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> How is the Google monopoly forcing them to make developer experience worse? My statement was a broader one about Mozilla's overall struggles in the market, n

> How is the Google monopoly forcing them to make developer experience worse? My statement was a broader one about Mozilla's overall struggles in the market, not about this specific decision. > Turn Firefox into a great developer browser that saves developers time and annoyance, and they'll happily give you money. Just to state the obvious: Developers are not any browser's primary target user base. Not by a longshot. I agree that appealing to developers is important. Microsoft had to learn that the hard way through the early aughts. But appealing to developers and power users isn't going to fill the gaping financial hole left behind after the Google deal got cancelled. Developers are notoriously cheap. If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. > And at some point they'll stop testing in Firefox, just like they don't test in IE6. And they'll do so because their users aren't using the browser and so it's not worth their time. For Firefox to remain relevant it needs marketshare. Heck, I'll bet the reason Google felt comfortable cancelling the search partnership is because Firefox' marketshare fell so far that the benefits were no longer worth the cost. Hence my comments about monopoly abuse and so forth.

luckylion 6y ago
> If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. I don't think that's obvious at all. JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), even though there are free IDEs (one of them sponsored by Microsoft no less). Theirs are just that much better. You're right that hobby developers are cheap, but the professional market is quite different, and even more so when you sell to enterprises. $100/yr is nothing compared to developer salaries and for all web developers, designers etc, the Browser is the major tool. > For Firefox to remain relevant it needs marketshare. My impression is that developers are pretty much the remaining users of Firefox. And they're kicking them out.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), JetBrains isn't up against a monopolist who's willing to offer the same features for free to any comers. Also, worth noting, the now-cancelled Google deal was worth $375M to their bottom line. So even if they could hit JetBrains' numbers (which I highly doubt), it still wouldn't fill the hole left behind. If anything, what this says to me is that Mozilla shedding staff makes sense. If JetBrains can be profitable producing a complex IDE with half the spend (Mozilla 2018 spend was $451M), it makes me wonder just how efficient Mozilla is with their staffing.
armoredkitten 6y ago
> Developers are notoriously cheap. If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. Exactly. Especially since Firefox is one of the only non-Chromium based browsers left. If you pivot towards only courting developers and make it a paid product, you now have a product that no longer at all represents the browsers (and rendering engines) that users are using. Why test on Gecko when (now that it's paywalled) no one is actually using Gecko?

luckylion 6y ago

> If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. I don't think that's obvious at all. JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), even though there are free IDEs (one of them sponsored by Microsoft no less). Theirs are just that much better. You're right that hobby developers are cheap, but the professional market is quite different, and even more so when you sell to enterprises. $100/yr is nothing compared to developer salaries and for all web developers, designers etc, the Browser is the major tool. > For Firefox to remain relevant it needs marketshare. My impression is that developers are pretty much the remaining users of Firefox. And they're kicking them out.

CarelessExpert 6y ago
> JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), JetBrains isn't up against a monopolist who's willing to offer the same features for free to any comers. Also, worth noting, the now-cancelled Google deal was worth $375M to their bottom line. So even if they could hit JetBrains' numbers (which I highly doubt), it still wouldn't fill the hole left behind. If anything, what this says to me is that Mozilla shedding staff makes sense. If JetBrains can be profitable producing a complex IDE with half the spend (Mozilla 2018 spend was $451M), it makes me wonder just how efficient Mozilla is with their staffing.

armoredkitten 6y ago

> Developers are notoriously cheap. If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. Exactly. Especially since Firefox is one of the only non-Chromium based browsers left. If you pivot towards only courting developers and make it a paid product, you now have a product that no longer at all represents the browsers (and rendering engines) that users are using. Why test on Gecko when (now that it's paywalled) no one is actually using Gecko?