5 ms·

You won't be able to beat Chrome by technology alone. I actually don't know how Mozilla can beat Chrome. Google has an extremely strong incentive to capture th

by simias 6y ago

You won't be able to beat Chrome by technology alone. I actually don't know how Mozilla can beat Chrome. Google has an extremely strong incentive to capture the web client market. Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. I want Firefox to win but unfortunately I just don't see a path for it. My mindset at the moment is "I'm going to use Firefox for as long as it's possible, and then I'll find the least crappy Chromium fork available". I don't know if it'll take 6 months or 6 years to get to that point but I really don't have faith in Mozilla righting the ship.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. Firefox isn't struggling on technical grounds though. It's not a charity case, it's a perfectly competent browser. Whether Firefox outperforms Chromium depends on which benchmark you use. As far as the user is concerned, they're both technically solid browsers.
- simias 6y ago
  I wasn't talking solely about technical merits. I was also talking about marketing and everything else. Google can (and does) push Chrome aggressively through a multitude of channels. How can Mozilla beat that?
thesuitonym 6y ago
I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. Wouldn't it be enough to have 30% marketshare again? Or even 10% would be enough to consider Firefox a serious competitor. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that if you're not #1 you've failed. You don't need to crush every single competitor into oblivion to be successful, you just need to succeed at what you set out to do, and in Firefox's case, isn't that just to build a good browser? The only way to beat Chrome, is the same way Firefox beat IE: Someone else will have to do it.
- takluyver 6y ago
  On some level, Firefox has to 'beat' Chrome in order to get/keep a significant level of marketshare. It needs people to see it as better in some way if they're to choose to use it, especially on mobile where Chrome is the default. For some of us, it still 'beats' Chrome on some kind of principle - I'm not giving Google yet more control. But are there enough people like me to actually keep a modern browser going?
- cpeterso 6y ago
  > I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. In that sense, Firefox's competition is not Chrome: it's the other "non-mainstream" browsers like Chromium Edge, Brave, or Opera. What can Mozilla do to attract those users to Firefox? Google doesn't want to crush Firefox to 0% because Google profits from Firefox searches and presumably wants a non-Chromium browser to exist to avoid antitrust scrutiny regulating Chrome.
  - somezero 6y ago
    I'm probably a niche user, but better crypto and web3 support (still cannot make firefox recognize my hardware wallet on Linux). That's the singular most important reason I switched, after many years. ... It'll raise trust if they follow through their promises. Open source Pocket, yet?
robertlagrant 6y ago
One big area where Firefox could win is privacy. The problem is that currently most of their money comes from Google, which means privacy will always be pretty limited. Perhaps £5/yr fees would fund an alternative?

by simias 6y ago

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

> Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. Firefox isn't struggling on technical grounds though. It's not a charity case, it's a perfectly competent browser. Whether Firefox outperforms Chromium depends on which benchmark you use. As far as the user is concerned, they're both technically solid browsers.

simias 6y ago
I wasn't talking solely about technical merits. I was also talking about marketing and everything else. Google can (and does) push Chrome aggressively through a multitude of channels. How can Mozilla beat that?

thesuitonym 6y ago

I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. Wouldn't it be enough to have 30% marketshare again? Or even 10% would be enough to consider Firefox a serious competitor. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that if you're not #1 you've failed. You don't need to crush every single competitor into oblivion to be successful, you just need to succeed at what you set out to do, and in Firefox's case, isn't that just to build a good browser? The only way to beat Chrome, is the same way Firefox beat IE: Someone else will have to do it.

takluyver 6y ago
On some level, Firefox has to 'beat' Chrome in order to get/keep a significant level of marketshare. It needs people to see it as better in some way if they're to choose to use it, especially on mobile where Chrome is the default. For some of us, it still 'beats' Chrome on some kind of principle - I'm not giving Google yet more control. But are there enough people like me to actually keep a modern browser going?
cpeterso 6y ago
> I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. In that sense, Firefox's competition is not Chrome: it's the other "non-mainstream" browsers like Chromium Edge, Brave, or Opera. What can Mozilla do to attract those users to Firefox? Google doesn't want to crush Firefox to 0% because Google profits from Firefox searches and presumably wants a non-Chromium browser to exist to avoid antitrust scrutiny regulating Chrome.
- somezero 6y ago
  I'm probably a niche user, but better crypto and web3 support (still cannot make firefox recognize my hardware wallet on Linux). That's the singular most important reason I switched, after many years. ... It'll raise trust if they follow through their promises. Open source Pocket, yet?

robertlagrant 6y ago

One big area where Firefox could win is privacy. The problem is that currently most of their money comes from Google, which means privacy will always be pretty limited. Perhaps £5/yr fees would fund an alternative?