as bytecode would be too slow without a jitter.
  - radarsat1 7y ago
    Ah, so it is all about the javascript engine? Ok I can see how that might put up some major technical barriers, but still it should be technically feasible to have the firefox rendering engine make use of the iOS javascript engine, no? Maybe it's not worth the effort of course. I am just trying to get a feel for what the barriers are.
    - sharpneli 7y ago
      Not via public apis. So cannot be placed into app store.
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      I think that iOS JS engine is tied to WebView and it would be hard to re-use it with other rendering engine.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        JavaScriptCore can be used can be used independently from the rest of WebKit, but I’d expect it to be slow.
    - KonkeyDong69 7y ago
      In addition to what the other replies said, feel free to eyeball the code required to embed SpiderMonkey in Firefox at https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/master/dom/bindings https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/master/dom/binding.... It's rather large and complex.
      - padenot 7y ago
        This is not at all the code to embed SpiderMonkey in Firefox, those are the bindings from DOM APIs to the implementation of those APIs in Firefox. Above that, calling into this layer, is another layer that transforms JS calls into C++ calls (roughly). The interface between SpiderMonkey and the rest of Firefox is here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/js/src/jsapi.h https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/js/src/jsapi.h.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    > One cannot have writeable executable memory on iOS (apple can, we cannot). > Thus one cannot make a JIT compiler for js and thus pages are slow. Lack of JIT doesn't slow down pages much. I believe the difference is so small that it might even be possible to be faster without JIT for most pages, especially on low power devices, it's only computation heavy pages that are going to suffer and even then it's not like you can't optimize common patterns statically ahead of time. It doesn't mean that it's a good idea to invest into it, you are still under Apple's mercy and they clearly don't want competing browser engines.
    - sharpneli 7y ago
      If I have understood correctly (I’m a C++ graphics programmer. So don’t know too much about what’s flashy in the web world) V8 only jits. As in it can only produce machine code and there is not even an option to run it as an interpreter.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        V8 has a high performance, JIT-less interpreter that disables TurboFan and relies exclusively on Ignition: https://v8.dev/blog/jitless https://v8.dev/blog/jitless
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      > Lack of JIT doesn't slow down pages much. So why do you think so many major companies invest such a huge amount of money in JS JITs? Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Mozilla all maintain JS JITs and spend what I guess is hundreds of millions of dollars a year on it.
      - notacoward 7y ago
        A budget of $100M, with 50% devoted to salary and a median salary of $250K, would be 200 developers. I seriously doubt any of the companies you name are devoting even a quarter of that to JS JIT development. Yes, they each make significant investments, but let's not weaken the argument by indulging a penchant for hyperbole.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > One cannot have writeable executable memory on iOS (apple can, we cannot). Nitpick: you can but you cannot ship it via the App Store.
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      Apple as does not allow side-loading, so wouldn't a jailbreak be required?
      - least 7y ago
        Jailbreak, enterprise certificate, testflight, or a developer account would be required to sideload an app. You can technically sideload an app without a paid developer account, but the certificate only lasts seven days, at which point you'd have to reload the application.
- capableweb 7y ago
  My guess would be that it's policy-enforced and what Apple really has problems with is not browsers as a concept (dynamically loading and rendering data) but rather the execution engine that websites usually use (JavaScript) and seeing that as a too-large-to-review area where they want to avoid having vulnerabilities in applications published on App Store. Or it's a anti-competitive move disguised as a "avoid vulnerabilities" but in reality they just really want to make sure iOS users keep using the one and only browser (Safari).
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    interesting. But I can’t help but think by that logic Facebook should be too large to review.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - extropy 7y ago
      Facebook does have code that dynamically compiles arbitrary input to machine code. That's the part Apple is not allowing in third party apps.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        > Facebook does have code that dynamically compiles arbitrary input to machine code. Not outside of JavaScriptCore they don’t.
  - marcthe12 7y ago
    Apple uses no Turing complete policy. So you also can't bundle a python or ruby interpreter in iOS. Its still anti-competitive but in a different area which is language and api. They are basically trying to push devs to use their native OS apis. PWA are also screwed up in Safari for a reason.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
- reubenmorais 7y ago
  I don't know the details first hand, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is what I remember from talking to engineers who explored this possibility over the years: You can't ship a native JIT (execute native code from the heap), I think it's enforced automatically by the App Store. So shipping your own JavaScript engine is out. You can't download and interpret third-party code, I think this is enforced by human reviews, so shipping your own Web rendering stack is out. You can use your own network stack with WebKit on top, which would let you offer some value to users like more advanced ad/tracker blocking.
  - robin_reala 7y ago
    This is exactly what Chrome on iOS did: they embedded their own networking stack, but reused WebKit and JSC.
  - thekingofh 7y ago
    Thanks for the information. That part about disallowing third-party code interpreting is particularly painful to hear. They shut down any possibility of another browser. Could see that they do this for security reasons because a badly implemented interpreter could open up holes, but I'd imagine the sandbox is sufficient to allow at least interpreters.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Web content must be rendered through WebKit as per the App Store Review Guidelines (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/). This is supposed to be enforced by App Store Review by inspection. In addition to this, there are technical reasons why your “browser” will be inferior to Apple’s web view performance-wise, mainly having to do with apps that generate code dynamically in-process needing entitlements that prevent submission to the review process.
- Yoric 7y ago
  Policy-enforced. Mozilla ported the true Firefox to iOS many, many years ago and Apple just rejected it from the store.
decasteve 7y ago
Anti-trust? Or have the lawyers for Apple (and Google) found the legalese to prevent this possibility?
- Macha 7y ago
  Apple is only a monopoly if the market is iOS devices so they're quick to point out the market is all mobile devices. Google allows sideloading, and allows competitors on the play store
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > they're quick to point out the market is all mobile devices. It is not. The market is stores for Ios devices, Apple does have monopoly.
iforgotpassword 7y ago
Yes, however, even as a Firefox advocate, I think in this case it's actually a good thing, since the majority of people would probably switch to Chrome then, contributing to the Blink monoculture.
- jraph 7y ago
  It's not a good thing, only a bad thing with a good side effect ;-)
nfriedly 7y ago
If Apple allowed Firefox on iOS - real Firefox with the rendering engine and extensions and everything, just like Android - I probably would have switched already. As it stands, I stay on Android mostly for Firefox.
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  Just curious, why does using “real Firefox” hold so much weight for you? Also, what steps have you taken to secure your device? One reason I haven’t switched from iPhone is that I’m not confident in my ability to secure an Android, and I’d rather trust Apple than Google.
  - Transfinity 7y ago
    One big thing is that you can't change the default browser, so any time you click a link you end up on safari. In my experience (I tried iPhone for 2 weeks after my previous phone died, before returning it and switching back to Android) that makes installing a different browser effectively useless. The rendering engine restriction is less obvious to the average user. And, frankly, if you don't trust Apple with your data then what are you doing using their network stack?
  - nfriedly 7y ago
    A big part of it is extensions, I have a handful of extensions that I use on a regular basis, and Firefox is the only mobile browser that actually supports extensions. Another part of it is that I just trust Mozilla more. Both in terms of conflicts of interest, and just plain fixing bugs. For example, Safari on iPod touch has been unable to access the microphone for years, even though Safari on iPhones can. I will concede your point about security. I think that iPhones are probably more secure than Androids. But, I feel that the security of my Android phone is sufficient for my needs.
    - Zak 7y ago
      Extensions don't get enough attention in this discussion. They're the main reason I prefer Firefox on Android. Anything that's missing or not to my liking, I can usually find an extension to provide or change. If something annoyed me enough and there wasn't an existing extension, I could look up the API docs and write one myself.
krzyk 7y ago
I wonder why no antimonopolist issue was raised there by e.g. EU. Like they did for NFC in Germany - they forced all phones with NFC to be open to use by different apps, which might finally bring other pay solutions to iOS (or non NFC capable iphones to Germany).
- Despegar 7y ago
  The NFC issue isn't related to antitrust. If they thought they could make an antitrust case against Apple they would. But their market share is so low in Germany, and the EU, that they just passed a law instead (specifically an amendment to an anti-money laundering law). It remains to be seen if it's even constitutional.
sebazzz 7y ago
Technically I think you are free to build have other browser engines on iOS. However, JIT or other dynamically compiled code is not allowed because that's a security risk. You can't have a browser in 2019 with interpreted javascript.
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  But why is JavaScript JIT compilation tied to the rendering engine?
  - andrewl-hn 7y ago
    Yep. technically, Apple doesn't force Firefox to use WebKit. They could still use their Gecko WebRenderer and use Apple's JavaScriptCore to run page scripts. Same goes to Chrome: Blink + JSC instead of Blink + V8. In practice in seems like both Chrome and Firefox have their renderers and JavaScript runtimes so tightly integrated that it's very hard to replace the later.
    - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      Elsewhere in this debate sharpneli says that there is no public API to call into JavaScriptCore and using non-public APIs violates the App Store rules. So that would explain it.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        There is API to use JavaScriptCore in your apps: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/javascriptcore https://developer.apple.com/documentation/javascriptcore. No JIT, though, so it’s slow.
- thekingofh 7y ago
  I think you mean that you can have interpreted javascript, just not JIT compilers. They don't allow you to mark memory as executable. That syscall is completely disabled on their systems.
jrs95 7y ago
It would be a lot more difficult than it sounds for Apple to allow 3rd party browsers and allow them to be good. Even on macOS now, Chrome depends on internal OS APIs which prevent it (or Electron apps) from being in the Mac App Store -- and for good reason, those things could break at any time. So in order to allow 3rd party browser engines that can compete with Safari in terms of performance etc they would need to make the APIs that are used to optimize them public.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  If these non-public APIs are so useful it feels to me that Apple is acting in an anti-competitive manner. They're allowed to use them for their own applications but deny third-parties the right to sell in the "Store" if they use the APIs. Sounds a lot like MSFT in the 90's...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ken 7y ago
That's a convenient excuse on iOS, but Firefox is doing poorly on macOS, too, where no such restriction exists. According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows -- and it's still under 10% there, too. Privacy-compromising systems aren't winning today because people seek out systems that compromise their privacy. They're winning because these companies focused on making the user interface good. Firefox will win big again when they stop talking about privacy and start making a UI that isn't lousy. True, Apple is talking about privacy a lot these days, but they've been focusing on UX first for decades. You can't start with "here is an abstract principle that's good for you, and you should use our systems because of it". The Free Software Foundation tried that for years. It doesn't work. Privacy is important, but it's a feature, not a product. You still need to have a great product.
- ragequitta 7y ago
  I'm trying to think of a UI difference in chrome or safari that is meaningful, can't come up with one. Can you elaborate?
  - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    i have way too many tabs open at all times, and chrome makes it way way easier to see what I have open and get to the tab I want quickly.(it just shows more tabs than Firefox, this is my main complaint) The top bar uses less vertical real estate and is just much cleaner overall. I can see more if not all of the url. Chromes next tab left, next tab right, and close tab, automatically map to the keyboard shortcut I set in macOS, and I still haven’t even found the menu option for next and previous tab in Firefox. (I’m sure it’s there and I just haven’t found it yet, but if it’s not there, that’s a deal breaker for me) I very badly want to use Firefox as my main browser, and I have it installed and give it a go every now and then, but it’s just not all the way there yet for me.
    - kilburn 7y ago
      The vertical space you can easily fix by opening the hamburguer menu > customize > density (bottom left) > compact. It then uses less space than chrome. You can also add/remove items from the top bar there, making your address bar larger if you want to. The default hotkeys for next/prev tab are cmd+option+left/right arrow. I don't know how to change those...
Chirael 7y ago
It’s nowhere as good or fine-grained as uBlock origin, but I’m surprised no one ever seems to mention (or use?) Firefox Focus and it’s associated Safari content blocker. Seems to work really well for me on my iPad and iPhone, at least for general ad blocking.
alwillis 7y ago
As Apple has reiterated, browser engines require low-level access and for security reasons, other rendering engines aren’t allowed. You can see from Apple’s updates that keeping up with the vulnerabilities for WebKit and iOS, etc. is already keeping them plenty busy: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210725 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210725 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210721 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210721 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210624 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210624 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210603 https://support.apple.com/kb/HT210603
- alwillis 7y ago
  My point is this gets dramatically worse if every browser engine has low-level access to iOS.
mr__y 7y ago
You could run the browser on other machine and use VNC to access this from a iphone (or any other mobile device). While this is rather complicated and probably less reliable solution, the bonus points would be (almost) perfect isolation of the browser process.

ppfrc 7y ago

Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web, severely cramped by their complete economic dependency on Google and their inability to allocate their funds intelligently

phatfish 7y ago
But they get shouted down whenever they try to monetise independently, can't have it both ways. Either more users start donating $5-10 a month (seems worth it to me given the time I spend with their product) or they take the Google money and deal with the conflict of interest best they can. A Shuttelworth style billionaire benefactor would work as well, but I doubt one will come from the tech community as Firefox is working against the anti-privacy data collection model that made them (or their friends) rich.
- rpastuszak 7y ago
  This. Bear in mind that Mozilla is experimenting with different monetisation models, be it subs, donations, relying on Google for search as well as partnerships with companies such as Scroll (publisher content monetisation platforms). Also, if you follow the discourse on anything published by Mozilla in the past 2-3 years—there's been a shift when it comes to how they speak about Googe. It's a marketing move, of course, but I think it's also a sign of the direction they are following. I believe something will change here, for better, in the next couple of years. I'd sign for a Mozilla subscription if it included services such as better VPN, supporting those who cannot afford to pay directly, but pay with they data instead. The move towards paid vs. non-paid services creates a risk that we'd end up with two types of internet users, with privacy being the currency of those who cannot afford an expensive mobile phone or a browser not trying to sell you things whether you want it or not. The history of Guardian (in the past 5 years or so) shows that people are happy to pay for a valuable service just to allow the others to have access to it. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic here, but I shudder every time I think about the alternatives.
  - just_observing 7y ago
    The Guardian has gone downhill in the last few years, just like the rest of UK mainstream news reporting. They have rolled over to do whatever the Government wants not reporting - take Assange for example. Their coverage is practically non-existent. I used to buy The Guardian every day, then I subscribed digitally. And then when their reporting slid downhill, I stopped subscribing. I still read it - but block their data scraping scripts and all ads. They are not worth supporting IMO.

edpichler 7y ago

Mozilla really has a big challenge. It is hard to compete with such powerful companies, creating a sustainable business with their mission without succumbing to ads or stopping to protect user privacy. It looks like an unfair game. I like the Brave business model. I wish to have the same with Firefox.

jillesvangurp 7y ago
Too bad they built Brave on Chromium instead of Firefox. Which of course given that the company is run by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich is a bit of a shame. Firefox is showing that they are more than technically competent to keep up with Chromium and deliver great performance and functionality. With the work they are doing rewriting Firefox component by component in Rust, Google will have their work cut out keeping up in terms of performance using their C++ implementation. Competition is good.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  Nobody would fork Firefox today, as they are just following Google reimplementing Chromium and as a consequence always behind and catching up, just burning resources. While they could fork Chromium themselves and focus instead on features that create an advantage and attract users.
  - martius 7y ago
    While I agree that a lot of features from Chrome appear later in Firefox, I don't think it's true for the engine. As an example, asm.js, the technology which became Web Assembly has been invented by Mozilla folks.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > With the work they are doing rewriting Firefox component by component in Rust, Google will have their work cut out keeping up in terms of performance using their C++ implementation. I would expect Blink’s C++ implementation to perform comparably; wouldn’t the main benefits would be security-related?

miklax 7y ago

Viva la Firefox :)

k1m 7y ago

The Guardian website is horrible when it comes to tracking. They don't tend to mention that in their privacy-focused articles. Here's a tweet that sums it up: 'The irony is real... @Guardian headline, "The Guardian view on privacy online: a human right", while allowing trackers to spy on their readers.' https://twitter.com/Ghostery/status/989543132349034499 https://twitter.com/Ghostery/status/989543132349034499

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Isn't Ghostery the tracker-blocker that sold its users' data?
- k1m 7y ago
  It is. I don't use them and recommend uBlock Origin to anyone who asks. But they are correct on this.
  - nullc 7y ago
    The Meta-irony is real... @Ghostery tweet about Guardian "allowing trackers to spy on their readers" while themselves selling their user's data.
    - k1m 7y ago
      That's why I find uBlock Origin so refreshing. The entire ad-blocking universe is so tainted with business interests it's hard to trust any of them. The uBlock Origin developer is genuinely principled from what I've seen.
      - yborg 7y ago
        Who should be getting a MacArthur grant or equivalent. I mean, it's literally gorhill or nothing, it's terrifying. Someone could walk up to him with $10M dollars and say 'Here. Stop making your thing and you can have this money." It would be a fraction of the revenue he's blocking and who could turn it down? Wladimir Palant suddenly became a big fan of whitelisting when he realized how much Google would pay for it. Everyone has a price.

lllr_finger 7y ago

On a free and open platform like OpenBSD, Firefox isn't even really an option due to performance issues. More than anything else, being forced to use Chromium for a decent browsing experience turned me away from using OpenBSD on a daily driver laptop.

danilocesar 7y ago
How's that? Firefox is way better nowadays than it was a few years ago. I have been using as my main work browser for some time and I don't face any performance issues with it.
- lllr_finger 7y ago
  On a BSD? It's great for me in Windows or Linux, but it's really choppy scrolling or watching videos in OpenBSD. There was a post on the mailing list somewhere that blamed excessive mallocs. This was with version 69, so not some ancient version either.
  - mikem170 7y ago
    I've been running Firefox on OpenBSD on a Thinkpad X260, for about a year, and it's been working great, including videos and scrolling.

acd 7y ago

Mozilla is right to fight for a brighter future of the web! First Internet was started as academic network with little to no advertisements. Then came the adtech model, personal data are sold for profit. News Papers does not fully get funded and totally free when they are founded by ads. Thus we should fight to keep an open democratic internet where quality journalism gets paid by end users not ads. I thinks its important with an free open Internet for our democracy to work. We have to somehow get away from adtech and attentiontech towards a user funded internet. Attentiontech is were personal attention span is what corporations fight to keep. We should have content which is good for end users.

fauigerzigerk 7y ago
I don't understand what subscriptions vs adverts has to do with being more or less democratic. I also don't understand how subscriptions are compatible with privacy. There is currently no widely used facility for making anonymous electronic payments. If there was, then governments (including democratic ones) would crack down on it hard. Journalism has always been funded through advertising.

hellofunk 7y ago

It would seem that the Brave browser and Firefox share similar goals on privacy. It’s hard to navigate the differences in their perspectives on this, why would one choose one of these browsers over the other if concerned about online tracking?

jimktrains2 7y ago
Brave still contributes to a chrome monoculture, and it still shows ads, so it has a different vision of privacy.
- hellofunk 7y ago
  From the standpoint of privacy itself, I’m not sure how it’s different. The browser does not transmit any browsing behavior or history to any servers anywhere, which seems consistent with anyone’s vision of privacy. That they figured out a way to still offer advertising despite this restriction, that’s just an orthogonal feature that doesn’t affect the stance of privacy.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
doomlaser 7y ago
Firefox has more power user features and a robust plugin system. One of my must-have features for a browser is the ability to define search engine macros for the address bar, to quickly and directly search sites like Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Google Image Search, IMDB, Metacritic, RottenTomatoes, etc. It's a lot faster to type command-L t whatever - to do a search of Twitter than navigating in any other way. So far, Brave doesn't have this as a user-definable option, so Firefox is my main browser across platforms.
- anonymousab 7y ago
  Chrome seems to have this - that is, you define a domain+query string and a keyword that, when typed, indicated that it should be used on that domain query. Did Brave remove that feature?

neiman 7y ago

I see a problem, though I have no alternative to offer, with the current model of organizations. It seems you are either for-profit, and then you have no ethics and do everything you can to centralize the world around you with no concern for users or their benefits. Or you're a not-for-profit foundation or the Internet Archive, where you do good things but are destined to be "poor". Are there are any "shades" between those two organization models?

beefield 7y ago
Co-ops.
Despegar 7y ago
Profit or non-profit doesn't really have anything to do with it. The issue is market power. Chrome has 70-80% market share according to this article. That's monopoly levels of market power and it's maintained through Android, which also has 80% market share. It's up to regulators to restore some semblance of balance to the market. If the browser market were less concentrated and there was more equal distribution, it wouldn't really matter whether you were a non-profit or not. In fact the web would be better off with competing interests jockeying over each other.
nine_k 7y ago
If you don't plan to be poor, then you need many paying customers. For a browser, the customers could be either end users, corporations with many end users, or marketers who want to sell to the end users. The latter case is Chrome, which works through a long chain of Google services. The corporate case used to be IE, geared towards deep windows integration. The case of the paying end users used to be the original Netscape. It did not work well for a number of reasons. Paying for a product when free-as-beer alternatives are available takes understanding, which is sorely lacking outside some segments of tech circles. I personally buy Mozilla a figurative pizza by a yearly donation. I do it because I understand their importance and feel grateful for their products. If more people did that it would help, but most people who are to benefit from Mozilla's efforts are not technical.
mistrial9 7y ago

dgudkov 7y ago

I'd like to point out that it's still not possible to support the Firefox browser with donations directly, in a crowdsourcing fashion. Donations to Mozilla Foundation don't go to Firefox which is supported only by search/sponsorship payouts from large corporations.

carapace 7y ago
Part of the problem is that the web has become so complicated that making a new web browser requires such resources. Imagine a world where two or three people working for a couple of months could come up with a new browser?

freediver 7y ago

Perhaps the fight should start with: - Not sending data to Google - Finding a different business model that does not almost entirely rely on Google - Not collecting user data Source: https://firefoxvschrome.com https://firefoxvschrome.com

mthoms 7y ago
Wow. This is so misleading that it borders on outright lying. What's your agenda?
- freediver 7y ago
  Truth? I can understand 'unpopular', but 'misleading' without probably even looking at it? 1) This can be easilly reproduced. https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... 2) Over 95% of Mozilla revenue comes from Google for using Google as default search engine https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-2017-fs-short-form-final-0927.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201... 3) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report - see first item
  - kbrosnan 7y ago
    1) GA was removed from the first run page https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/pull/7621 https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/pull/7621
  - mthoms 7y ago
    Your link implies that Chrome is more respecting of privacy than Firefox. Can you show me a single reputable tech journalist or online privacy expert that agrees with this premise? No, you can't. Your bulleted points are widely known. Could Firefox be even more private? Of course. Would it be better if it didn't rely on Google for the vast majority of it's revenue? Obviously! Heck, even Mozilla itself freely admits that. Is Firefox worse than Chrome at respecting your privacy as your link implies? That's plainly ridiculous. Even Google itself has never made such a claim.

mscasts 7y ago

Firefox is unfortunately becoming unrelevant. They have pretty much less than 5% global usage and it's not exactly increasing. Mozilla needs to sharpen up in my view. I use Brave because I like Brendan Eich and I am not exactly a fan of Mozilla as an org. There is no way to fund Firefox development as a user and it seems like they have focused more on side products / services lately.

amiga_500 7y ago
Firefox works great. I have to use chrome af work, so use both. Firefox lacks nothing.

googthwy123 7y ago

I think people are sometimes forgetting that Firefox is an ad-supported product. Firefox monetizes by sending people to Google. In some sense, Chrome is less directly funded by ads than Firefox, because Google (like Microsoft and Apple) has a reason to fund the development of a web browser even if it wasn't directly leading to ad revenue. On the other hand, Google is only paying for Firefox to the extent that Firefox users bring ad revenue to Google.

aledthemathguy 7y ago

One new model Firefox can adopt (try) is being made possible by cryptocurrencies. Mozilla can follow Brave's path and "pay" clients in cryptocurrency for viewing ads (although I am not sure this is in line with Mozilla's interests or goals or even ethics). This might be able to create a new incentive layer for the web. Most users really don't care about their browser (you'd be surprised how many downloaded Chrome because it was just "simpler" than Explorer and stuck with it for no prominent reason). Introducing an incentive to use Firefox might tilt the choice (why not use a browser that pays me a few bucks - which I will put back in the web). I'll stop at this.

j-pb 7y ago

Never forget that mozilla puts meta bulls* before solving problems. Their "spec hackers" decided to kill WebSQL, because of they feared that the available implementation was so HIGH quality that there wouldn't be any implementation diversity. Instead they gave us the indexedDB garbage dump. Firefox and Mozilla can go straight to oblivion for all I care.

detaro 7y ago
No, because the spec did not actually specify enough to allow implementation diversity or even just the available implementation be updated to a new version that breaks backwards compatibility, and apparently none of the proposers cared enough about the spec to do the work of documenting the intended behavior. WebSQL implementations later proved to be insecure by not limiting the kind of queries allowed, and strictly speaking any fix of that would have broken the proposed specification.
- j-pb 7y ago
  Just use the SQLite implementation and documentation everywhere. SQLite is arguably the most well tested piece of software on the planet. It would have been the only piece of every browser that 'just works'. But hey having a "spec" on top to all the available documentation is super necessary so that some bloke on twitter can put it into their bio. Even HTML doesn't have specs anymore, because they don't matter. They are a means to get all browsers to be compatible not the goal. And Safari and Chrome still ship with WebSQL, so I don't think that "security issue" is actually there.
  - detaro 7y ago
    I'm not sure where you get the idea that HTML does not have a specification? It has a very extensive one.
    - j-pb 7y ago
      Its not a specification though, its a "living standard" a.k.a. we document the stuff we build as we go.

lcall 7y ago

I hope Firefox succeeds, as I like the idea of not concentrating yet more power in few hands, but, on OpenBSD, I use Iridium (Chromium derivative), so I see these benefits, and am wondering what Firefox would add for me, privacy- and security-wise: 1) Iridium doesn't send info to Google like Chrome does (or that is the idea); 2) It is easier (last I checked) than with Firefox to leave some config tabs open so I can quickly turn on/off javascript, images, and/or cookies for those sites where I need them (by exception list or temporary exception, and easy to manage it without a mouse once the tab is open; separately, I do change the search engine also, and create search keywords), and 3) OpenBSD adds pledge/unveil system calls from the browser, to prevent it from reading/writing files where it should not (plus I browse under a different user than I do other things with high confidence there will not be a privilege escalation; also they say the pledge/unveil support is easier to implement in Chrome/Iridium than in Firefox because of the cleaner separations of concerns in the code organization (my wording; though they have probably also put pledge/unveil in FF also for all I know), 4) Maybe the security of Chrome/Iridium benefits from Google's bug bounties, more than what Firefox has done (ie, the security track record of each, frequency of major holes over, say, the last 1-3 years). I don't really know but I'm glad they try. Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? (I am aware of OBSD removing DNS-over-HTTP from Firefox, indicating that is a choice that should be made by the user at the system level instead).

gst 7y ago
> Given those things, what are the remaining biggest reasons I might prefer Firefox? Iridium seems to be quite outdated - the latest release that's listed on the website is from April. Given that there have been multiple critical security issues fixed since then - with some of them allowing for arbitrary code execution (https://www.cisecurity.org/advisory/multiple-vulnerabilities-in-google-chrome-could-allow-for-arbitrary-code-execution_2019-114/ https://www.cisecurity.org/advisory/multiple-vulnerabilities...) - I personally would consider using Iridium too risky.
- lcall 7y ago
  I currently limit its use to an account on my computer that doesn't do the things where I care as much about security (and limit JS use), and the pledge/unveil OBSD stuff prevent it from reading or writing in directories not explicitly named as allowed. Still, you make a good point and I plan to think about it. Maybe the question is which is more risk: a local and limited compromise to a low-privilege account on OBSD, or sharing more info with Google (sounds like Google is the lower risk maybe -- hard to say...). (On the other hand, it is becoming easier to upgrade packages on OBSD between releases and so if Iridium started releasing more often it could take advantage of that--but that is just speculative.)

Karrot_Kream 7y ago

These articles always seem to elide over the WHATWG/W3C fight. Firefox and other browser vendors chose a living, implementable HTML spec over a consensus-based standards body (with its own deep problems), and now we lament the lack of alternatives. If you let browsers create the standards and change them unchecked, the natural conclusion is to own the entire stack for yourself.

OrgNet 7y ago

It needs to fight for the present of the web, because it is getting worst.

madenine 7y ago

Is there even a fight left? Chrome was the newer, faster, better working option when the average user was acclimating to the web as a constant part of their lives. To a degree, Chrome became a status symbol - knowing to ditch IE and download chrome was a mark that you were minimally web and computer savvy. For the average person to switch away from Chrome, FF would need to have an overwhelming advantage - and I'm not sure privacy is the place where the average user will register that advantage. With 100 other companies stealing and selling their data at any given time, why should they worry about their web browser?

Zealotux 7y ago
For a long time, it was installing Firefox over IE that was regarded as the proof of being "computer savvy". I'll even admit that back in the days, I took great pride in introducing it to my whole family when most of them didn't even know there could be an alternative to IE. And back then, it was Firefox that was the fastest, safest, coolest kid in town. Up until recently, I was sharing your pessimism over the crushing success of Chrome and how Firefox would never get back in the heart of people. This is why it amazed me when people – non-techies – around me not only did notice but were more than eager to know why I had stopped using Chrome. Small talk was enough, in many cases, to convert them back into Firefox, which isn't is what I wanted to as I never specifically advocate for personal software solutions. It appears regular people are more aware of these issues than we, in the tech field, might think. Maybe it's because I live in Europe and we're being constantly bombarded with cookie compliance notices – which are obvious dark patterns 90% of the time – that acts as a systematic reminder that almost no website we ever visit "respect your privacy". I'll admit it's nothing more than empirical, biased observation, but maybe something's happening here, I believe we should at least try.

auslander 7y ago

> Macs remain a fairly open system, although the increasing focus on the Mac app store, which Firefox isn’t on, bodes ill for the browser’s future. Why not put FF in App Store? I'd even pay for clean, no "integrations", version.

barryvan 7y ago
I suspect that it's because Firefox makes extensive use of "private" Apple APIs to be able to efficiently render on the platform, and Apple doesn't allow such uses for apps distributed through the app store. Similar issues apply to electron apps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255

alwillis 7y ago

Not only does Firefox have to worry about Chrome and Safari, now there’s Brave on Mac/Windows/Linux/iOS/Android. Brave is co-founded by Brendan Eich, who co-founded Mozilla. Brave is doing all the things Firefox should have done: create a new ecosystem for a secure and private web, while Mozilla is still taking millions from Google in exchange for making Google the default search engine. Although the invasive ads are blocked by default, users can opt-in to privacy preserving ads and get paid in Basic Attention Token, which can be used to support the over 300,000 and growing registered content creators. On the desktop, Brave has Tor, IPFS and WebTorrent built-in—no additional plugins needed. Yes, it’s based on Chromium, which feeds into the monoculture narrative. But there’s the irony of the guy who started Firefox using Chrome’s engine to attempt to kill Google’s surveillance capitalism system.