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The unfortunate truth is that Firefox is irrelevant now. There’s just not enough value to users in a completely independently browser engine. And if there’s not

The unfortunate truth is that Firefox is irrelevant now. There’s just not enough value to users in a completely independently browser engine. And if there’s not enough value to users then there’s no sustainable business to build on top of it. Those of us that love the web should divert our energies to keeping Google and Apple honest IMO.

kaba0 6y ago
Just by being an independent browser engine, firefox is arguibly one of the most important open source software projects - since basically everything is web-based nowadays and they are the only thing making the web the web, instead of a fancy google chrome runtime. Other than that, I pretty much value having actual privacy when browsing, and firefox is really really good at that with ad-blocking (which may easily go away with chrome and with the pace of development on it, forks will be in a pretty bad situation), containers, etc.
- cageface 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of Firefox as well and appreciate some of its unique features like containers. It's improved a lot in the last few releases. But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. As a thought experiment - what has the existence of FF done to prevent Apple & Google from going their own ways lately on web features? Not much if anything at all.
  - nottorp 6y ago
    > But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. I don't know... my bank launched a new web interface for online banking and they seem to take my firefox bug reports seriously. Show me another browser that runs uBlock Origin and has both a facebook and google container...
  - progval 6y ago
    So what? Everyone should just give up because it's too hard, and let Google run the show? There is a couple of antitrust lawsuits going up in the US against Google. If we're lucky, one of them may break up the Android and Chrome arms of Google (or Alphabet, I guess) and/or require a ballot screen to choose a browser on Android, like the EU did for Windows and IE. And there may be other opportunities in the future for Firefox to regain some equal footing with Chrome. But that can't work if we declare Firefox dead.
    - cageface 6y ago
      All anti trust against Google is going to to is strengthen Apple and accelerate the migration to proprietary app silos. It’s not going to drive a Firefox renaissance. Most likely it will be executed so ineptly it will end up strengthening Google too.

kaba0 6y ago

Just by being an independent browser engine, firefox is arguibly one of the most important open source software projects - since basically everything is web-based nowadays and they are the only thing making the web the web, instead of a fancy google chrome runtime. Other than that, I pretty much value having actual privacy when browsing, and firefox is really really good at that with ad-blocking (which may easily go away with chrome and with the pace of development on it, forks will be in a pretty bad situation), containers, etc.

cageface 6y ago
I'm a big fan of Firefox as well and appreciate some of its unique features like containers. It's improved a lot in the last few releases. But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. As a thought experiment - what has the existence of FF done to prevent Apple & Google from going their own ways lately on web features? Not much if anything at all.
- nottorp 6y ago
  > But none of my clients even ask about Firefox support anymore. They don't care and neither do 99% of their users. Supporting FF maybe be the morally correct and heroic thing but it's like being vegan. You're a rounding error on policy decisions that matter. I don't know... my bank launched a new web interface for online banking and they seem to take my firefox bug reports seriously. Show me another browser that runs uBlock Origin and has both a facebook and google container...
- progval 6y ago
  So what? Everyone should just give up because it's too hard, and let Google run the show? There is a couple of antitrust lawsuits going up in the US against Google. If we're lucky, one of them may break up the Android and Chrome arms of Google (or Alphabet, I guess) and/or require a ballot screen to choose a browser on Android, like the EU did for Windows and IE. And there may be other opportunities in the future for Firefox to regain some equal footing with Chrome. But that can't work if we declare Firefox dead.
  - cageface 6y ago
    All anti trust against Google is going to to is strengthen Apple and accelerate the migration to proprietary app silos. It’s not going to drive a Firefox renaissance. Most likely it will be executed so ineptly it will end up strengthening Google too.