5 ms·

What Mozilla is doing now with Firefox should be taught in business schools as an example how to destroy a brand.

by neiman 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago
It really is strange and I don't understand what's driving all these bad decisions.
- neiman 5y ago
  My guess is that they're unhappy of being a fringe browser with a "small" (a few millions) crowd of loyal users, but instead want to be "great again".
schleck8 5y ago
Can someone fill me in?
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Hostility towards users asking questions as seen in the tabstrip API bug. (A really simple thing that I fix on a weekly basis in 4 minutes every time I restart Firefox but somehow next to impossible for Mozilla. Although I should admit they are making it harder and harder for me as well.) Pushing Pocket (which is nice and could have become a nice source of income from users like me who wants to support the browser) in a dishonest way and as a built in part of Firefox instead of an extension that people could remove, saying there were no ties when there definitely was. Almost scaring the crap out of a number of the more careful ones of us when they installed a "I, Robot extension" or something without any warning. Milking the browser part of the system dry to fund its "mission", then laying off browser engineers and the Rust team to save money. Pretending to be a community when fundraising, but a dictator when making decisions. Misleading people to think they suppprt Firefox when they donate to the foundation, then sending nothing to the browser and burning it all on "its mission".
  - mkl 5y ago
    It was Mr. Robot, and it was installed via the user studies test system.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Milking the browser...to fund its "mission", then laying off browser engineers and the Rust team to save money...Misleading people to think they suppprt [sic] Firefox when they donate to the foundation, then sending nothing to the browser and burning it all on "its mission" This is where they lost me as a donor. Mozilla can't go a month without launching a new idiot project. Do we know what fraction of their revenue gets spent on Firefox and Rust versus everything else?
    - tristan957 5y ago
      Mozilla literally can't win on HN or Reddit. People criticize them for taking money from Google and then when they try to monetize new ideas, they again get criticism. The Mozilla Foundation (where your donations go) is not the one launching these new ideas that you hate so much. If you are going to hate something, at least hate the right thing.
      - soundnote 5y ago
        Yeah, people want a spotless FOSS project run entirely on donations. It's silly, and I'd wish people started waking up to the realities of the world. You can still do a decent job while living according to them. The strange thing is that it shouldn't even be a timing thing all that much, a bunch of SaaS apps were already running by 2015 and subscriptions were becoming a more normal thing. Even Office 365 had been a thing for five years at that point, Dropbox and Evernote for eight. But I definitely remember the hatred, and I was one of the haters back then. Maybe the difference is that the initial Firefox userbase came more from FOSS people where there's more of a purely altruistic expectation, while I at least approached new browsers more from an IT startup culture angle, wanting to support organizations that do good things more than hanging onto moralisms.
  - boppo1 5y ago

What Mozilla is doing now with Firefox should be taught in business schools as an example how to destroy a brand.

by neiman 5y ago

What Mozilla is doing now with Firefox should be taught in business schools as an example how to destroy a brand.

rsj_hn 5y ago

It really is strange and I don't understand what's driving all these bad decisions.

neiman 5y ago
My guess is that they're unhappy of being a fringe browser with a "small" (a few millions) crowd of loyal users, but instead want to be "great again".

schleck8 5y ago

Can someone fill me in?

skinkestek 5y ago
Hostility towards users asking questions as seen in the tabstrip API bug. (A really simple thing that I fix on a weekly basis in 4 minutes every time I restart Firefox but somehow next to impossible for Mozilla. Although I should admit they are making it harder and harder for me as well.) Pushing Pocket (which is nice and could have become a nice source of income from users like me who wants to support the browser) in a dishonest way and as a built in part of Firefox instead of an extension that people could remove, saying there were no ties when there definitely was. Almost scaring the crap out of a number of the more careful ones of us when they installed a "I, Robot extension" or something without any warning. Milking the browser part of the system dry to fund its "mission", then laying off browser engineers and the Rust team to save money. Pretending to be a community when fundraising, but a dictator when making decisions. Misleading people to think they suppprt Firefox when they donate to the foundation, then sending nothing to the browser and burning it all on "its mission".
- mkl 5y ago
  It was Mr. Robot, and it was installed via the user studies test system.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Milking the browser...to fund its "mission", then laying off browser engineers and the Rust team to save money...Misleading people to think they suppprt [sic] Firefox when they donate to the foundation, then sending nothing to the browser and burning it all on "its mission" This is where they lost me as a donor. Mozilla can't go a month without launching a new idiot project. Do we know what fraction of their revenue gets spent on Firefox and Rust versus everything else?
  - tristan957 5y ago
    Mozilla literally can't win on HN or Reddit. People criticize them for taking money from Google and then when they try to monetize new ideas, they again get criticism. The Mozilla Foundation (where your donations go) is not the one launching these new ideas that you hate so much. If you are going to hate something, at least hate the right thing.
    - soundnote 5y ago
      Yeah, people want a spotless FOSS project run entirely on donations. It's silly, and I'd wish people started waking up to the realities of the world. You can still do a decent job while living according to them. The strange thing is that it shouldn't even be a timing thing all that much, a bunch of SaaS apps were already running by 2015 and subscriptions were becoming a more normal thing. Even Office 365 had been a thing for five years at that point, Dropbox and Evernote for eight. But I definitely remember the hatred, and I was one of the haters back then. Maybe the difference is that the initial Firefox userbase came more from FOSS people where there's more of a purely altruistic expectation, while I at least approached new browsers more from an IT startup culture angle, wanting to support organizations that do good things more than hanging onto moralisms.
- boppo1 5y ago