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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

• causality0 6y ago
  Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental mistake. The who's-got-the-biggest-version-number dick-measuring, the constant deprecation of power features and customizability, everything that was intended to beat Chrome in a contest Google couldn't lose is the reason Firefox can't hold onto a decent market share. The 25% of internet users who wanted what Firefox offered ten years ago still want the same thing now, but Firefox decided it was worth losing that 25% trying to chase the 75%, and they lost.
  • cel1ne 6y ago
    I don't think so, i switched to Firefox about two years ago, after the major upgrades, and I think it's way snappier, faster and more usable than chrome.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    The challenge with not competing with Chrome is that websites are now mostly developed with Chrome as the dev-tool. Even large companies are just optimizing for that one browser: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/11/28/please-build-websites-web-not-just-google-chrome/ https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/11/28/please-build-websites-w... How many users are going to be willing to put up with stuff not working until they switch?
    • causality0 6y ago
      Functioning like Chrome in rendering and page features doesn't mean Firefox has to behave like Chrome in the UX. For example, why gut the ability of people to skin and customize their browser as they see fit? Why is Mozilla involved in a running battle against users who want the tabs below the address bar? Why entirely prevent us from sideloading extensions instead of letting us turn the ability on and off?
      • afiori 6y ago
        I guess that for the first two the answer is in part managing complexity
        • asddubs 6y ago
          and the last one is to reduce attack vectors
          • dependenttypes 6y ago
            Ah yes, the good old walled garden approach. Not very "open", is it?
            • asddubs 6y ago
              i mean I don't like it either, but I do believe them in this instance that it's mostly in service of not letting installers just sneak in a toolbar
              • dependenttypes 6y ago
                I think that this is misguided. If a malicious installer sneaks in toolbars it can also install a keylogger/send all of your data to a server/install a firefox fork with the toolbar preinstalled/etc. If anything this kind of thing only hurts the users that know what they are doing (such as someone wanting to install a 3rd party addon or someone wanting to install addons via nix).
                • notriddle 6y ago
                  > If a malicious installer sneaks in toolbars it can also install a keylogger/send all of your data to a server/install a firefox fork with the toolbar preinstalled/etc. If it's totally rogue malware, sure. The toolbars, on the other hand, were coming from companies like Oracle that operated entirely within the bounds of the law.
    • TimSchumann 6y ago
      This is the main thing I’m concerned with. Instead of adhering to an open standard, everything becoming ‘whatever google says goes’.
    • cotillion 6y ago
      The Firefox bug report for a websocket message inspector was opened 7 years ago. It took 6 years before it got implemented. Its no wonder they lost marketshare among developers.
      • TimSchumann 6y ago
        Agree with this sentiment 100% - it’s not better, it’s just less evil.
      • pjmlp 6y ago
        I can find similar examples in Chrome, yet that doesn't detain some devs to worship it.
        • MattGaiser 6y ago
          Yes, but Chrome is considered the default. If something doesn't work in Chrome, I will get in trouble with my boss for implementing it. If something doesn't work with Firefox, we tell the users to use Chrome.
          • pjmlp 6y ago
            So just like IE 6, some things never change in spite people telling otherwise.
    • xxs 6y ago
      Make better and paid/subscription based(!) dev tools, instead screwing the UI and disabling add-ons. People are buying jetbrains products even though free ones exist. I do use firefox but all the auto-update features are off on desktop. On mobile I am/will be stuck with 68 forever, I suppose as well.
      • usrusr 6y ago
        Perhaps FF developer edition was meant to test the waters for this approach? Do web people actually use that? I never got to the point of making it part of my process, but I'm not doing enough web to really have a process. In any case, a dev browser can only be relevant if it's representative of end user browsers. The history of browser wars has shown that a superior dev experience can be a decisive factor in winning users, but it can never be more than a supporting role. These days a far more plausible dev level monetization angle would be Mozilla's unique position as the origin of Rust. Spin out a Rust subsidiary that sells service and perhaps also some premium tooling/SaaS in the open market while doing work on Rust/Servo/FF for a nominal fee that allows both sides to keep the lights on. But that (just like paid browser dev tools) would be B2B and apparently Mozilla Corp completely fails to see itself as a B2B actor outside of consumer eyeballs deals like the Google deal and the increasingly outbrainy start tab fillers. But failure to go that way is hardly surprising. Where would the business skillset come from when the entire organizion outside the tech teams has more in common with the great money furnaces of Wikimedia than with anything else? The only way I can see for that kind of transition to go well would be some form of merger/acquisition with someone already existing in those fields (consultancy and/or tooling). "you take the engineers, we'll be buying services". But the successful ones would be very reluctant to suddenly load themselves with the entirety of Rust. It would probably take someone owner-managed who brought a decent amount of idealism into the equation. Total number of candidates might amount to zero.
    • pjmlp 6y ago
      The anti-IE generation is mostly to blame for that, they ended up adopting the behaviours they criticized so much.
      • MattGaiser 6y ago
        IE made life miserable for developers. I am not sure we would have cared if it were not moribund.
        • ohgodplsno 6y ago
          Whereas Chrome makes life miserable for users not using Chrome, because of the sheer amount of non-standard, Chrome-only features used in current webdev.
          • harshitaneja 6y ago
            Which non-standard features?
            • ohgodplsno 6y ago
              Using google properties is a bit of an easy jab, but: Youtube using polymer/shadowdomv0 and absolutely destroying performance on Firefox is a an easy example. Google Earth used non-standard APIs. Otherwise, have a quick search for "non-standard" on MDN, and see how many of those Chrome implements.
              • eyko 6y ago
                But both of those are Google products. Yet here we are in a thread blaming an entire generation of web creators and users.
                • pjmlp 6y ago
                  Ah, so only when Microsoft does it is bad, but when that generation worships Google for doing the same it is suddenly alright.
  • nikitaga 6y ago
    Lack of good built-in RSS reader is puzzling. Could have been their way into offering paid web services as the cross platform browser is so perfectly positioned for this feature.
  • TimSchumann 6y ago
    I find it hard to disagree with this sentiment. I don't use firefox as my main browser because it's better than Chrome, I use it because it's not google.
    • bickeringyokel 6y ago
      I find I am not missing anything in terms of features or stability since the quantum engine except perhaps bookmark management being a bit clunky. If you truly prefer chrome why not use a chromium browser that is not Google? (Brave for example)
      • TimSchumann 6y ago
        I question the longevity and/or motives of institutions maintaining any of those builds other than possibly Microsoft. And believe me, if you would have asked me if trusting Microsoft was the safe bet 20 years ago, I would have said you were nuts. But here we are.
        • riffraff 6y ago
          I understand questioning the motives, but does the longevity matter? I have a ton of bookmarks and some extensions, but those carry over easily across chrome variations. If Brave died next year you could switch back to chromium relatively easily, I think. I guess, I may be missing something, and would like to know what.
    • lrem 6y ago
      Seeing Google from the inside, I have way more trust in it than the general public. But I do use Firefox as my personal browser because I like what they're doing with the tech stack. Having everyone just slap their logo on Chromium sounds like a way towards eventual stagnation.
      • glenstein 6y ago
        This is the reason why I was initially excited about, and then disenchanted with Vivaldi. I initially had the impression that they weren't going to use Chromium, and that their return to Opera's roots meant returning to the spirit of innovation that made Opera so compelling back in the day (I will never stop singing the praises of Opera Unite). But then I learned that Vivaldi, too, would be based on Chromium.
  • ulfw 6y ago
    Who cares about the version number? Come on. People don‘t pick a browser based on a too high or too low version number.
    • causality0 6y ago
      Exactly my point. Mozilla used a rational numbering scheme where the larger the change, the larger the increment, with full integers being reserved for major changes. Then Chrome started changing its integer every few weeks and Firefox upended its own scheme to keep from looking unfashionable.
      • ansible 6y ago
        Between auto-updates and the numbers changing very often, I'm not even slightly aware of the current version numbers for Chrome or Firefox.
      • forgotpwd16 6y ago
        For a rolling-release model like this a scheme could include the date released, e.g. Firefox 20.07.x which is also used by Linux distros. Right now version numbers are pretty useless.
        • gspr 6y ago
          Version numbers aren't useless. It's just that there's an insane fad going around that only the latest iteration of something is suppose to be used.
  • Brakenshire 6y ago
    25% seems like much too high a number for the group you’re talking about. I’d be interested to see some data on level of technical engagement and knowledge, but in my experience a large percentage of users don’t even have a clear idea of what a browser is. The reason Firefox has lost market share in my opinion is because: i) Chrome is pushed by Google.com, which has a near monopoly on search ii) Chrome was bundled and installed alongside other software iii) Chrome is built into Android and Chromebook iv) Chrome has a huge advertising budget And all of these factors combine to make Chrome feel like the default portal to the web. Also for a period of time Chrome was undeniably a better, more stable browser. It’s only relatively recently with Electrolysis and Firefox Quantum that Firefox has regained a technical parity or superiority. And those changes depended on specifying a proper UI and Extension API which is the reason why the browser is no longer so customisable. But Firefox Quantum only exists because of Servo, and vital parts of Servo (parallel layout in particular) have not been integrated into Firefox. It’s bizarre to see Mozilla sabotaging its long term chance at technical leadership not only by scrapping Servo but firing the engineers who built it. I had an untechnical family member say unprompted last week they want to move away from Chrome but couldn’t use Firefox Mobile because it’s too slow. At the same moment Mozilla leadership was sacking its staff working on parallelising the browser engine.
    • KingOfCoders 6y ago
      I left FF several times for being slow, being a memory hog, dropping extensions, not adding power features (vertical tree tabs) and come back from Chrome for ideological reasons. I might not be the core audience or user group, but I have not left because of i.) - iv.).
      • ohgodplsno 6y ago
        > not adding power features (vertical tree tabs) https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ ?
        • stekern 6y ago
  • afiori 6y ago
    what was 25% ten years ago is closer to 5% now
  • outadoc 6y ago
    > the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because no one wants to create an extension from scratch just for Firefox. They tried their best and I hope it's been enough, even though the future looks bleak.
    • KingOfCoders 6y ago
      "Firefox would just be slow as hell" Why is that? The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards. I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me (except HTTPs). Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) They broke exetensions several times without any benefit to users, but losing extensions on the way. One of the core features for power users dropped for nothing - well for their own fun rewriting the browser and rendering engine several times, I guess it was fun at least doing "interesting things".
      • tester756 6y ago
        >Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) How many is many? I'm using up to 10-20 and it never felt slow on worse setup.
        • dependenttypes 6y ago
          I would consider 500+ as "many". 10-20 would be considered as "very few".
        • eitland 6y ago
          10-20 are so few you can get away with it in Chrome or even old IE. Many is somewhere north of 200. Many of us are routinely on 400 and more. As for why, I at least consider the computer an extension of my mind. What it remember, I don't have to. Edit: Chrome can handle way more than that, it just becomes very tedious when you cannot see the tabs. Also I don't know if omnibar can search for open tabs like awesomebar?
  • kanox 6y ago
    > constant deprecation of power features and customizability Can you be more specific? Advanced customization is provided by extensions and they're as well supported as ever.
    • gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
      They really are not. Even Mozilla would not make that claim.
      • gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
        So would anyone care to explain how vimperiator style customization is possible with webextensions? Newer Firefox explicitly does not support that level of customization.
        • remexre 6y ago
          Never used Vimperator, but I'm happily typing this message in an embedded Vim using SurfingKeys on Firefox 97.
          • gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
            Yes I also use the various attempts at vim emulation in the newer Firefox versions. The attempts are commendable given the limitations of the APIs. None of them are anywhere near as powerful in terms of vim like behaviour. If you never used any of the really powerful old style extensions you have no point of comparison. But this is irrelevant. Previously extensions could do anything to alter Firefox. Webextensions are deliberately limited in scope - this is explicitly stated by the Firefox developers. So to say extensions as well supported as ever is factually wrong. The support is much more limited now.
            • causality0 6y ago
              It's like going from a pad and paper to a typewriter. Sure, you can write much faster, more precisely, and everybody to the same standards, but you're fucked if what you wanted to do was draw a spaceship. Then there's always the apologists who come in to say that their ASCII-art spaceships are basically fulfilling the same function of the ones you used to draw and you should stop complaining.
  • alcoholic_byte 6y ago
    Google entered the game later. So according to your logic one should always drop dead the moment s.o. else enters the game. Besides, without having read all responses to your post, FF is different, or do you think Alphabet would condone a browser that has container tabs and disables a lot of advertisement/tracking out of the box. Also offering what I had 10years ago, means not being able to to implement new features as quickly, it stagnates development;and on top of that, it will mean less innovation, so you could turn around, crying foul, and say that not enough has been done to be innovative. In my opinion, it is a void argument, a friend to all is a friend to none so to speak. And let's not forget, Google/Alphabet had Chrome support an old protocol that was deprecated to make youtube work best only on their browser. A move in itself qualifying as sabotage of a competing product. It is only possible because Alphabet controls a lot of the infrastructure, people use(more on that a few paragraphs down). Mozilla needs money so they make a deal with Google keeping it as the default search-engine, which means giving revenue to their competitors since Alphabet also produces the Chrome-Browers. IMHO, Mozilla is not at fault here. The everything is free mentality and the economic playing field is. Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are the Robber Barons of the 21st century. Just like Rockefeller et all were a hundred some years ago. We now see first hand what happens if they are not reeled in and not split up. There is an eerie similarity to what happened with the old barons. Thankfully that process gained some tracking in some countries and I do hope it will continue. Yes I am aware there is Chromium, Iron, Brave, Opera, but I am cautious and wouldn't want to touch them with a 10 foot pole, because the rendering-engine is provided by Alphabet which thrives on information gathered against the users will. All nice products, but my argument here is the same as the one against foreign chips in domestic security products. There is always this hint of doubt. One only has to look at the development-frameworks e.g. Facebook offered for free turning every app based on them into a data gathering tool. So I can only agree with posters below: FF is superior and more innovative and secure than Chrome and most people wanna be hip, not have to think and that is where the bigger advertisement-budget comes in. If one screams loud enough, people apparently do believe it is healthy to eat a certain brown excrement while being part of that a huge surveillance botnet that is Google. //Edit: Here is the source of my claim regarding Youtube https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... //Edit2: And regarding security and innovation in that area. Google was very innovative. It dropped Certificate Pinning for their Chrome-Browser. The only thing that alerts one do MITM-Attacks if an attacker gains access to a key for signing a certificate. IMHO one more reason to stick with FF or move over. These days people think what Chrome provides is everything there is. I for myself vote with my wallet. Adblocker(because Alphabet also runs an ad-provider, also for other sides), I do not use Google as search-engine and if I must hooktube instead of youtube :)
  • fastball 6y ago
    I don't use FF because I still find SpiderMonkey (its JS engine) to be slower than V8.
    • alcoholic_byte 6y ago
      Firstly, the question of browser superiority and choice is not just about speed. You wouldn't want to choose an operation procedure A) over B) simply because A is faster as A has a mortality rate 30%higher that B. Secondly, the web is not high-end-gaming so a few ms more or less don't really matter IMHO. Also note that Alphabet might slow their service down deliberately, because you are not using their browser. Lastly, to finish off with a strong argument, I want you to look at https://arewefastyet.com/win10/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/win10/overview?numDays=60 . It always depends on the benchmark and circumstances, as I havn't checked other OSs on that site.
    • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      You mean you find the browser to be slower? There's more to a browser than its JavaScript engine. Firefox and Chrome also use entirely different rendering engines. As for which browser really is faster, it depends on the workload. Someone already linked to https://areWeFastYet.com/ https://areWeFastYet.com/
  • ptx 6y ago
    > Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser To be fair, part of what distinguished Firefox from the original Mozilla browser was that it was more similar to Internet Explorer, e.g. supporting alt+D to focus the location field and that kind of thing. But I agree that becoming too much like Chrome is a bad idea - if I wanted Chrome, I would use Chrome.
  • Certhas 6y ago
    Pretty much every Firefox discussion on Hacker news you have commenters that say they just can't stand Firefox because it's 10ms slower than Chrome. Google also has been advertising Chrome heavily for the last ten years. And there was a time when Firefox was undeniably significantly behind on performance.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • jansan 6y ago
      On our Javascript heavy app Chrome is still about twice as fast as Firefox. Admittedly it is not your average app, but I cannot confirm claims that Firefox is almost as fast as Chrome.
      • matsemann 6y ago
        How much is that biased because everything has been optimized to Chrome? From frameworks to your implementation.
  • slim 6y ago
    firefox lost it's market share because chrome was a better, faster, more complete browser. Mozilla didn't need to develop any strategy other than building and even better browser. So they tactically designed a safer language, then used it to build a better browser. It was working as planned, but they just abandoned it. Now they don't have a better browser and I wonder if they'll ever have one.
    • alcoholic_byte 6y ago
      No. Bigger marketing-budget and better positioning in reaching users. If they use google with a non-Chrome browser they will be prompted to install Chrome because it is better. Some people might have just installed it so Alphabet would stop nagging them. Youtube supported some old deprecated protocol that only Chrome still supported so the users perceived youtube as performing better more reliable on Chrome, and it also gave Alphabet an excuse to say:" This does not happen with Chrome". Slyly withholding the information that Alphabet created this unpleasent user-experience in the first place. So that smells of deceit, and manipulation to me. Thus, even if it were true that Chrome is more performant than any other browser, I would not put my trust and security in a company resolved to use these types of actions. //Edit Just because I mentioned the Youtube thing twice already. In case you want to have a source: here it is https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... // Edit 2 Well I just found out that Chrome is dropping/has dropped Certificate Pinning. How is that for improvement of the security of you user-base? FF still supports it. //Edit 3 There was also a paper trending on HN on how QUIC aka HTTP2 threatens a user's privacy. The design-decision was explained with performance in the paper; I can get that talking about a protocol concerned with speeding up the internet, but coming from a company monetizing surveilance and targeted advertisement, is very disquieting.
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    "That was a fundamental mistake." I have the same opinion. Yet multiple times I have been "corrected" on HN by former/current Mozilla employees that this strategy of trying to match every new feature in Chrome was the only option. Seems like there are some fundamental disagreements between Firefox developers and Firefox users. Whenever I read the Firefox developer discussions I always feel the tone is that "we know best". Other users do not have a voice. Sure you can donate to the Foundation, but as stated in the OP Firefox developers are employed and paid by the Corporation. I sincerely doubt they are interested in any constructive feedback from other users, even if they are supporters.
  • Krasnol 6y ago
    As one of those conservatives who always whined about major changes: Nah, that's not the moment of doom. The moment of doom came when google chose to spread their browser bundled with freeware and people all around ended up just having it as their major browser. Many not even knowing how that happened because they never remove the check marks on the installers. I'm still pissed that people where I installed Firefox now use Chrome as their main browser without having even realised when that changed....I wish there would be a way to block just google/Chrome installers. Most of the people don't know/care about where Chrome comes from or that it's good to un-google or whatever. It's just a minority caring about this. This minority is not relevant to the overwhelming dominance of google.
  • slightwinder 6y ago
    > Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser Not really. firefox rose tu domination as bland copy of the Internet Explorer, the dominating Browser that time. They also added parts of their own like tabs and addons, but that were just gadgets for those who knew about them. > The 25% of internet users who wanted what Firefox offered ten years ago still want the same thing now, What 25%? Addons are hardly used by anyone, except Adblockers. Even the most well known addons are only used by around 1-2% of the users. Adblockers are more popular, but even they seem to stuck by just 20 or 30% of firefox-users.
  • xg15 6y ago
    I don't know if that was really Mozilla's fault or that Google was always in a position where they could force Mozilla's hand. When Firefox was at its absolute maximum market-share, Google was already the "start page of the internet" thanks to its search page. They used this and other marketing/bundling strategies (which were possible thanks to Google's resources) to aggressively grow Chrome's market share at an unprecedented rate. Compare Firefox' incredibly heroic battle against IE which, after a decade of advocacy, archived an unbelievably-seeming 30% global market share - with the rise of Chrome, which went from 0% to 50% in a few years and completely obliterated IE. [1] Sorry, but that was never an even playing field. It's amazing what they did manage to archive in their position - but with Google dominating both the browser and the way web sites are discovered, they have far more leverage to influence web standards than Mozilla has. I think Mozilla's choice was one of "copy Chrome and keep at least some amount of influence on the web" or "do your own thing and become incompatible with the web that actually exists". [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
    • ukyrgf 6y ago
      I don't remember Google throwing any marketing at being the start page of the internet. That was a Reddit campaign trying to get users to switch from Digg.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • squarefoot 6y ago
    I think Firefox lost users to Chrome mainly because Google advertises their product constantly. What you point out about trying to imitate Chrome is right though; when they dumbed down the very complete and functional settings window into an almost empty HTML page that forced to resort to about:config to do anything non trivial, or when they literally copied the terrible Chrome main window structure, I literally wanted to puke. I'm not sure however this is the reason why normal users distanced from the product. Firefox back then was the alternative to Internet Explorer and its load of security and privacy problems, so it started in a context where a good number of users actually wanted to switch to a different browser, despite some lock-ins such as Active-X and the like, I believe even Opera had some well deserved success at a moment for that reason, but none of them could compete anymore when the new kid in the block was a strongly and pervasively advertised product like Chrome. Firefox today is faster and more user privacy friendly than Chrome; to me if most people don't use it is simply because they don't know. Small personal example: of the many people I installed it, the number of those that went back to Chrome is a single digit percentage, which should suggest they didn't choose Chrome initially, but rather they didn't know about the alternatives. Now it's the time for all Firefox users to tell others that they chose Firefox, and why, then for Mozilla to invest some damn money in advertising!
  • antisthenes 6y ago
    I can't speak for the other 25%, but this is certainly true for me. I stopped using the official Firefox when they decided to throw away the entire plug-in ecosystem and moved to Quantum or whatever. After they did, it's been a long, but very stable slide down in power user functionality and what made it Firefox.
  • giancarlostoro 6y ago
    It's really a shame, and I've mentioned this before. If Mozilla sells a 'Developer' version of Firefox that is technically fully open source, but the idea is that it will directly support Firefox development, I will pay, you can add tiers, a VPN (since they're going to offer this anyway) and other goodies (maybe I can finally have a cool @firefox / mozmail.com / foxmail.com email or whatever) and I would probably subscribe to pay for higher tiers if it brings me other benefits, the email bit I mention because they do already provide an email client, it's a shame they never produced their own email service to subsidize their efforts elsewhere. Mind you they already have Firefox Developer edition, they can keep it free and add a Firefox Professional Developer Edition that guarantees funds go to better funding Firefox development and I will be one of the first to pay for it, if it's got a monthly subscription or yearly. No "discount" tactics either, please, it makes no sense for someone trying to maintain a lot of non-profit open source projects.
  • craftinator 6y ago
    Sometimes, a group makes no poor decisions, or no none that actually matter, but their goals are overcome by events, and they fail. It's not about what Mozilla did, it's about what Google did; Firefox is simply not going to win against Chrome in terms of marketshare. Of course they can still win in terms of making their browser more awesome for the people who actually use it!
  • takeda 6y ago
    Agree the same thing started with Opera, previously they were known from inventing many features (some of them actually Chrome copied when it first appeared). Once Chrome started gaining traction they started be the ones that were copying Chrome. Ultimately dropping the Presto engine and becoming just another skin for Chrome. I didn't use Opera and later Firefox to get Chrome experience.
  • john4534243 6y ago
    The future of Rust language from Mozilla is also uncertain.
  • blablabla123 6y ago
    > Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. Yes, that's also were Mozilla lost me. Also since last year's questionable privacy problems, I really see no point in continuing to use Firefox. Just going for maximum performance/best integration which is Safari. For sure alternative implementations will come, Kosmonaut looks promising. Actually KHTML/Konqueror which Webkit is based on also came out of nowhere, when the Web standards where already considered sufficiently complex for nobody to do a new implementation. So I think this is fertile ground for new efforts...
• gigatexal 6y ago
  Revenue is secured. They have another deal with Google worth ~500M a year for the next few years. But for growing it and for the future of the browser that’s TBD imo
  • TimSchumann 6y ago
    Why would google fund a direct competitor unless they thought it was to their advantage? I don’t see how this helps Firefox Users.
    • gibolt 6y ago
      It is to their advantage. They get all the search ad revenue
    • MattGaiser 6y ago
      Google’s business is search engine and advertising, not browser market share. Also helps with an anti-trust case.
      • TimSchumann 6y ago
        If you don’t think Crome is a substantive part of google’s core business, I think we’re gonna talk past each other this whole time.
        • fastball 6y ago
          Chrome is a loss leader though.
        • aero-glide 6y ago
          How does Chrome make money though?
    • coliveira 6y ago
      Google wants to control search. If they don't pay, some other company will pay for the search traffic.
• leokennis 6y ago
  I have to say this is one of the instances where I’m glad Apple’s hunger for profit and privacy engineering intersect. On Mac at least with Safari there is a privacy oriented browser left. Maybe Apple could revive Safari on Windows?
  • TimSchumann 6y ago
    I’m slightly annoyed to agree with you here, but I do. I also hope Epic takes Apple to the mats and gets some concessions from the justice department with regards to all the stuff going down with ‘platforms’ and ‘app stores’.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    I also like apples stance on privacy. Given that they are probably the only company that could pull it off, I'd really like to see apple become more open(i.e. Stallman-ism constrained by reality) philosophically - they love to tell their users right and wrong, but if they made a fairly open ARM MacBook that I could run anything other than MacOS (If it's not windows I want things like eBPF to play with) I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
  • petepete 6y ago
    What about Chromium isn't privacy focussed? It was my understanding that all of Google's grubby code isn't present.
    • fastball 6y ago
      Or Brave. It's Chromium with ad-blocking / anti-fingerprinting built in, so even more privacy preserving by default.
      • brianush1 6y ago
        Brave's made a big mistake in the past, so I'd hold out on using it until there's no other non-Chrome option: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...
• moksly 6y ago
  This is completely anecdotal, and maybe I’m the only one, but native browsers have become so good that I’ve gone from decades of using Netscape/Firefox/opera/chrome/whatever to mainly using Edge and Safari. I don’t really need to share a profile between my browsers as I use windows at work and Mac/iOS for personal use. We’ve gotten to a point in time where the browser is simply really good, and I think that simply makes it hard to make a living if your primary product is a browser. Even Microsoft abandoned having their own because they no longer needed it to be completely their own to sell their products.
  • pjmlp 6y ago
    They abandoned it because Edge team got tired to play catch-up, while still fixing IE 11 bugs. Slowly but steady we will start seeing ads for Chrome developers instead of Web developer, ChromeOS has won.
    • wyclif 6y ago
      Just the other day I saw a job opening for a "Chrome developer." First time I've seen that, and I thought to myself, "wow, we've really turned a corner..."
      • rb666 6y ago
        Was it for a position at Google?
        • wyclif 6y ago
          No, it was at an SaaS company. I hope you get what I'm saying here...it wasn't Google looking for an engineer to work on the Chrome browser. It was for an engineer to develop exclusively on the Chrome platform.
• brador 6y ago
  I still don’t understand how they spend 500M a year with so little to show for it. What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world? Nothing. I still can’t copy urls From multiple selected tabs without an extension. What we need is a group to step up, create a new browser, capture the 500M/year payday and put the money to work.
  • esperent 6y ago
    > What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world? Rust, Wasm (although a joint project, inspired by asm.js which was purely Mozilla) come to mind. Also, I consider keeping the focus on privacy in an age when huge behemoths of companies are determined to steal every aspect of our lives for profit to be truly important work, much more important than any tech innovation.
    • hu3 6y ago
      Mozilla employs (or employed) 2 "Rust devs". If that. steve could chime in to be more precise. But I'd say Rust is a merit of the people involved much more than Mozilla. If anything Mozilla just fired servo folks who contributed to Rust so it's not like they even pretend to support it. I hope Rust gets a foundation and I hope that Mozilla transfers the "Rust" trademark to them.
  • quotemstr 6y ago
    Mozilla did give us Rust and rr [1], both of which were genuine advances. [1] https://rr-project.org/ https://rr-project.org/
  • ygjb 6y ago
    Creating a "new browser" is monumental task, and it's not enough to make something that works. Browsers are extremely high risk pieces of software with an attack surface comparable to an operating system. Building something competitive means being able to make reasonable assertions of security, and that takes tons of resources.
  • freshsqueeze 6y ago
    This is true. Mozilla knows well how to market to the tech crowd with the "we're the saviors of the internet, privacy, everyone else is evil" marketing. For the billions burned, you'd expect a lot more. The internet browsing experience feels the same as it did 10 years ago.
• mrweasel 6y ago
  The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market? Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in seeking out these funding options and a brutal focus on openess, but the latter IS something Mozilla knows how to do.
  • toyg 6y ago
    This would likely require the bulk of Mozilla to be based in Europe. It could be achieved for sure, but it would take years to transfer the relevant knowledge. I don't expect MoFo and MoCo leadership to be willing to entertain such possibilities, considering how "valley" their outlook seems to be.
    • mvn9 6y ago
      >but it would take years to transfer the relevant knowledge. A) The people with the knowledge just have been fired and are free to move and to be hired B) Thanks to corona, remote work is a fully accepted option Something new can be running next week or even tomorrow.
      • creato 6y ago
        I think remote work is missing the point here. It's politically difficult for governments to spend their tax revenue by paying a largely foreign workforce.
        • luckylion 6y ago
          Not just politically difficult, it's also generally unwise. In the event of deteriorating relationships, you'll suddenly lose access to what you've been funding, because the US would declare it "a matter of national security" and outlaw the export. You can still work with the sources you have, but it'd be hard to keep it running smoothly. Much better to not have that risk if you're going to spend billions on it.
• jeswin 6y ago
  Mozilla must put the advocacy bits aside and focus on the core product. Perhaps the problem with a non-technical CEO is that the advocacy and new shiny stuff is given as much importance as the invisible (and insanely complex) work that makes a browser fast and safe. A total failure of strategy here - if the leadership couldn't find other revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves. Instead they axe the future of Firefox.
  • bmcn2020 6y ago
    I'm not sure. I think advocacy is a core part of its USP -- Mozilla is privacy-friendly, and that's an important point, especially as all internet users, even average consumers, are being constantly hit over the head by how data-hungry these huge corporations are. It's an uphill battle, sure, and there are a lot of things to overcome, but I'm not so sure I'd blame the leadership on this entirely. I'd blame the market...for now.
    • zajio1am 6y ago
      Mozilla has so many privacy issues so that calling it privacy-friendly is misleading: https://brmlab.cz/project/spyzilla https://brmlab.cz/project/spyzilla
      • sp332 6y ago
        I'm flagging this comment because some of the advice in the link makes the browser much less secure. Don't disable OCSP checking!
      • pornel 6y ago
        Mozilla is doomed when it's held to such an impossible standard (such as being "spyzilla" for supporting TLS PKI). All this poo-pooing on Mozilla doing anything less than paranoid-extreme makes people leave for other browsers, which aren't any better, and often are way worse for privacy.
        • zajio1am 6y ago
• cxr 6y ago
  Five years ago it was clear that possibly the best thing that could happened to the future of Firefox, Mozilla, and the Web would have been for Mozilla Corporation to have gone belly up. But we're past the point where that might do any good with respect to salvaging Firefox or Mozilla's name. Mozilla Corporation's role today is to siphon away any attention or enthusiasm that might otherwise be directed towards the ideals that Mozilla was originally created to facilitate. The Mozilla Corporation was supposed to have been set up to further the ideals of the then already extant movement that had been operating on a shoestring budget. The imprimatur should have been to direct its paid staff towards doing the boring work that unpaid (but highly effective) volunteers weren't interested in—not to wrench control away and consolidate power within a (now-proven ineffectual) company making ill-conceived commercial plays while trying to fit in with the culture of the Valley and squandering billions. In the early 2010s, I attended a conference—one sponsored by Mozilla—and brought in on their dime, having been a fairly involved contributor for a few years, but not someone on the corporate payroll. Another guest and I mentioned how poor a job the travel agency had done, essentially fleecing Mozilla and doing much worse than if we'd arranged for travel and accommodation ourselves and then forwarded the bill. "Mozilla has a lot of money" was the response. After the better part of a decade, Mozilla's revenue has only grown, and so has their propensity to squander money. The best option we have now is for folks to wake the heck up, to realize that the Mozilla that exists is not the one portrayed in either its messaging or fixed in the minds of casual slacktivists, to start a grassroots effort (a la early Firefox) to work on an independent browser—where, unfortunately, the best bet at this point is probably in leveraging WebKit against Chrome and Blink, given what an untameable mess the modern Web has become (not helped by the FirefoxOS efforts; nor the mess that Gecko codebase has become)—and most importantly never allow that effort to be subverted in the way that the Corporation managed to cannibalize and take over Mozilla. But that's not going to happen, because Mozilla continues to position itself as the organization where folks with a casual interest in the health of the Web are supposed to direct their good vibes, while thoroughly proving itself to be unworthy and incompetent at upholding the principles it's supposed to be fighting for, and while time and time again, the public have proven themselves to have short attention spans on the order of months—so, by the end of the year Firefox and Mozilla will be back to being perceived as your old chum that's fighting the good fight, instead of being steered by a bunch of clueless, well-salaried Bay Area devs LARPing as some motley crew with your best interests at heart, all while the term "non-profit" gets bandied about in public discussions, much to their delight.
• ghevshoo 6y ago
  Yesterday I started donating $10/month to the Mozilla Foundation. TIL it’s not the Mozilla Foundation that develops Firefox. I stopped using Chrome when they added the “feature” that logging into gmail was the same as logging into the browser. If there was a little notification to the top right in the Firefox with a link to “pay”, even if it was optional, there is some proportion of users who would. And I would bet that your average Firefox user is an order of magnitude more likely to do this than your average chrome user. So I wonder why they don’t do this? I’ve had similar frustrations for other products I get for free that I wanted to pay for.
  • sp332 6y ago
    I had the same question. And what's even stranger is that the Mozilla.com (not.org) website has no way to send them money, and doesn't even mention the paid products like the VPN. At least Pocket gets a mention which I think you can pay for.
    • alcoholic_byte 6y ago
      Those who seek shall find. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ Got the link from the Thunderbird-site where https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/ https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/ redirects to https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US So yeah the link is out there but you really have to look for it. Which is actually s.th. quite nice. Imagine they would go about nagging people. You might say one of 2 things: a) So in their face, others are probably donating what do they need me for b) So in my face, that is indescent, I do not donate. Whatever the choice happy donating; I already did.;)
      • sp332 6y ago
        That's .org and the donation does not fund Firefox development or any other activity of the Mozilla Corporation.
        • alcoholic_byte 6y ago
• mwcampbell 6y ago
  It's easy to criticize from the outside. The question we should ask ourselves is what we should have done, and can still do, to help Mozilla's mission. I just set up a monthly donation, as I should have done a long time ago.
  • eafer 6y ago
    That won't help: donations to Mozilla don't go to the development of Firefox.
    • mwcampbell 6y ago
      They could though. If enough of us start donating, maybe the leadership will make the necessary organizational changes to make donations go toward Firefox development. It definitely won't happen if we don't do our part.
      • hu3 6y ago
        Why are we to blame? We can't just start donating massive amounts of money and hope that management funnels it to Firefox. The same management that receives almost half a billion dollars per year from Google is the management that just fired Servo, MDN and Dev Tools staff.
        • mwcampbell 6y ago
          The question for me is not who's to blame, but what I can do, since I can only control my own actions.
          • hu3 6y ago
            I don't think lack of funding is the problem but rather a lack of management. More money is just going to incentivize their current malpractices. I think what we could do is support a Firefox Foundation if/when it eventually exists.
• Dunedan 6y ago
  Does somebody know what the remaining ~750 people are working on? How many of them work on Firefox, Pocket, Lockwise, VPN, HR, marketing, ...? Is there somewhere an overview about that? Many here disapprove with the recent layoffs and especially the areas affected by them, but I'd like to better understand how many people still work on Firefox (desktop browser, mobile browsers, dev tools, servo, ...), compared to topics like Pocket and VPN and supporting roles like HR or marketing, to get a better picture of how how I feel about Mozilla's future.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• mandreyel 6y ago
  A possible alternative source of income for Mozilla I think would be, and one I haven’t seen mentioned before, providing consulting services in their areas of expertise. For example, demand for Rust engineers seems to be steadily increasing[1] and I can’t think of a better company with a larger concentration of Rust expertise than Mozilla. Perhaps the same could work for other areas (ex frontend), but I’m biased toward Rust. Due to lack of experience in this regard I’m not sure if this could actually work, but I could imagine allocating part of their engineering time budget to consultation, whose income would fund their core products. [1] Besides all the articles popping up about starting to employ Rust by well known companies, my anecdote as a full-time Rust SDE is that I’m getting more and more requests on LinkedIn, and not just for the usual crypto roles.
  • momokoko 6y ago
    There are so many ways for Mozilla to leverage their core competencies. Unfortunately failed management with no means to remove them means none of that will happen. Executive leadership at Mozilla is a disgrace that has now caused a tangible negative result on the future of the internet. The fact that Mitchell Baker still leads this organization is insane. An absolutely inept failure somehow still leads Mozilla. It’s absolutely crazy
    • fzzzy 6y ago
      You do realize that Mitchell has only been ceo of mozilla corp since January, right? And that almost all of the C suite has turned over in the last few years?
    • mandreyel 6y ago
      I completely agree. It’s depressing to see the whole thing steadily come apart at the seams due to their own leadership (or lack thereof, one could argue). Actually I realize what I wrote above is less true now as they have fired a good number of their incredibly skilled engineers, many of them of course Rust developers. So I suppose my post should be rephrased along the lines of “what Mozilla should or could have done”. [edit]: Rephrased to be less dramatic.
  • 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rwmj 6y ago
  Revenue well north of $200 million every year since 2011. How hard would it have been to do the obvious thing and build up an endowment?!
  • sp332 6y ago
    They have a pretty significant cash pile which they mentioned last year. The quarantine kinda threw a wrench in things, but they are still paying the people they let go through the end of the year. So it's not like they're imminently about to run out of cash.
  • jefftk 6y ago
    I don't think that would have made sense: Mozilla stays relevant by producing a browser that lots of people want to use. This requires substantial investment in developer salaries, or else other browsers get better and you don't. If they had taken your approach, I think they wouldn't have been able to get out Quantum, and then Firefox would be much smaller now, and be even less able to influence the direction of the web.
    • rwmj 6y ago
      But they only spent a fraction of the cash on developing Firefox features like Quantum that people want, and essentially wasted the rest of crazy projects (FirefoxOS), buying things that their users hate (Pocket), and outlandish C-level salaries. They could have paid the core developers and had the endowment. If they wanted to do the non-core stuff, that's something that the foundation that managed the endowment might have done with x% of its capital, simply by investing in companies that align with Mozilla's mission.
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  I'm starting to sincerely hope there'll be a fork of Firefox or at least a separation from Mozilla, and for Quantum/Servo to be separated and made an easily embeddable. The inability to donate directly to projects has imo has had a direct result of requiring Google money. Firefox and Quantum don't need 100M to survive. That's that just absurd. Even if you had 250 people working on it for 100k each, you still wouldn't get to anything as crazy as 100M. 100k for working on open-source is a pretty good salary. There's no need to branch out and make all kinds of other side projects that have to fit under the Mozilla umbrella. Splitting focus like that just makes it become a juggling game of who needs the money more, shifting focus between projects and making it difficult for donators to comprehend where the money is going to. When I donate to KDE, it's doesn't come as a surprise that I can't request my donation to be earmarked for something. The project is for a desktop environment after all. It's in the name and it's the flagship product. But when your flagship product is a browser and you don't provide people the possibility to donate to that product... well, what's the point in donating? Even the argument of "I know better what to do with your money than you do" sounds incredibly pretentious. We hear that all the time from politicians and we clearly see where that money goes to: their pockets, their friends pockets, some other project we never heard of and THEN it goes to the project we thought it would go to. If I wanted to give my money to an institution I didn't believe in, I'd pay more taxes.
  • jefftk 6y ago
    > 100k for working on open-source is a pretty good salary. The kind of people you're trying to hire have the option to earn 3-4x as much working for a FAANG. Being excited about working on something you believe in can get you a long way, but that's still a lot to ask. (See discussion above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24157803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24157803)
    • infogulch 6y ago
      Also, when estimating total employee cost from salary, a good rule of thumb is to double it to cover indirect compensation and overhead such as healthcare, retirement matching, employer's share of income tax, office overhead, IT infrastructure, etc.
• djhworld 6y ago
  Does anyone know if the new stuff touted over the last few years (servo, webrender etc) is going to make it into the mainline Firefox release? I moved back to Firefox back when they released Quantum and was really excited about the plans to make it even better - the blog posts from Lin Clark around parallel layout engines, web render etc. made me really excited about the trajectory of FF [1] I know this stuff is complicated and they're working to get it right, but I heard in the recent round of layoffs most of the Servo team has been decimated. WebRender is only in the mainline releases for Windows and experimental everywhere else [2] [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how-firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-h... [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
  • tarkin2 6y ago
    Some of it already has made it into ff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164058
• The_rationalist 6y ago
  How is it legal that the financial report of 2019 is unavailable? It's at least a big red flag, I doubt they did such a practice the other years.
  • sciurus 6y ago
    I think about a year of lag is normal, e.g. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/11/21/state-of-mozilla-2018-annual-report/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/11/21/state-of-mozilla-20... https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/11/27/state-of-mozilla-2017-annual-report/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/11/27/state-of-mozilla-20...
    • The_rationalist 6y ago
      You're right.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jacknews 6y ago
  The google contract seems totally at odds with mozilla's privacy focus. And there seem to have been too many off-target projects recently. IMHO, they should keep a focus on privacy, and the core browser, adding VPN and perhaps CDN services, all bundled as a subscription. Maybe also ad-free search; perhaps duckduckgo should buy mozilla, or vice-versa? I think a lot of people would be willing to pay for a 'safe, private portal' to the internet. I think advocacy alone is almost worthless when it comes to defining standards and ensuring they're open. You have to have code (and users) in the game.
• xg15 6y ago
  > In ten years it’s possible that the Mozilla Corporation may be just a memory, with the Mozilla Foundation surviving as a modestly-funded advocacy organization. Maybe I'm pessimistic here, but what exactly could a "modestly-funded advocacy organization" with nothing left but their brand archive against Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc? Without Firefox, I don't see what kind of leverage they would have to continue their mission. Firefox also was what gave their brand relevance to the public. The only thing I could see is them becoming a political lobbying organisation or "think tank", trying to advance their mission by pushing for more internet regulation. But even then, they will be pitted against vastly more powerful lobbies.
• kalekold 6y ago
  Rust is dead!
• jillesvangurp 6y ago
  I'm less worried about the product than the organization. IMHO, Mozilla as a company has never really had a credible business model beyond Google (mainly) choosing to compensate them for directing some search traffic to them (and general ass coverage when it comes to allegations of monopolist behavior). The layoffs are a consequence of their strategy for finding alternate revenue streams being simply too weak to produce tangible results. Certainly not anywhere near levels that would allow them to justify having the ambitions of a big VC founded silicon valley based company with offices in e.g. the middle of the real estate bubble called Mountain View (as well as several other premium locations world wide). What they do technically with their browser product is fine however and worth protecting. I just don't see that costing in the order of hundreds of millions/year. A couple of million goes a long way to keep a world wide collective of developers going. Many OSS projects manage with far less. It doesn't require maintaining offices in the downtown areas of SFO (in addition to Mountain View), London, Paris, Portland, Berlin, Taipei, etc. I use Firefox exclusively; like many other users. The wider community of Firefox developers and users has plenty of ways to keep the project going long term in one way or another. Same with Rust. Rust will be fine without Mozilla. It's widely used and loved by engineers useful to quite a lot of companies. IMHO the rust community is actually much less dependent on central management by anyone (including Mozilla) than the Firefox browser. Most long lived OSS projects need independence like that and thrive because of their independence. Luckily, Mozilla has a very decent licensing policy (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-policy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-policy/) that crucially does not include any copyright transfer. That means their role is strictly as a facilitator of development; not as an owner of the copyright to the code. That means that in principle there is room for other companies to get involved or for independent developers to get involved. Which is why I'm not worried about the project surviving the drama of their mother organization imploding or not. I hope it leads to some sensible changes in the Mozilla Foundation.
• staktrace 6y ago
  FWIW, as a Mozilla employee, I think this is one of the best summaries I've read of the state of Mozilla.
  • webmaven 6y ago
    Any recommendations for second best summary?
  • spenrose 6y ago
    Agreed (Mozilla employee 2013-2017). If I were going to add something, it's how important Mozilla was c. 2004-2010 when "the Internet" was dominated by OECD knowledge workers using Windows. When iPhone brought "the Internet" to everyone (mainly via its clone Android) c. 2010-2015, browsers moved from the center of the action to plumbing. Like a retired sports star, Mozilla has never been able to cope emotionally with the idea that the world has moved on. Worse, because on some level they know it, the cognitive dissonance gets sharper every year.
• ekianjo 6y ago
  How are the expenses of Mozilla increasing at such a pace without having a sustainable business model? Seems like poor management.
• mothsonasloth 6y ago
  On the graph at 2014 on the x-axis, is this the "real" reason why Brendan Eich had to resign as CEO of Mozilla Corp?
  • chromedev 6y ago
    No, it was due to him donating to Prop 8
• quicklime 6y ago
  > But as the number of Firefox users decreases (due to the growing market dominance of the Chrome browser), and those users click on fewer online ads (for example, because they’re spending less during the COVID-19 pandemic), the willingness of Google and other customers to pay the Mozilla Corporation for those users decreases accordingly. > Thus when COVID-19 hit and the Mozilla Corporation hit a brick wall in terms of search engine revenue... Did the pandemic really have an impact on search engine revenue? From what I can tell, users are spending more time online, viewing (and maybe even clicking) more ads and searching for more things online. Google's stock is back to its pre-pandemic peak level, so they seem to be doing fine. Did Google play hard-ball with Mozilla during their contract negotiations, and manage to lower the cost of their default search engine deal? If so, I feel like that should've generated a bigger outrage than some Chrome UX/Security people tweaking the URL bar. Especially with all the antitrust stuff going on.
  • slightwinder 6y ago
    Companies are spending less money for ads, some even went bankrupt. People also have less money to spend, or are just careful not wasting it in uncertain times. Though, yes, in most countries it normalizes, but the dent in income is visable.
    • quicklime 6y ago
      And yet, Google’s revenue only decreased by 2%, and Facebook’s increased by 11%. I can see Google making an argument not to increase the amount of money they pay to Mozilla this time, but not to decrease it.
      • slightwinder 6y ago
        Not really? Revenue in Q1 and q2 for Alphabet were sinking. What went up were other areas than advertisment, as also they were doing some budget-savings, to reduce the actual fall of revenue, saving some costs at the end.
        • 6y ago
• jhoechtl 6y ago
  Inventing an entirely knew programming language with new concepts that is aiming at smart people and basing critical components of the web browser on it. It is this kind of decision which freaks out the ordinary HN reader but is otherwise an alarm bell to any sane business responsible. That was the nail into the coffin.
• burtonator 6y ago
  If Mozilla wants to have a future it needs to: - Realize it lost the browser wars, abandon FF and base it on chromium. It might upset the average FF geek on HN but you're not paying for FF development - Google is. As FF user base keeps dropping Google is not going to be interested in funding their development. No one cares about FF enough to actually fund it. Google just is because they want to push you ads. - They need another revenue model. Probably focusing on B2C products. They should start acquiring more companies to buy growth. They've really squandered a huge opportunity.
• whoisthemachine 6y ago
  It's really interesting that Mozilla doesn't funnel donations to software development interests. There are successful open source projects that do so, such as Linux Mint [0]. Maybe what's really broken is the idea that a browser needs a backing corporation to fund it? Personally, I can see no better way to keep an open internet than through the development of meaningful software that serves that purpose. [0] "Donations are usually quite high after a release and Linux Mint 20 is no exception." https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953
  • dralley 6y ago
    The problem is that Mozilla Corporation needs to exist for various legal reasons, and that it's impossible for Mozilla Foundation to channel funds to Mozilla Corporation for other legal reasons. Whereas Linux Mint literally just operates a Patreon / Paypal / Bitcoin account and distributes the funds between a couple of people.
    • detaro 6y ago
      > that it's impossible for Mozilla Foundation to channel funds to Mozilla Corporation for other legal reasons Do you know details about that? I can imagine that there'd be tax complications, but would have expected a foundation could buy things/services from an entity it owns.
      • dralley 6y ago
        I'm not a lawyer but I can only imagine it's quite tricky when the Foundation is a tax-exempt charity and the funds in question are being used to the primary benefit of a for-profit entity which it owns. It would be a bit like having your cake and eating it too, in terms of the legal provisions of the tax code.
    • whoisthemachine 6y ago
      I wasn't suggesting the Mozilla Foundation channel funds to the Mozilla corporation. I was suggesting that the Mozilla Foundation own Firefox and use donations to the foundation to fund Firefox development.
• rch 6y ago
  Why is it uncertain? They'll get acquired or wind things down. They've had a good run.
• networkimprov 6y ago
  The unstated thesis of the article seems to be that Mozilla lacks a killer app. So what are possible killer apps, given their history building user-facing internet infrastructure? (I love FF and never touch Chrome except for testing, but <10% market share is not killer.)
• no_wizard 6y ago
  I always felt that Mozilla should have seen nodejs as their future, and in kind tried to build a gecko powered version (and therefore could have a real successor to XulRunner - electron before its time) I think this may have been a seriously missed opportunity to unset v8. However quantum may have been a little late to the party. I’m not as vehement against their other moves, though. Pocket could and maybe can be a real business, if they focused on delivering a top tier experience. I thought it could have been a better feedly and/or pinboard alternative, I just haven’t seen enough compelling features there as of of yet. After all, Mozilla Needs alternative revenue streams beyond their search deals. I also think they could have been an internet identity broker, bringing a unified web identity via their Firefox account service. Alas that may have been too big to crack. May need to reinvestigate Pocket, but aside from that and just using Firefox as my main browser, I feel like they lost a lot of steam and some goodwill with the developer community.
• t0mmyb0y 6y ago
  When you tie your horse to google you will go out of business.
• pbronez 6y ago
  > I doubt that Mozilla management or employees are interested in the Mozilla Corporation becoming a DoD contractor, and it’s unclear to me how much government or foundation funding Mozilla could attract as an R&D lab focused purely on civilian applications in the Internet and web space. I think there might actually be some interesting opportunities here. Consider: - Digital Propaganda and Misinformation are increasingly seen as key national defense issues - COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation and exacerbated the digital divide - FAANG is under increased anti-trust scrutiny - USG has strong mandates for web accessibility that current web tech makes very difficult to fulfill - Privacy implications of AI/ML is getting more attention Mozilla is well positioned to contribute to positive solutions in all of these areas.
• cassepipe 6y ago
  I am really surprised they did not go for the VPN offer way sooner. It's a massive market in which all that matters in how much you trust your VPN provider. And the only insurance you've got is your VPN provider telling you they don't collect data which is hard to believe considering how much money user data is worth. The only thing Mozilla has plenty is people trusting that they are fighting for greater privacy as they've always have. It seems so obvious that I would like to know if there's a reason they did not go for that sooner. Consider also that integrating a user-friendly Mozilla VPN manager in the browser could bump Firefox downloads. So why?
• jasonv 6y ago
  This thread, paired with the Google/deprecation thread, feel ironically aligned. Mozilla seems to be deprecating parts of their organization, and Google deprecates products constantly... except for Chrome. Chrome has had a fairly reliable and well maintained product path. I used to use Firefox constantly, but between Safari being excellent on my Mac, and Chrome being preferable for work related things -- and their decent profile synchronization, I find myself a little mystified every time I go back to Firefox for a spell. Just little things, but they definitely feel like the 3rd wheel now.
• twblalock 6y ago
  I like the comparison to Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Like those organizations, Mozilla was being kept alive by corporate money (primarily Google's) and never developed the ability to be a sustainable business on its own.
• brianzelip 6y ago
  Hey author of the posted blog, as a Baltimore resident (and librarian!), I love the shout out to the Howard County library's "choose civility" campaign![0] Nice site. [0] https://civilityandtruth.com/about/#about-the-name https://civilityandtruth.com/about/#about-the-name
• dzink 6y ago
  Mozilla can take government grants or even subscription money to become a Cloudflare for consumers. Enable uses to content rate any content including youtube videos and protect each other at massive scale. As a parent I would pay for a safer browser experience for my kids. The Disney of browsers if you will. Provide a leader board of sorts for top contributors who have given time to rate content, money to the foundation, code contributions, etc. They don’t have to sink down the advertising hole either. This is just the tip of the iceberg of ideas I saw in 5 minutes. A corporation paired down to focus on consumer problems or government contracts related to internet security can be nimble and beat the FAANG model precisely because they don’t have to bend to the will of advertisers.
• GNOMES 6y ago
  I have been forcing myself to use Firefox the last two months. Ignoring some performance issues on Google branded sites, I have yet to experience any incompatibilities. The reason I am going back to Chrome is bookmark usability and Chromecast support. Posts on the r/Firefox subreddit and official Firefox support pages mention that Chromecast uses proprietary API's, and can/will not be reverse engineered or implemented. I never noticed how often I use the ones at home or work until the ability to cast wasn't available. As per bookmarks, I love not having my bookmarks visible in my main while browsing, and having them on the new tab page in Chrome is wonderful. I tried to pin my bookmarks to my Firefox top sites, but felt clunky using a hotkey or the menus to view all bookmarks.
• TLightful 6y ago
  Very happy Firefox user here. Google can take a jump. Chrome was relevant (in terms of quality 10 years ago). Irrelevant now.
• moritzwarhier 6y ago
  I have to chime in... Mozilla seems to pull back on its investment in web standards and browser engine development for revenue reasons. Instead focusing on Pocket, VPN services and similar stuff, all the while keeping up a dubious privacy-advocating public image. Pocket, Mozilla VPN etc might look like they promise more short-term revenue. My view is that Mozilla wants to complete its metamorphosis into a near-irrelevant Opera clone. Gecko/Servo, Firefox and MDN are the valuable parts of Mozilla (to me). Introducing paid premium membership to MDN would have been acceptable. Now I fear that I have to revert my Chromium->Firefox switch. Also, people might not be as gullible as Mozilla thinks regarding their pro-privacy stance. They recently did a billboard and train ad campaign in my area (germany) about tracking and how they claim to prevent it. I doubt that won over significant numbers of users. Sure, they struggled to survive going down the developer-centric "poweruser" road. I don't dispute that. What they're missing is revenue-generating consumer products on a large enough scale. Still, I fear that on the basis of their current portfolio and corporate image they won't be able to become competitive in that area. Introducing paid products focused on more niche markets (e.g. developers) would have seemed more sustainable to me.
  • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > Sure, they struggled to survive going down the developer-centric "poweruser" road. I don't dispute that. Did they really go down that road? The general perception is that they've just been copying Chrome for years.
• imagetic 6y ago
  Q: What do most regular people consume on the internet? A: Video. Q: What does Firefox suck the most at? A: Video.