While I was reading this post, I felt the same way as I read the HN comments on the Mozilla layoffs two months ago: misplaced blame. I admit I have a soft spot

While I was reading this post, I felt the same way as I read the HN comments on the Mozilla layoffs two months ago: misplaced blame. I admit I have a soft spot for Mozilla, having used Firefox since Firebird. I really want them to succeed, which colours my thoughts on this topic, and it makes me sad to hear them engaging in shady behaviour. But the impression I got from this post is this: the author believes if Mozilla focuses solely on Firefox (no VPN, more engineers, Servo development full steam ahead) they would be doing better, with Firefox having more users and more money than ever before to go around. I do not believe this to be the case. The post frames "Laid off 25% of its employees, mostly engineers, many of whom work on Firefox" and "Used their brand to enter the saturated VPN grift market" and "Started, and killed, a dozen projects which were not Firefox" as Mozilla's self-inflicted failures, rather than wounds sustained while engaging in battle with corporate giants. I disapprove of the increased executive pay, as well as the advertisements and add-on changes. But I cannot quite find them to be totally at fault for all seven listed items. There's been a lot of engineering effort recently from big companies to make the Web more featureful, and its associated infrastructure faster, than ever before. I completely agree with the author (see the linked post) when he points out that the massive side-effect of this is that only a big company can make a Web browser. It's something that seems to have crept up on us, and will almost certainly take control away from individual users. It sucks. So as far as I'm concened, Google has been the company complicating Web standards without talking to anyone else, developing infrastructure that's only appropriate for massive organisations, and (more recently) exempting themselves from opting out of tracking, all while pushing their browser through previously-unheard-of advertising channels to give them the advantage. All this means Firefox has to catch up, and the money has to come from somewhere — hence the layoffs and other projects. I don't see any other way for them to reach the future I want. To repeat: it sucks. While I wasn't old enough to donate, I liked seeing the 2004 Firefox page in the New York Times. A few years ago I walked through London and saw three electronic Chrome adverts in half an hour. I think Mozilla has the deck stacked against them, severely. And I think nothing would make Google executives happier than to find _Firefox_ is the one getting called names.