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Firefox Was Always Enough

• ZeroGravitas 6y ago
  I dont think I understood the point about mozilla wanting to influence the web being bad for firefox. Particlulalry if having lots of users is how you influence things, since then you need to provide a good product (or lock users in via some external ecosystem). Maybe some recent EU legislation moves can help them in the same way the browser choice thing helped.
  • soniman 6y ago
    The point is that the if you do x for the sake of y, then you really don't care about x, and x will suffer as a result.
  • btilly 6y ago
    The goals have a lot of compatibility, but occasionally come in conflict. And example may illustrate. If you care about making Firefox good for users, you will work to improve current performance, and prioritize compatibility with badly coded websites. Even if it makes it harder to adopt future standards coming down the pipeline. If you care about pushing standards, you'll put more energy into those future standards, even at the cost of performance and compatibility with badly coded websites. Firefox has consistently chosen to prioritize standards that are someone's idea about how to do things better over the real world that exists right now.
  • lmedinas 6y ago
    Well thats the thing... Firefox is not particularly good in anything and this is the point of the article. When Firefox becomes more unpopular than Mozilla fails its mission aside from Firefox, which is to set open web standards. The situation for Firefox is that bad, that even enterprise users - ESR - are moving to MS Edge since its offering support together with MS Office. I think Firefox needs something drastic to become relevant again, which is very unlikely taking into account the last years history. Myself as a FF user i'm more and more tempted to switch to some other multiplatform-chrome-compatible browser.
• etempleton 6y ago
  I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox needs to be the best browser. It is the thing that makes the company money and makes it recognizable to the lay person. You will never be able to outspend Google, Microsoft, and Apple, but they are always going to have more competing priorities pulling their best engineers away and causing political infighting about what should be crammed into the browser. Mozilla does not have to have any of that. 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. That is it. I like some of Mozilla's side projects and I agree with the business philosophy that they should be looking to diversify their revenue stream, but I think they should all be part of two core products: Firefox and Thunderbird. Why Thunderbird? Because I think there is an undeserved niche in the business email service provider space and I think Mozilla can have a universal client on desktop, phone, tablet, and browser that is the trojan horse to up sell that product.
  • Miraste 6y ago
    > 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. I know Mozilla's non-Firefox projects aren't popular here, but if Thunderbird really wanted a niche in the business world Mozilla would need to start an email service to go with it. The age of non-integrated email clients for the average user ended a while ago.
    • GordonS 6y ago
      I think you're spot on here. The only people using desktop mail clients are techies with multiple accounts (such as us HN users), and business users (who all use Outlook).
      • dsr_ 6y ago
• asdfman123 6y ago
  > Mozilla has always made the bulk of its money from selling the preferred placement of a search engine in Firefox It's amazing how valuable eyeballs are -- that you can fund an entire software project just that way.
  • frutiger 6y ago
    It’s not the eyeballs that are valuable. It’s the money those eyeballs will spend.
  • JohnBooty 6y ago
    Ostensibly, they pay Firefox for eyeballs, but.... Google certainly values the eyeballs they get via Firefox, but Firefox could disappear tomorrow and that barely affect Google one bit from a pure "eyeballs" perspective. How much traffic would Google lose? People would just use those same Google services through Chrome, Safari, native apps, whatever. So, I believe Google funds Firefox mainly as a hedge against monopoly charges. If Chrome ever dominated the browser market entirely with 95%+ marketshare like Internet Explorer back in the bad old days of IE5/6, they'd be painting a large target on their backs for various governments to step in and make life difficult. If we think about it, Chrome/Chromium's current ~70% market share is pretty ideal for Google. They get to kinda sorta mostly control the web, without a bunch of pesky governments on their backs.
    • stkdump 6y ago
      I guess the choice for google isn't either keep firefox alive or let it die. It's probably more be th standard search engine in firefox or not. Mozilla would probably still be able to sell that spot to s/o else, albeit for a lower price, but not so low to get Firefox fully out of the picture. I guess the revenue stream from firefox users is still big enough that it is worth it for google.
    • jakemal 6y ago
      If Google decided not to pay Mozilla someone else would. Google would lose traffic and eyeballs in that case. Though I do think there is some truth to the monopoly hedge as well.
• MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  > Now it’s focused on technological pessimism in the form of a security and privacy emphasis. First time I've seen this phrased that way. If all you can think of with regards to tech is security and privacy, you are the EU: "technological pessimism".
  • ploika 6y ago
    The EU's focus is more "consumer protection" than security or privacy as such, in my view.
    • MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
      Yes that might be a better general term. However the perspective is the same: no optimism, no enablement, no vision. Instead control and contain the negative aspects. I'm not saying that in itself is bad, its just not sufficient to build a prosperous civilisation.
      • k33n 6y ago
        In the pursuit of better technology, don't forget that we have already built and are living in a prosperous civilization. The browser doesn't exist to "create" a civilization. It exists to enable the one that already exists, and is evolving every day.
        • MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
          > don't forget that we have already built and are living in a prosperous civilization I don't think thats true for the west. The only impressive progress we have made for the last 50 years was in computer hardware and software. Sure, we are somewhat comfortable, we got a bit better at producing things, but if compare that with 1850-1950? Its not even a competition.
          • ploika 6y ago
            That's pure HN solipsism. I don't know how you can look at plummeting rates of illiteracy, child mortality, polio(!) and countless other scourges on humanity and conclude that no impressive progress has been made since 1950 outside of computers. The first (internal) organ transplant was only in 1954. The amount of progress made in medicine and pharmaceuticals alone is staggering.
• throwanem 6y ago
  Seems overloaded. Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201216145506/https://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2020/11/firefox-was-always-enough.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201216145506/https://www.ianbi...
• Scarbutt 6y ago
  Firefox lacks in the default UX area, just from the top of my head: Print to PDF is better in Chrome, comes with a preview. Search marks matches in the scroll bar. Opening a recently closed tab opens a new tab in Chrome instead of replacing the existing one. There were probably 5-10 more annoyances in Firefox for me that I don't recall right now. Maybe it was my familiarity with Chrome but overall I still think Chrome has better UX defaults. I like the bookmark tags feature of Firefox though, which Chrome lacks.
  • RealityVoid 6y ago
    I just switched a bit on mobile from Firefox to Chrome. I was annoyed by the fact that the address bar is at top in there and I think it's unfair to say at all points that the UX is better on Chrome.
    • Scarbutt 6y ago
      Was referring to the destkop version but yeah, Firefox(with uBlock) has been working great for me on android and prefer it much over chrome there.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • deadbunny 6y ago
      Pretty sure there is an option to move the addressbar to the bottom in FF on Android.
      • RealityVoid 6y ago
        I have it there by default on FF, I was talking about chrome having a worse UX on Android. Reading the original post, I admit I phrased it in a confusing way.
        • The_rationalist 6y ago
          You can have the bar at the bottom on chrome (I don't remember the flag)
• eplanit 6y ago
  " remember when Brendan Eich was briefly the Mozilla CEO." Odd phrasing that glosses over how he was ousted by the early days "woke" mob (before they self-identified as such).
  • sradman 6y ago
    And that Eich went on to create the privacy focused Brave browser based on Chromium. Yet, these mistakes didn’t really change the downward trajectory. Apple and Google are the dominant mobile platforms and I can’t see how an independent desktop browser can grow against competent conglomerates.
    • BrendanEich 6y ago
      Brave has grown every month since early beta launch. It can be done, but Firefox has lost share almost every month for a long time. Google distributing and marketing Chrome definitely hurts Firefox, and yet Brave grows. A mystery to discuss another time.
      • sradman 6y ago
        > A mystery to discuss another time. The article discusses four strategies and I think your (assuming you are the Brendan Eich) strategy for Brave falls under 3. Technological pessimism, though it needs a better name. You are correct, growth for a desktop browser is possible, I misspoke, but I think the general browser market is a tough nut to crack. Good luck. Your (Brendan Eich's) past and present work is greatly appreciated.
        • BrendanEich 6y ago
          I reject Ian's categories. Brave is not only about "pessimism" and never was. Of course this makes us hard to categorize. Main point is we grew and grow. Firefox shrinks, it's dying. I'm not saying that a bigger browser in decline would be easy to turn around, but Mozilla has not done right by Firefox. I do agree with Ian that loss of Firefox founders hurt. We made brevet promotions and hires who did not hit the heights of hyatt, blake, joehewitt, and bengoodger. This is an oft-told tale, often requiring restart via a different codebase while maintaining the extant one.
• thoughtleader31 6y ago
  Safari is definitely in the technological pessimism camp as that's Apple's party line on the open web. Safari has continuously caused "headache" to businesses that rely on tracking user behavior for years now, as Apple is very bent on protecting your privacy from every other company outside or inside their walled garden.
  • ludocode 6y ago
    They claim to be in the technological pessimism camp. I don't believe their poor support for progressive web apps is truly about privacy and security, but rather to force apps to go through their App Store so they get a cut of the revenue.
    • Veen 6y ago
      There are exceptions to that though. They did a lot of work to get Google Docs working well in Safari, even though Google has (bad) native apps.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • dschuessler 6y ago
      These aren't mutually exclusive but rather well aligned goals. I find it odd to ask whether any non-monetary goals are "truly" their goals. They are a listed company. Of course they want to make profit. But they do so in part by means of providing privacy and security.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• blindm 6y ago
  I think Firefox is like some banks in that it is too big to fail [0]. Not that Firefox is a financial institution, but something that has embedded and woven itself so deeply into the web in general that I can't imagine the web without it. If it dies in some fantastical way, something else (hopefully better and evolved) will fill its place. We can't have the Chromes of the world slurping up all our data in the near future. Firefox is a privacy tool as well as a browser. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail
  • wongarsu 6y ago
    Firefox can trace its history back to Netscape Navigator, released in 1994. It has failed and come back before. Even if the Mozilla Foundation fails, Firefox would likely survive in some form.
    • jlokier 6y ago
      That was in the age of desktop browsers. Nowadays most browsing is mobile, and all mobile devices come with a high quality browser component which is effectively part of the operating system already, used pervasively by applications on the device as a component rather than a standalone browser. Installing a browser, any browser, is already a niche thing to do for the majority of internet users today.
      • nitrogen 6y ago
        Another thing working against Firefox on mobile is that it seems like every software update for Samsung phones resets the default browser/URL handler to Samsung Internet. Anyone not paying close attention will just click through the EULA and suddenly no longer be using Firefox.
        • jlokier 6y ago
          I have a Samsung phone, and it's updated quite recently, but I've never noticed this. I virtually never open Samsung Internet only because I virtually never open any web browser. Browsers launch as a side effect of something else. For example clicking on a link inside LinkedIn, Telegram, bank app help, etc. When that happens, if a separate app gets opened it's usually Firefox Focus that opens for me, so I guess that means the default URL handler is Firefox Focus (must have set it years ago) and it's not being changed by software updates.
• terracatta 6y ago
  I think Safari is going to have the market cornered on technology pessimism (aka privacy features) and browser performance per watt on macOS and iOS. Google is rapidly locking down enterprise by building in tight integrations with Google Workspace/G-Suite (see: context aware authentication). In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. The first step in their recovery is to convey what their vision of the web looks like in 2035 and commit to Firefox being the first browser to make it a reality by 2025.
  • bee_rider 6y ago
    There's a world in which Apple views Mozilla as a potential ally in the whole "privacy" fight, but unfortunately I suspect it isn't the real one.
  • minikites 6y ago
    >In 10 - 15 years the web should be better than it is today. Is the web better now than it was in 2005-2010? I don't think it is and I don't see the trend arbitrarily reversing. Tons of regular people (and even tech-savvy folks who should know better) voluntarily use, love, and advocate for using a browser (and email service!) made by the modern equivalent of DoubleClick.
    • nitrogen 6y ago
      modern equivalent of DoubleClick Nitpick: they are DoubleClick: > DoubleClick was a company acquired by Google in 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick
    • terracatta 6y ago
      Are there things that have gotten worse? Yes Are things way more complicated? Yes But net overall? I believe it's better than 2005 and even 2010. Meaning, I would not want to revert back to 2010 and start building back up from there. There is too much good we would lose in the process. I have no idea if my opinion is shared by the majority, but I am very optimistic about the future of the web.
    • 6y ago
• open-source-ux 6y ago
  I've long wondered why Mozilla hasn't worked on a embeddable Gecko engine as an alternative to Electron. The Mozilla alternative could be promoted as a modular, cross-platform component but in a stripped-down, faster and less memory hungry form than Electron (assuming these features can be achieved). The traction that Electron has gained as a cross-platform option for building apps is huge. It's only set to get bigger (whether for better or worse). Imagine if Gecko was in this space competing with Electron. Imagine if thousands of developers place their trust in Mozilla because they have built their cross-platform apps using Gecko. They'd want to see Mozilla grow and succeed - they have a stake in seeing Gecko development continue. Is it too late (or too unrealistic) for this to happen? A very long time ago, Mozilla did have the option to embed Gecko into apps. It was never well-documented and what remains of the documentation is out-of-date and untouched: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embedding_Mozilla/FAQ/Embedding_Gecko https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embed...
  • sieabahlpark 6y ago
    The engineers at Mozilla are just waiting to see if doing this also aligns with the social justice mission statement.
  • jcranmer 6y ago
    > I've long wondered why Mozilla hasn't worked on a embeddable Gecko engine as an alternative to Electron. They have. Several times, in fact. There was the old embedding, then XULRunner, then Firefox apps (I'm not sure if that's the same as webapprt). But these efforts generally only lasts a couple of years before Mozilla decides it's the wrong approach and kills off the embedding.
    • dblohm7 6y ago
      Though it is embeddable on Android via GeckoView.
      • iggldiggl 6y ago
        Although unfortunately at the same time increasing your app size by dozens of MBs just so you can use Gecko doesn't seem like an easy sell for mobile apps, especially when you have to compete with the Webview provided by the OS for free.
• thefrog 6y ago
  I'll always take a good opportunity to shit on Mozilla. I was disgusted when Eich was outed and still am. Haven't used a Mozilla product since. What is happening to them now is a function of poor management and even poorer judgment. It's what happens when you solely rely on a cash cow and fail to innovate meaningfully. Fuck Mozilla!
• xacky 6y ago
  I have a love hate relationship with Firefox, its only major trick left is that it’s not Chromium. Making it a monopoly of the non-monopoly browsers. I tried for a while to use Waterfox and Pale Moon but they just aren’t accepted by too many websites and now even mainstream websites are locking out Firefox too.
  • the-dude 6y ago
    Which sites are 'locking out' Firefox?
    • jlokier 6y ago
      Some things lock out Firefox as an accident of implementation. I don't recall which site it was for me recently, perhaps Sainsbury's, but I reached a card payment screen and it just would not accept payment - it kept getting stuck with a spinner making no progress at the payment stage. Opened exactly the same page in Safari and it worked fine quickly. Next time it happened again, and I remembered that I needed to switch browser.
      • the-dude 6y ago
        Are you running extensions/adblockers in FF?
        • jlokier 6y ago
          Of course. That payment problem is fixed now though. It was broken for a few months and is fine now.
          • the-dude 6y ago
            Are you sure it was FF and not the adblocker?
            • jlokier 6y ago
• SmokeyHamster 6y ago
  >The problem? Firefox’s founders are all long, long gone. Brendan and Mitchell are Mozilla’s founders. Well then, you should have thought about that before you forcibly kicked out founder Brendan Eich because you disliked his unrelated politics. You can be a woke company that belittles everyone who doesn't share your narrow ideology or a company that makes a good web browser with a sound business model. You can't be both. Firefox has been a shitty web browser for many years now. I've largely abandoned it for Brave (interestingly created by Eich) and Chrome. Good riddance.
  • rideontime 6y ago
    You're misinterpreting the statement in your search for a soapbox. Brendan was one of "Mozilla's founders," not "Firefox's founders," so he was the wrong person for the job anyway.
    • moralestapia 6y ago
      Oh boy, I HIGHLY DOUBT that Brendan "was the wrong person for the job" ...
    • nebulous1 6y ago
      I actually missed that too, I guess because it wasn't where it seemed he was going after the previous paragraph. So looking at that section again, his argument seems weak on that point. He is promoting founders as leaders because they have innate clout and don't have to engage in consensus building, but that should apply to Mozilla's founders too.
      • BrendanEich 6y ago
        You're right, founder effect wears off in terms of consensus-free authority, and it should. Founder effects in code style and culture last practically forever, in my experience. But with Mitchell pulling $3M/year, the top job needs leadership and consensus around what to do to save Mozilla, not resting on laurels from a couple of decades ago. (BTW Mitchell was not on founding staff @ mozilla dot org; she was on Netscape's legal team and wrote the NPL and MPL.)
• tomrod 6y ago
  Except for mobile, where recent updates made it a hot mess.
  • DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    This absolutely boggles my mind! Who in their right mind pushed the Fenix upgrade for release while absolutely breaking compatibility with the whole universe of Firefox add-ons? The whole point of using firefox is the control that add-ons and the about:config actually give you. Failing to realize that is failing to understand who you're user are. I hope that Mozilla the company fail as fast as possible, so that Mozilla the foundation is allowed to carry on Firefox's purpose and fund actual work from people like the author, instead of ivory tower board and C-levels.
    • nitrogen 6y ago
      If you're lucky, you traveled back in time and disabled Firefox updates before Fenix rolled out. If you're unlucky, you later visit a site with an exploit for that old version.
  • loufe 6y ago
    It's a matter of perspective. I found the previous generation intolerably slow compared to Chrome, but the new version is now my daily driver. I wasn't using any addons which makes the difference, but still, boy am I happy to use Firefox instead.
  • nfriedly 6y ago
    Can't say that I agree. I've been using Firefox on Android for years now and it just keeps getting better IMO. I'm satisfied with the performance and the UI, but what I really love the extensions. I know they rejiggered the UI a bit recently, but it seems like a moderate improvement to me. Also, I use Firefox to sync across all of my devices. I know you can do that with Chrome, but I trust Mozilla more than Google with my data.
    • tomrod 6y ago
• catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
  ooh! Really cool to see Amna get a mention in this post. Amna lets you use your browser as part of to-do list. Though, it in in itself is not a browser. Feel free to try it out and drop feedback! (https://getamna.com https://getamna.com)
• herodotus 6y ago
  How I long for a funding model where eyeballs=$, but NOT because of advertising or tracking. I pay money every month to be connected. I wish some of this money ended up in the hands of the software companies that created the software I used, and some of it in the hands of the content providers. I can only dream....
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• thrower123 6y ago
  I just don't know if 8% of desktop browser share is enough. It's creeping down into Opera range, and at that point, you're not a real option, you're a niche enthusiast brand.
  • deadbunny 6y ago
    How does market share equate to being a "real option"?
    • vineyardmike 6y ago
      Unfortunately and unavoidably, all browsers won’t be 100% compatible so web devs need to do browser specific fixes. If the browser is sufficiently unpopular, it won’t get specific fixes. If it doesn’t get specific fixes, then it breaks websites and users are forced to try another browser. Eventually customers may just give up on the incompatible browser. Increasing the drop In market share, increasing the likelihood that a website doesn’t get specific fixes... [spiral]
  • Brakenshire 6y ago
    I agree, they’re currently locked in a negative spiral, the share needs to be higher to be stable, otherwise maintaining compatibility will not be a high enough priority for web developers. 8% on desktop means 3-4% on all platforms and less in selected markets. To regain market share they need to be the unambiguously better browser. I thought there was a really solid path to do that with their parallelising efforts, in particular a fully parallel layout engine in combination with their other work would have meant drastically improved UI speeds, notably on Android, but elsewhere as well, it would have eliminated a lot of development difficulty and allowed a much more native-equivalent level of performance. That would have made a good basis for an embedded engine to compete with electron. That path seems to have been closed off with the Servo team being fired. I’m not sure where Mozilla is going now, it’s not enough to tread water.
    • ohgodplsno 6y ago
      WebRender has already been integrated into Firefox.
• pantelisk 6y ago
  If I understand this correctly. Mozilla let the author go, and the author still went out of their way to write a comprehensive and clear minded article full of feedback and honest recommendations. If I see one big problem with Mozilla, is that they chose to let go people like the author. Engineering & product culture only follows.
  • input_sh 6y ago
    It's rare to find someone who worked for them that's dissatisfied with the experience. They employ nowhere near the amount of people that FAANG employs, but people that work there are usually really passionate about their work and receive good benefits in return. Point being that the author is more of a rule than an exception. Disclaimer: Was a Mozilla fellow a few years back.
    • geoelectric 6y ago
      Mozilla was both an amazing and a highly frustrating company to work for, when I was there from 2010 to 2015. It was also a very different place when I started (before Fx4) from when I ended (just before FxOS was killed). When I started it was a place full of passion, with a lot of technical vision going on (Fx4 was a major reboot and there were a number of side projects going on that showed promise), albeit not necessarily a lot of obvious strategic vision. I'm sure there was more behind the scenes with John Lilly, whose leadership I hired into, but I lost confidence after he left and suddenly it seemed like the message was "desktop is dying, mobile is everything." Wasn't our mission success based on having enough market share to win a seat at the standards tables and win a place on the "supported browsers" test plan for major websites? Getting a significant part of the shrinking desktop market we'd already executed well on in the past and that competitors were idling on might be better than getting a little of the mobile market that companies with greater resources were bouncing off of left and right, no? Intranets and SaaS apps are still a thing, and offices still use desktop, so there'd still be a core audience right? Maybe mobile browsers can be different and less standardized than desktop browsers and that's OK? Maybe it has to be? Maybe it even should be while mobile browsing incubates? Maybe browsers won't even be the primary way websites interact on mobile and they'll use client apps instead? That was a confusing pivot for me at the time, and Mozilla's strategy was to both put all the momentum on mobile and to kneejerk to a rapid update model for the desktop browser, inspired by Chrome. Problem was that destroyed the desktop add-ons community because it turns out you can't do that when you have a monkeypatch/binary extension model with high coupling, and Jetpack/Add-Ons SDK wasn't mature enough or powerful enough yet to replicate most existing add-ons. It also exhausted the users because the existing flow of having to explicitly approve updates on launch still remained, only now it was frequent enough to disrupt workflows--you never knew when launching a web page meant having to navigate the updates dialog first. Google had designed their browser ecosystem and usability around that update model, it wasn't something you could just graft on. By the time we figured it out Chrome had picked up a decent chunk of the community. The company then more or less doubled in size, in no small part bringing in a bunch of people from mobile and related sectors that didn't have the FOSS culture in their backgrounds. That culminated in the development of FxOS, which I always felt like was treated as an unwelcome fork by the platform team. Maybe it was because of the need to support two fundamentally different forms of interaction, two different models of security, two different distribution and update models, two different lots of things in wrapping Gecko with an application vs. wrapping it with an OS. That also divided the company, since there were now two broadly different technical missions going on, albeit sharing code. When considering the success of FxOS vs. KaiOS, it's worth thinking about the drag having two competing priorities in the same company causes, and how that might clarify when the 3rd party is doing the fork instead. Conflicts like "how do you release a fix for Fx the browser when it'd zero-day FxOS the phone and you can't get an update through the carrier for two months" may not be so much of a problem to figure out without that tension. I'm extremely impressed with what Fabrice and co. have able to pull off with KaiOS, and I bet lightening that load helped a lot. When I left, after it was plain FxOS was not going to succeed at that time, in that environment, it was still a place full of passion--but it was now also a place equally full of frustration, and not with a lot of strong leadership going on and a sharply muted FOSS culture. Seemed like there were a lot of missteps and platitudes, but not a ton of optimism. I was very happy to see Servo come to fruition and Quantum be released, because I honestly expected Mozilla to go down in flames before they could get the desktop browser to a state where people who'd defected would install it again. I'll always treasure my experience with Mozilla--and having worked at two FAANGs now since, I agree the level of talent was equal or greater at Mozilla. But I do have to admit I wish I'd shifted that five year period about 2-3 years earlier across the board. I came in right after the really good part, I think. And I do have to wonder if that talent would remain as good without the strong FOSS culture that incentivized me to be there. I worry when I see people like Ian getting laid off too, because there's simply no way that can be about talent. If he doesn't still fit there, that implies a level of change with which I'd have been deeply uncomfortable.
• karaterobot 6y ago
  What would happen if Firefox took away a significant number of users away from Chrome? Wouldn't Google just stop paying for search placement, removing Mozilla's main source of income? I get that Chrome isn't Google's direct source of income, ads are. But, it seems like controlling the web in order to facilitate serving advertisements (e.g. AMP, Extension Manifest v3) is part of its strategy. If Mozilla made a more successful browser, and Mozilla hewed to its stated values, it would just become a threat to Chrome, rather than a harmless surface area for serving ads, and a small opportunity to earn a little good will. From that perspective, it made perfect sense to me that Mozilla has tried to diversify its revenue. The fact that it hasn't been successful at doing that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea.
  • toyg 6y ago
    > Wouldn't Google just stop paying for search placement, removing Mozilla's main source of income? They would haggle a bit more but they would still pay. That's because Firefox's very existence is their insurance against accusations of monopolistic practices in a field where antitrust caselaw actually exists.
    • emn13 6y ago
      Also, it's not like chrome is googles main source of income or anything. I don't think google really would be impacted all that much anymore in todays market if chrome shrank, especially if they lost market share to firefox (as opposed to say, apple, and maaayybe microsoft). Why would they care?
• imbnwa 6y ago
  Can anyone from/formerly of Mozilla explain why XUL had to die? When I was a kid it seemed utterly fascinating, I wonder now if we'd ever needed Electron if there was a modern XULRunner
  • IainIreland 6y ago
    I believe this is the best account: https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addons/ https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addo...
    • imbnwa 6y ago
      Thank you
  • kubanczyk 6y ago
    > Waterfox Classic is continuing to support the long-standing XUL and XPCOM add-on capability that Firefox removed in version 57. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfox
    • dblohm7 6y ago
      How well do they support it? Do they fix security bugs in the parts that are now effectively abandoned by upstream?
      • kubanczyk 6y ago
        I see they port fixes from Firefox, but I doubt they patch the abandoned parts.
• Yaggo 6y ago
  Mozilla should launch a stripped-down version of Firefox, with all the past 20 years' legacy support removed. No quirk mode etc. Just bare minimum implementation of modern core web tech. How fast would it be?
  • rank0 6y ago
    I love the idea of this. But what exactly should be stripped away? I can think of Pocket but thats about it. What do you mean by legacy support?
    • Yaggo 6y ago
      It's probably true that it's difficult to decide what should be removed without breaking the browsing experience too much. Still, I bet that the engine still contains lot of code for legacy stuff from the era when we wrote HTML such as <table cellpadding="0"> etc. The real problem of course is that the web specs itself have become too complex and expensive to implement. But a stripped-down version of browser could point out why we need to reboot the whole technology. It would be a long shot, I admit.
• AntiImperialist 6y ago
  I had been using Firefox as the primary browser since before it was v1.0 until some time in 2016, which is when I switched to Chrome. The reason was mostly usability related. Chrome felt faster and easier to use. With the reach of Google, Firefox had to be that much better to keep up, like it was compared to any version of IE. Unfortunately, Firefox kind of remained the same while Chrome became better and better. In hindsight, they could have done what Opera did. But then they didn't. I don't think they did anything particularly wrong. Firefox just aged beyond its usefulness and will die, just because it's not needed anymore. I see Brave as the spiritual successor of Firefox. Just like Firefox challenged the then status quo and made way for better browsers to come, Brave is challenging the current status quo Chrome and Google's business model at the same time.
  • tristan957 6y ago
    Unless Brave is forking Chromium, Google owns them. Google controls what gets merged into Chromium. Brave can talk the talk all they want, but they merely exist as a Chrome skin with crypto added in and a few privacy features included. I know they are committed to supporting Manifest v2 (I think), but more and more decisions are going to have to be made where they differ from upstream Chromium. I have doubts this will be sustainable forever.
    • jonathansampson 6y ago
      Google doesn't own us (Hello, I'm Sampson from Brave). We don't have to get anything merged back into Chromium (though we do contribute up-stream, and have landed commits). We do a soft-patch on top of Chromium, removing that which is against our commitment to privacy-by-default, and user control. If we never land another commit in Chromium, that would be okay. We continue maintain our patches (as does Microsoft and others who build upon Chromium).
  • kaba0 6y ago
    Brave is basically a chrome with preinstalled extensions, which would wither away the second chrome stopped being developed. Firefox is a treasure we should keep alive, because otherwise the web would turn into the same closed source walled garden, as most other things do.
• jillesvangurp 6y ago
  I'm a happy Firefox user. IMHO the thing that needs sorting out is the relation between Mozilla the company and Mozilla the Foundation. I just browsed the website of the Mozilla Foundation and to my surprise learned that Firefox development is not one of its responsibilities. I was assuming that that was in fact its primary mission. It's not apparently. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just a vague website but it reads to me like they are spending their time doing activism and marketing and that they do not employ any developers. The reason the foundation leading product development would make sense to me is that having no commercial conflicts of interests are kind of a per-requisite to do what most users (including me) value in Firefox, is to protect their privacy, commit to open standards (over any competitive advantages that proprietary/exclusive features could bring), be as secure as they can be, etc. Except it seems that Firefox development is currently not structured like that and Firefox is instead an OSS product developed by a commercial for profit business competing with other companies backing a different OSS product (i.e. chromium) where users have some concerns about the conflicts of interests of the companies backing that (e.g. Google and MS) with respect to exactly the things I value in Firefox. So, given that, what's the point of having the foundation and what's the point of Firefox as a commercial product (other than guilt tripping Google into keeping the money coming)? I don't mean pretty words and mission statements of a commercial entity. But what's the point for users picking one company over another? They are both companies that ultimately are run by their share holders; not by their users. A foundation is different: it serves its members and its mission without a goal to enrich shareholders.
  • takluyver 6y ago
    The Mozilla foundation owns the corporation, so it's not 'run by shareholders' in the normal sense. Any profit it makes stays in Mozilla. I think they set it up like this because some things are legally easier to do as a for-profit corporation than as a non-profit.
    • johannes1234321 6y ago
      That is true, however routing funds (donations) from foundation to corp is hard, thus only very little $, ¥, €, ... of the money donated go to browser development, while the brand is tightly tied to it. Browser development is funded out of corp budget, which mostly is Google's money for being default search engine. Thus I can't even donate to browser development ...
• mekoka 6y ago
  It seems to me that Mozilla isn't just technologically pessimistic, but they also just lack vision for the future of the web and what roles the browser could play in it. Right now, the only reason we're talking about them is that Firefox is sitting atop a sizable share of a practically impenetrable market. Very successful companies are being started around much less of a product, but Mozilla seems to genuinely have no idea what else can be done with a browser in the future. If they knew, they would become a proper browser as a platform company. Maybe it's me being too naive, but if you had asked me 10 years ago to predict where they would be, I would've said that in the future Firefox would come in different versions. The main one, the flagship, would remain the general purpose browser that we know. But there would be some special editions custom tailored to specific markets. You'd have "Enterprise" editions, that facilitate internal app development for organizations. If your organization needed to quickly build internal tools, you wouldn't need to tussle with WebPack and all the other front-end nonsense. The browser would come already equipped with a development toolkit and environment, ready to connect to your db of choice, etc. I imagined that they could come up with other special versions of Firefox already customized to facilitate integration with popular platforms like Salesforce, Amazon, and others for people who work or develop for those. A proper browser as a platform with an ecosystem. I still think it's possible.
  • fragmede 6y ago
    Can be done with a browser in the future? There's no shortcoming of vision, the problem is monetizing it. A browser in the future is going to let me copy and paste seamless between mobile and desktop. What, are you going to charge 1 cent per completed copy and paste? Am I going to pay a dollar to get nightly builds of Firefox onto my device? If I have an Apple device that's not even possible!
    • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
      I know this may sound like a blasphemy and anachronism rolled into one, but why can we not return to purchasing a copy of software? All of a sudden, the incentives to deliver 'monetizable' product are gone, because you already got your money. Or that does not jibe with continuous rent seeking?
• lucideer 6y ago
  It's curious that the 4 bullet points in the final section don't make any mention of open source (in fact, the article doesn't at all). I think Opera Software circa 2012 was doing all of the things we would hope for/expect from Mozilla & Firefox, and doing them much better than Mozilla could. Bar one: it was not open source. When I made the switch to Firefox in 2012, it was my belief that I would not have been forced to switch browser had Opera originally been open source. I strongly believed in open source at the time; I used Opera in spite of that. When they shut down the Presto project, I lamented the loss due to the inability of the community to fork. I'm wondering if Firefox went away, would a fork be likely to survive in any impactful way; browsers are massive, complex & enormously expensive to maintain, whether you have rights to the source or not. Maybe open source isn't the panacea we thought in this particular context. I'm still on Firefox as I'm loathe to support any browsers built on Blink & contribute further to a monoculture, but the Vivaldi project have finally started to achieve similar things to what Opera was doing 8 years ago. It's notable that it's linked in blue in the section of this article headed "A better browser".
  • kome 6y ago
    I did exactly the same. I switched to Firefox after Opera changed direction, with Opera 13. It's incredible how much Opera 12 was advanced and snappy. It was 2012... I used Firefox since then. And I never had an issue with it. But, especially at the beginning, I really felt it was an inferior browser. But still better than chrome for sure. Just because I don't want google to know all my chronology.
    • inglor_cz 6y ago
      Opera Mobile worked great on Symbian smartphones with very limited screen resolution and system resources, too. Much better than the built-in Web browser from Nokia itself. Often, Opera Mobile was your only chance to get something done online on such a device. For example, purchase a ticket.
      • BlueTemplar 6y ago
        Not to mention the reduced data usage (literally ~10 000 times more expensive than today!)
• gxqoz 6y ago
  I just hope any Firefox-only developments at Mozilla won't strand Pocket, one of my favorite apps (and which I pay for).
  • Brakenshire 6y ago
    Has Mozilla fully open sourced Pocket? It seems like years since they promised to do that.
    • pseudalopex 6y ago
      No.
    • cooper12 6y ago
      There's some stuff here: https://github.com/Pocket https://github.com/Pocket
  • himujjal 6y ago
    Man. You have to be careful. Pocket has been pushing too much of political content. Specially from the left's point of view. I believe anything with a bias is bad. Right or Left. Specially such sites where people see or read. Otherwise pocket is great.
    • gxqoz 6y ago
      It's pretty easy to turn off any ML-generated Pocket recommendations. I wasn't even aware they were doing this given how long I've had it turned off. I'm only interested in articles I've curated myself.
• robertlagrant 6y ago
  > I don’t have a read on Edge My guess it's MS will let Chromium do the heavy lifting, and they will integrate it nicely with AD etc and all IT departments will make it the new corporate default.
  • geogra4 6y ago
    What's scary is that even Microsoft has essentially given up on an independent browser engine
    • jonathansampson 6y ago
      I was at Microsoft (and on the IE/Edge team) when that movement started. The writing was on the wall; too many developers were targeting (and testing in) Chromium (and/or Webkit) alone. The iPhone in 2007 pretty much claimed the mobile-web as its own. Massive efforts were made to bring IE up-to-speed. Support for -webkit- prefixes and more were added, but that proved to be too little, too late. IE 11 eventually even had pretty stellar ES6 support. Forking Trident into EdgeHTML (for project Spartan) was a good move, but still not the right move. Hundreds of thousands of lines of code later, it was clear that Edge would need to adapt or die. I left before the decision was made to drop EdgeHTML (I went to Brave), but I think that was the right decision for Microsoft. I've seen saying for years that I think Firefox will eventually do the same, or suffer the same drift into irrelevancy that Microsoft had been experiencing for so long.
      • geogra4 6y ago
        > I've seen saying for years that I think Firefox will eventually do the same, or suffer the same drift into irrelevancy that Microsoft had been experiencing for so long. Man, that would be something? Firefox forking Chromium to replace gecko would be a very sad day for the internet, but as of now it does kind of seem inevitable.
        • lmedinas 6y ago
          I might be wrong but i guess thats what Mozilla is about right now, is to have enough resources to continue to support Gecko. If things continue on the same way or turn worse its inevitable or they will just stop producing a browser. I dont think there is a point to continue Firefox without Gecko. Of course im with you, if Gecko dies it will be a very sad day for the internet.
• liminal 6y ago
  "Quantitative improvement" is table stakes that I worry have been abandoned with the jettisoning of the Servo team. "Technological pessimism" is a differentiating strategy, but ultimately dooms them to the small subset of users who understand and care about privacy at a deep level. "All encompassing" is a death march. All is infinite and Mozilla can't afford to implement everything hoping something turns out to be valuable (Google OTOH can bankrupt competition with this strategy). "A better browser" is where I think Mozilla should focus their attention. They were doing that with their lab experiments, but abandoned them before they could become valuable. Doing this approach well requires commitment to do enough of them that a vision coalesces and then more commitment to see it through. Mozilla used to be audacious enough to invent a new programming language in order to build a better browser. Now they seem to have turned their backs on that initiative and I'm left wondering if they have any guts left at all.
  • takluyver 6y ago
    They didn't abandon the technological effort that went into Rust & Servo - they just decided to bring it into Firefox piece by piece under the name 'Quantum' rather than launching a brand new browser with a different name. Although there was a marketing push with Firefox 57 when the new code started to land.
    • Brakenshire 6y ago
      They abandoned the parallel layout engine which was arguably the most important bottleneck that Servo was attempting to tackle.
  • dblohm7 6y ago
    > "Quantitative improvement" is table stakes that I worry have been abandoned with the jettisoning of the Servo team. I can assure you that perf has not been abandoned.
• rubyist5eva 6y ago
  Recently switched back to Firefox after meandering between Edge and Chrome on multiple platforms (Linux, macOS and Windows) for work and non-work purposes. Firefox Dev Tools are fucking awesome. Firefox sync works great. All the extensions I want are here. It's fast enough in ways that microbenchmarks don't mean anything to me...and it's free as in Liberty (last but not least). I've been looking for a VPN, and even though I find the features rather anemic - I've used mullvad before and I trust the infrastructure that Mozilla VPN is built on and it's a way to give money to them. I will probably also switch over from Raindrop to Pocket for the same purpose.
  • kashura 6y ago
    where have you been my whole life? Raindrop looks amazing. Thank you!
  • depingus 6y ago
    Raindrop looks nice. I've been using xBrowserSync to sync bookmarks on all devices, regardless of browser). Features: Open source. Run your own server. Encrypts on the device. No accounts. No ads.
  • toyg 6y ago
    Is Raindrop active? I can only find archived / discontinued stuff.
    • tmottabr 6y ago
      Never seen any indication that it isn't. I use it for a few years already and never had any problem. i like it more than pockets. https://raindrop.io/ https://raindrop.io/
      • toyg 6y ago
        Ah ok, so this is not Mozilla Raindrop. Thanks for the clarification.
        • 6y ago
• ilaksh 6y ago
  Probably should not bother writing this because it's not going to be appreciated but I will try anyway. The browser evolved from an information dispersal tool to become a networked operating system with a few implementations loosely compatible. My suggestion is that now with web assembly we have a chance to almost start over with that. The problem is that people are not really approaching wasm as an operating system or shared platform. Rather they are making piecemeal efforts and adding little bits of functionality in here and there in different runtimes etc. So so far it seems a missed opportunity to create a framework where people can collaborate on what the platform is. Something like a common ABI. Or a distributed package registry. Or a voting mechanism for new features. We should have a new shared platform built on web assembly. And for the information distribution part, drop CSS and HTML and start over with content-centric networking and markdown. Focus on instant retrieval and pre-dissemination.
• benwerd 6y ago
  If Mozilla wants revenue diversity, it can be found through empowering independent creators on the open web. The open, standards-oriented, values-based browser is the key, not a sideshow.
• znpy 6y ago
  > But to be clear: the money always kept coming! On a per-user basis it even increased over the years. Well if the number of users diminishes...
• throw_m239339 6y ago
  Mozilla doesn't have a real sustainable business model right now. FireFox OS could have provided such model, in fact, its successor kaios is doing very well and one can imagine that in the future, it will be the primary OS of half the mobile users on the planet. 'Feature phones' aren't dead. They provide a cheap alternative to touch phones, are usually more robust, and allowing them to run web apps instead of MIDP stuff is a giant opportunity for any web actor. Ditching Rust as a core component of the future of Firefox is also a demonstration that Mozilla isn't a tech focused corp anymore. Rust is going to yield a lot of result when it comes to security, memory saftely and maintainability and firing Rust devs was terribly short sighted. So yes Firefox was always enough. Leadership at Mozilla doesn't get it.
  • secondcoming 6y ago
    Out of all internet users out there, how many would choose Firefox just because it's written in rust? An insignificant fraction. That said. I've been using Firefox as my main browser for years. I only use chrome when a website needs it or works better in it.
    • bobmichael 6y ago
      If you read GP carefully, they're not making the argument that users will choose Firefox because it's written in Rust, but rather that the improved security and performance brought about by Rust would be what attracts and retains users.
      • narag 6y ago
        Are users very worried about browser security nowadays? It was a major concern a few years back, but I seldom hear that kind of complaint. I do hear about surveilance and privacy, but not so much about catastrophic failures.
        • methodsignature 6y ago
          Sometimes you just need the differentiator in your feature set. Then you let your marketing team go to work.
• evmar 6y ago
  > (Ironically [the Firefox UI bits] were called “chrome” before Chrome even existed.) Not ironic, intentional. Chrome was made by former Firefox engineers, and the name was a joke about exactly this. I remember struggling to come up with a better name for the app other than this code name and then they eventually launched it with it anyway.
  • flas9sd 6y ago
    I followed that lead and read into your chrome notes, narrowing down between "first post" 2008 and "the end" 2012 - .. massive. Thanks for chrome on linux!
  • worker767424 6y ago
    It's not even a codename. > The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_interface_and_interaction_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_...
    • evmar 6y ago
      I meant that the internal code name of the Google browser project was "chrome", under the assumption it would change when it was time to release.
• mybrid 6y ago
  Firefox on Android still only has 10 Add ons. Ten. It just seems to me Mozilla is deliberately killing Firefox off.
  • bsdubernerd 6y ago
    I still use FF on a desktop, but on Android is not Firefox for me. It's just as dumb (if not dumber) than chrome, and serves no purpose whatsoever without addons. I also don't get the point of limiting addons to a vetted whitelist. I feared this would be the case since they introduced signing requirements, and that's precisely what happened. I waited a bit, but I completely lost interest since the new mobile redesign which also destroyed the UI usability for me. Mozilla will need to do a complete turn-around to get me back on mobile.
    • tristan957 6y ago
      A browser with 10 add-ons is as dumb (if not dumber) than a browser with no add-ons. A browser backed by a company committed to open-source and privacy is as dumb (if not dumber) than a browser backed by an ad company. Dear god stop over-reacting. Open source communities are so toxic. Can't believe you actually typed these words into existence.
      • bsdubernerd 6y ago
        I wouldn't complain if work from the community (which is just as important as the browser itself) wasn't artificially restricted. As a previous extension developer, an avid extension user, and also OSS contributor, it strikes against all my values. I'm fully supportive of Mozilla for their work, a doubly so for being the main alternative to Chrome, however Android always felt as a double-standard to me. FF on Android is not (and was really never) on the same page as the desktop version, and I don't understand why it can't. I'm complaing because the reason why I love FF on desktop is the reason why I find it unusable on Android.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• dmje 6y ago
  I've loved Firefox for years. There's also been a bug that I've never been able to track down: clicking on dropdowns doesn't "stick" and it take multiple tries to select something. Today I finally cracked. I just can't have that irritation in my life any more. So Brave it is. #myfirefoxstory
• avodonosov 6y ago
  I prefer Firefox over Chrome for better usability. An example of glaring UI bug in Chrome: https://webm.red/view/XWtg.webm https://webm.red/view/XWtg.webm
• tracker1 6y ago
  I always thought with Firefox + Thunderbird, the next natural evolution would be mail service integration and SaaS mail offerings. So many companies now outsource their mail and the Thunderbird devs had so much insight into the space it could have been a natural extension with revenue diversity. They could have been on the path of Google Apps and Office 365 before they even existed. Now, who knows.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• hartator 6y ago
  Yes, middle management fucked up Firefox.
• tux 6y ago
  Well written article, was a good read. I think that Firefox company should rehire you :-) You hear this FIREFOX? But if they don't, maybe Google will be smarter and hire you for Chrome instead ^_^ After all you started in "Chrome" group even before Chrome browser existed. Hehe
• myfonj 6y ago
  > Remember what was really cool in Firefox? Tabs! Ah how this resonates with me so much, I remember the difference of tabless IE and oh so magical Netscape / Firefox when those were new. I consider myself Mozilla fanboy to this days. But alas, every time I try clean installation with default settings I cannot believe how … bad this became and how far it diverged from original experience: by now Firefox is browser with the WORST user experience regarding tabs usage, from my perspective. Current defaults are: - Super slow Ctrl+Tab modal tab switcher, mimicking OS alt+tab app switching mechanic. But slow. And distracting. And not pretty. And considering tab bar, mostly redundant. - Ctrl+Tabbing order is, naturally, in most recently used order, so visual tab proximity means nothing. - Ctrl+Shift+Tab does mostly nothing [1]. No, it does not select the least recently used tab. No, it does not switch to tab to the left. When tabs don't fit the tabs bar width, Ctrl+Shift+Tab opens another (vertical) tabs list and lets you read titles and navigate with arrows. But usually you just instinctively press Ctrl+Tab to "undo" it, but now you stare on that Modal over the opened list and question your browser choice. From there Ctrl+Tab finally stops working predictably and whole experience breaks into horrible mess. Don't get me wrong, Ctrl+PgUp/PgDown still operates well. You can still change some settings to get even Ctrl+Tab working the way original Firefox popularized. But still, this state of things makes me very sad. I'd really like to spread Firefox, but with such details that I cannot explain even to myself it is impossible. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1576130 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1576130
  • wackget 6y ago
    Christ. I forgot about the default visual tab switcher. It's truly horrendous. That, and the "insert related tab after current" behaviour, are the first things I turn off. Horrible.
  • mmphosis 6y ago
    I've yet to be sold on tabs. I sometimes modify the user chrome to hide the tab bar - although it is problematic. Currently, I have the hn comments in one window, and the article in another window, and hn front page in another window on a "smaller" 2K monitor. Customized for compact density, os tab bar moved to the right, menu bar off (the default) and still the 30 links on the hn front page don't fit on the page. Why can't the tab bar be hidden when there is only one tab? I don't need to see a tab with a truncated title that already appears in the title bar. I guess I am supposed to hide the title bar, and learn to love a Lotus Notes era "Tab" interface. In my opinion, tabs are not cool.
• b0rsuk 6y ago
  > With this in mind the argument is: Firefox has to be popular enough that Mozilla has at least a veto over problematic points of standards, and the ability to vigorously advance positive standards. Has veto ever worked for web browsers?? I think the problem is user perception: users don't blame the page, they blame the browser. Especially when they learn browser X renders the page while browser Y doesn't. As an example, browsers were racing to fix malformed HTML so that the user has a good experience.
• dr_j_ 6y ago
  It’s just a web browser. I mean it’s just a web browser. What is there to be so excited about? Really..?
  • Brakenshire 6y ago
    It’s one of the only things which prevents Apple and Google from being able to carve up the open web between them.
• blacklight 6y ago
  Firefox must obviously be the core product, the one that people know, love and trust and can easily use - although this doesn't mean that Mozilla can't try other projects as well, maybe with with more constrained resources so projects that don't get enough momentum don't linger for too long. And the writer has a point when he says that the weight of Firefox has allowed Mozilla to be a heavyweight at the table of the standards of the web. But there's a point he misses (and he was nearly there when he mentioned Gecko). What do Chrome, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge and basically every browser on Android and iOS have in common? That's the web engine - and that's WebKit/Blink, with Chromium usually being the foundation. That wasn't a big problem when the guys at Google were still pushing for better web standards, but that's no longer the case. Gecko may have a big window to become a really modular engine that any browser can use on any platform, and it could advertise itself like the modular, corporate-free, privacy-aware, fully standard-compliant solution that can power the next generation of browsers out there - or at least be an alternative to the WebKit/Blink/Chromium monopoly. I know that a while ago Mozilla had considered exposing Gecko as a browser-agnostic engine, but at some point for some reason they dropped the plan - and that's quite a shame.
• ghosty-discord 6y ago
  At this point I always wonder how did Mozilla sustain...
• 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  It occurs to me that web standards are a lot like a government. A lot of users, a few rich stewards with vested interests, and no real democracy. If I, a random user, come up with a really great standard that solves a bunch of real problems that users have, it has no chance of being accepted unless it solves the problems of the few rich stewards. So, today, The Web(TM) and its Internets(TM), which now pretty much defines our global economy, is currently being developed by advertising and consumer product companies, and a handful of companies who profit off of the standards that they make. Our future rests not a little in their hands. Feels kinda like watching a big capitalist train moving towards global society in really slow motion.
• betwixthewires 6y ago
  I have recently gone from a Mozilla fanboy to a Mozilla hater in the span of under a year. I'm sure this won't be popular, but I refuse to use Firefox particularly, and would rather use chromium at this point, which, if you'd heard the way I trash google, you'd ask me what on earth was going through my head. It has gotten that bad. They keep progressively crippling the browser. There isn't a single Firefox major update, either software wise or news wise, that amounts to good news. They try to dress it up but the substance is always bad for the user. Recently, they artificially limited the extensions available in Firefox mobile. I uninstalled Firefox immediately on all my machines. Now they're firing the Rust team? Are these people stupid? Rust is pretty much the only thing Mozilla has going for it. I guess it's time for Thunderbird to go as well. The idea that Mozilla is somehow the only thing standing between Google and control of web standards is laughable. I used to buy it. But Firefox is funded by Google, and they'll get what they want. And you can see plain as day that they're getting what they want. At this point you're more disconnected from Google's influence using ungoogled-chromium than using Firefox. So that's what I do. I feel more free online using a fork of a Google product than I do using Firefox. Imagine that.
  • SkyPuncher 6y ago
    I feel like we're in a very interesting place for main stream computing. The technology has matured enough that it's nearly impossible to add novel, valuable features. It feels like everything is just starting to break for no good reason. At the same time, companies have hard data about what works and what doesn't work so they're starting to trim excess.
    • betwixthewires 6y ago
      > At the same time, companies have hard data about what works and what doesn't work so they're starting to trim excess. What works for whom? Every place I go on the internet where technical people discuss things, there's a common thread: competing interests have incentivized companies to put user needs second and it has resulted in a broken web that does not work and does not serve the users. The most cynical of us say that the web is irreparable. It seems to me, from a user perspective, that they haven't found what works at all. It also seems to me that they don't care about finding what works anymore, they're happy to rest on their megalithic laurels the way Blockbuster and Radio Shack thought they could ad infinitum. I think you're right about novel features and things breaking for no good reason, and I think the next phase in innovation of communication and networking technologies are already beginning to adopt some new axioms: less is more, and the idea that there will be one place to do everything online is flawed and cannot be achieved.
• sadfev 6y ago
  No, all your pandering and political posturing doesn’t mitigate the fact that FF is a hot pile of usability garbage
• eitland 6y ago
  To anyone who works at Firefox : I never left. There still isn't a good alternative for me. But can someone please fix the extension API? A good start could be to add a supported way to move the tab bar around or at least remove it so it doesn't annoy me when I use vertical tabs.
• Khyaju 6y ago
  So need to be careful
• 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  what would happen if firefox decides to fire all "executives", "ceo" and the whole "bureaucracy" leadership, not technical one that is. what money can be saved from doing that which brings me to the second question, does firefox really need a CEO?
• Triv888 6y ago
  They went back 5 years with new firefox mobile