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Unfortunately in the current landscape, I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground. Browser
by summerlight 4y ago
Unfortunately in the current landscape, I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground. Browser development becomes an extremely complex, expensive project that requires at least hundreds of engineering headcounts and Mozilla cannot simply afford it. Worse, Servo was a kind of big bet to change the equation from the ground but Mozilla decided to abandon it. I don't see a plausible scenario to recover the market share in this situation?
- freediver 4y ago> I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground Probably true, as long as it depends on the same big tech for revenue.
- orev 4y agoServo was not abandoned, it was setup to act as a proving ground for various techniques, and the things that worked out well were integrated into Firefox. The group was disbanded because they accomplished their initial goals.
- summerlight 4y agoAnd most of its developers got laid off. At the moment, Mozilla told that they need to "put a crisper focus on new product development and go to market activities" because "economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue". I don't think it has achieved its original goal and gracefully disbanded, unless I see any strong evidence that the decision was primarily and independently driven by the Servo/Rust engineering leaders.
- Nextgrid 4y agoSee my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959277 - Firefox is not failing because of anti-competitiveness, it's failing because in its default configuration it's not bringing much to the table for the average user compared to Chrome or Edge.