3 ms·

Not sure what you are writing regarding Firefox Send and Lockwise. They are/were good, or at least good for me.

by krzyk 5y ago

gjsman-1000 5y ago
They are decent - but they are undermining the development of the Firefox browser by consuming lots of precious time and money which is not what Firefox needs right now. Remember that Mozilla get's 90%+ of its funding, not from donations, but from Google for being the default search engine. Firefox's market share is now ~4%, dangerously close to where Google might decide that the payout isn't worth it. And close enough where Google thinks they could stop payments without causing any antitrust ire because it's such a small percentage it doesn't make any business sense. You would think Mozilla executives would take that as a sign that their funding and core product is at stake and they need to double-down on it. Instead, they fire engineering teams and spread into the many side projects in a desperate attempt at diversification that isn't working.
- Miraste 5y ago
  I get where you're coming from, and I would also love to have more work put into Firefox, but development speed has precisely nothing to do with why it's lost so much market share. Nobody is choosing a browser because of feature checklists. The average user has Chrome because it's the default on Android and ChromeOS, and on everything else a helpful notification tells you that your browser sucks and you should get Chrome as soon as you google something, or check your email, or watch a video, or open a document. It's the strongest software marketing in history and short of antitrust legislation I don't see any way for Mozilla to compete.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Maybe when Firefox was at 33% and Google was just starting to gain major dominance in Chrome, Firefox should have realized the game was changing and tried blocking ads for Chrome or even lying to Google properties that it was Chrome (as Microsoft Edge now is capable of even though Microsoft AFAIK hasn't flipped the switch). If Google complained, Firefox could say it was a response to anticompetitive behavior. Google would then be a catch-22 where if they cut Firefox's default search funding, they would be inviting lawsuits and investigations. It wouldn't be a healthy relationship but it would have given Firefox a stronger footing than right now. But Firefox just naively believed adding more fluff like Pocket and paying their executives ludicrous sums of cash would do the trick. You can't do that - you need to get into the mindset that Google wants to kill you and has the power and brand to do it, so you need to fight and stop the bleeding or get killed.
- dralley 5y ago
  "lots" But are they? I doubt you actually have any special knowledge of this. They don't seem to me like they would require so much resources.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    It's an open secret if you want to look around. For example: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html "Sadly Mozilla's annual report doesn't break down expenses on a per-project basis so it's impossible to know how much of the spending that is on Mozilla's programme is being spent on Firefox and how much is being spent on all these other side-projects. What you can at least infer is that the side-projects are expensive. Software development always is. Each of the projects named above (and all the other ones that were never announced or that I don't know about) will have required business analysts, designers, user researchers, developers, testers and all the other people you need in order to create a consumer web project. The biggest cost of course is the opportunity cost of just spending that money on other stuff - or nothing: it could have been invested to build an endowment. Now Mozilla is in the situation where apparently there isn't enough money left to fully fund Firefox development."

Not sure what you are writing regarding Firefox Send and Lockwise. They are/were good, or at least good for me.

by krzyk 5y ago

Not sure what you are writing regarding Firefox Send and Lockwise. They are/were good, or at least good for me.

They are decent - but they are undermining the development of the Firefox browser by consuming lots of precious time and money which is not what Firefox needs right now. Remember that Mozilla get's 90%+ of its funding, not from donations, but from Google for being the default search engine. Firefox's market share is now ~4%, dangerously close to where Google might decide that the payout isn't worth it. And close enough where Google thinks they could stop payments without causing any antitrust ire because it's such a small percentage it doesn't make any business sense. You would think Mozilla executives would take that as a sign that their funding and core product is at stake and they need to double-down on it. Instead, they fire engineering teams and spread into the many side projects in a desperate attempt at diversification that isn't working.

Miraste 5y ago
I get where you're coming from, and I would also love to have more work put into Firefox, but development speed has precisely nothing to do with why it's lost so much market share. Nobody is choosing a browser because of feature checklists. The average user has Chrome because it's the default on Android and ChromeOS, and on everything else a helpful notification tells you that your browser sucks and you should get Chrome as soon as you google something, or check your email, or watch a video, or open a document. It's the strongest software marketing in history and short of antitrust legislation I don't see any way for Mozilla to compete.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Maybe when Firefox was at 33% and Google was just starting to gain major dominance in Chrome, Firefox should have realized the game was changing and tried blocking ads for Chrome or even lying to Google properties that it was Chrome (as Microsoft Edge now is capable of even though Microsoft AFAIK hasn't flipped the switch). If Google complained, Firefox could say it was a response to anticompetitive behavior. Google would then be a catch-22 where if they cut Firefox's default search funding, they would be inviting lawsuits and investigations. It wouldn't be a healthy relationship but it would have given Firefox a stronger footing than right now. But Firefox just naively believed adding more fluff like Pocket and paying their executives ludicrous sums of cash would do the trick. You can't do that - you need to get into the mindset that Google wants to kill you and has the power and brand to do it, so you need to fight and stop the bleeding or get killed.
dralley 5y ago
"lots" But are they? I doubt you actually have any special knowledge of this. They don't seem to me like they would require so much resources.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  It's an open secret if you want to look around. For example: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html "Sadly Mozilla's annual report doesn't break down expenses on a per-project basis so it's impossible to know how much of the spending that is on Mozilla's programme is being spent on Firefox and how much is being spent on all these other side-projects. What you can at least infer is that the side-projects are expensive. Software development always is. Each of the projects named above (and all the other ones that were never announced or that I don't know about) will have required business analysts, designers, user researchers, developers, testers and all the other people you need in order to create a consumer web project. The biggest cost of course is the opportunity cost of just spending that money on other stuff - or nothing: it could have been invested to build an endowment. Now Mozilla is in the situation where apparently there isn't enough money left to fully fund Firefox development."