8 ms·

This is offtopic (and probably against the rules) but why is it that every thread about Firefox seems to be filled with toxic vitriol? It seems that everything

by worble 4y ago

This is offtopic (and probably against the rules) but why is it that every thread about Firefox seems to be filled with toxic vitriol? It seems that everything Firefox does causes anguish for everyone in the comments, but I rarely see such hate leveraged at Chrome posts/updates. What causes this effect?

mgkimsal 4y ago
Possibly a sense of betrayal? There was a time when FF seemed like it had a future of being a large player in the browser market. Hanging in single-digit usage seems like that time has come/gone, yet we continue to see loads of things that are... ancillary to that earlier dream of 'being #1' (or just a larger player). Some announcements are 'nice', but almost all seem to point to 'too little too late' for the original dream. I say this as someone who uses chrome/ff/safari daily, and threw a 'Mozilla release party' (with a Mozilla cake!) back when Mozilla hit 1.0, and donated early on to FF/mozilla. They seemingly squandered years becoming less and less relevant to day to day usage, and it bugs some folks. On top of that, we get treated to press releases and social media tidbits now and then of "we're laying off dozens/hundreds of people, and our CEO makes millions of dollars". Depressing to see what it's become vs what people expected years ago...
- nyolfen 4y ago
  speaking from a distance, mozilla has long struck me as one of these parasitized open source orgs like wikimedia, famous for one piece of software or project but stuffed to the brim with bureaucratic careerists who contribute nothing
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    I dunno, when I started as a junior dev I really appreciated mozillas js guides and other webdev related documentation. They just seemed to have top notch stuff that made me respect the foundation, since they didn’t need to go out of their way to produce such a communally helpful thing. I’m sure to a webdev that already had a ton of experience they might’ve thought it was a waste of their donation money or whatever but I personally got a lot of benefit
    - musicale 4y ago
      The MDN documentation is great actually.
      - solarkraft 4y ago
        1 great thing for 30 terrible ones.
        SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
        I dunno, like I said the docs were helpful to me when I was new, but probably less so to someone who never needed a reference in the first place. I can imagine maybe I just am not the people who benefit strongly for 30 “terrible” things. Like this ocr stuff doesn’t benefit me at all, but you know, I bet it’ll be hugely useful to some people. Idk this position just seems a little narrow minded and negative nancying.
        danielheath 4y ago
        Nup, I still use MDN constantly after 10+ years of regular JS work.
    - notatoad 4y ago
      MDN is still the gold standard for web docs, but my understanding is that Mozilla fired most of the people responsible for it [1] and it's currently run as a joint project with funding from microsoft, google, and various other companies who contribute to it. the list of MDN advisory board members [2] is a good reference for what companies are actually leading MDN these days [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90539632/mozilla-vows-mdn-isnt-going-anywhere-as-layoffs-cause-panic-among-developers https://www.fastcompany.com/90539632/mozilla-vows-mdn-isnt-g... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/MDN_Product_Advisory_Board https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/MDN_Product_Adv...
  - matthewmacleod 4y ago
    This is probably a direct result of the toxic polemic that invades every article published about Firefox.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  You're right, I feel betrayed. Not because the browser is behind (it is), but because Mozilla seems much more interested shilling in random proprietary shit than working on the browser. I know they're in financial trouble. But how they spend what's left doesn't make it look like they're interested in surviving that much, only management salaries. If one of the major chromium skins supported tree style tabs I'd long be gone.
- notatoad 4y ago
  speaking only for myself personally, this is pretty much it. i'm not intentionally coming into the threads and badmouthing firefox, but i get why people want to - it feels like they've very deliberatly set the perception of their brand as being "the good guys" in comparison to chrome/google, and they haven't really been living up to that. they're essentially just another corporate browser development firm, same as chrome, edge, opera, brave, etc, but they try to project the vibe of being the saviours of the internet. and at one point it seemed like they might be, but now we all understand that they're not. of late, it feels like they've come to the conclusion that their browser can't actually compete on merit, so they're leaning into the reputation of mozilla of old. but they're not the mozilla of old, they're just another company doing corporate things and collecting that fat paycheque from google for search engine placement.
  - janfoeh 4y ago
    I would argue that the fact they even have a "brand" has been a fork in the road. It used to be a bunch of people writing a piece of software for whatever damn reason they had, and that was enough to produce something notable and worthwhile. You'll have a hard time convincing me that anything so fundamental has changed that this cannot still be enough. The moment anyone does, I'll leave the net for good, because then all truly is lost.
wryun 4y ago
Chrome is understood to be controlled by a profit-seeking corporation. If people are using Chrome, they're mostly ok with this. Firefox is controlled by a not-for-profit which is dedicating to making the internet a better place. People who would also like to make the internet a better place tend to get quite worked up when they feel Mozilla is not doing what they'd do. (Disclaimer: I mostly happily use Firefox)
- luckylion 4y ago
  I'm a Firefox user, too, but let's keep the facts straight: Firefox is controlled by the Mozilla Corporation, a profit-seeking corporation. That corporation is owned by the Mozilla Foundation, but they want to make money with Firefox to fund their other projects, they're not there to fund the development of Firefox.
noicebrewery 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some light brigading going on from rivals. There's also some really lazy frontend devs out there that get indignant about testing on Firefox. Chrome is the new IE and Google is the new Microsoft. They make up their own standards on a whim, which thanks to market dominance everyone is forced to follow. They collect user data without permission. They waste computer resources. They push people towards other Google products in an anti competitive way. Mozilla has made some dumb mistakes here and there but it pales in comparison to the very serious threat that Chrome, and Chromium in general has to the free web and to users. It's worth noting that the complaints below have nothing to do with the article, which shows a pretty promising tech, and are just bagging out FF because just as you said, that's what happens on HN.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Mozilla has made some dumb mistakes here and there but it pales in comparison to the very serious threat that Chrome, and Chromium in general has to the free web and to users. The company that owns Chrome is nearly the sole financial support of Firefox.
  - morvita 4y ago
    Which is also based entirely on their market dominance. I'm 100% convinced Google continues handing millions of dollars a year to Mozilla so Google can point at Firefox as competition when the regulators come knocking.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      I suppose it's better than the alternative...
  - Steltek 4y ago
    I must have missed all that revenue coming to Google from "Chrome+" subscriptions. Google can't allow Firefox to die because it would raise questions about Google's own funding of Chrome.
- 4y ago
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
Because it used to feel like Firefox was on our side. At some point over the last 20 years it started to feel like they didn't care about us anymore. It felt like they cared more about attracting others than keeping us around because they know we're stuck without any viable alternatives. Everybody has always known Chrome was evil, so no one bothered getting an emotional attachment, at best the only argument anybody had in favor of chrome was that it was fast.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > It felt like they cared more about attracting others than keeping us around And worse, they weren't (and aren't) even attracting others, so their antagonism towards their long-term users was even less justified.
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    Colorways anyone?
- kelipso 4y ago
  > at best the only argument anybody had in favor of chrome was that it was fast Literally the only thing I and probably most people care about. 99.9% of the time I spend using a browser is browsing, so speed is pretty much the only thing I care about..
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    I switched to FF because it was faster than IE. Then it became slow, and I found chrome. Then I switched to chrome because it was faster, and that's the end of the story. I tried FF once on a work MacBook. It installed, but wouldn't launch. Uninstalled and haven't looked back since. I could probably make it work for me again, and it might be alright. Chrome just works, though, and my workflows all just work. I literally have no reason to switch... Until January. Once manifest v3 rolls out, i will be very interested to see just how badly hampered ublock becomes.
- causality0 4y ago
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
Maybe because people in the know think that Chrome is pure evil and Firefox should be the shiny knight in golden armor to behead the evil monster, but in reality it's a clown disguised as a knight. The announcement reads: "more than 1 billion people around the world who live with disabilities." And with the new ocr image feature they will all become Firefox users, just watch the usage statistics in the next few months. That's why.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure the OCR thing is just enabling a recent-ish, built-in Mac and iOS platform feature (I bet it already worked on FF iOS, in fact, since that's Webkit under the hood). Thought it is a pretty great feature, to be fair.
- kdmccormick 4y ago
  This is exactly the vitriol that GP is talking about. Yes, their market share is low, and yes, they're working on accessibility features anyway. Why does that bother you so much?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    They could be working on other things instead. If your car is missing a wheel, you can absolutely add a wheel chair ramp in the back, and that will improve the experience for some people who might potentially be drawn towards your car, but it's not going to sell your car on the mass market, because your car is missing a wheel.
    - cokeandpepsi 4y ago
      What the are you going on about? non-sense analogies? this a press release about an accessiablity features allowing firefox to support images to text when using a screen readers, and screen reader performance improvements the press release was written by someone who is blind and worked on the feature
      - 4y ago
cosmotic 4y ago
Firefox team has a history of making huge, sweeping UI changes which users absolutely hate. Chrome has remained largely unchanged since its first version. Users that chose Firefox because of the way the UI works at that moment often have the rug pulled out from under them.
BlackLotus89 4y ago
Yeah I'm a firefox user and I don't click on posts about chrome. This is just a guess, but maybe everyone left using firefox does so because they believe in a free and open web and privacy and wish for firefox to succeed, but often feel disappointed when many news about firefox seem like step backwards. I for one am ok with how firefox is right now, it could be better, I hope that mozilla invests more in firefox, but I'm still holding out for alternatives like ladybird even if they are years away from being a usable alternative. Anyway just my 2 cents
i_am_proteus 4y ago
I use Firefox, except when I need to look at a web site that was developed by people who don't care about Firefox users. When I see Firefox roll out features that don't really change anything, all the while steadily losing market share, I'm disappointed. But I also can't think of anything Mozilla could do to fight the dominance of Chrome and Safari, so I guess it's not that disappointing.
adamrezich 4y ago
your point might've been more salient if you'd waited for said vitriol to actually materialize before posting
macspoofing 4y ago
I don't think the hate is directed towards Firefox, but rather Mozilla. I know I lost faith in Mozilla when they posted a blog entry a couple years ago to detail reasons behind their restructuring and what their renewed focus is, and made it seem like Firefox was an afterthought [1]. Choice quote: >Mozilla exists so the internet can help the world collectively meet the range of challenges a moment like this presents. Firefox is a part of this. *But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests.* (emphasis mine) What other products? The entire organizational focus should be centered on Firefox so that it can meaningfully compete with Chrome, as Firefox is the only truly open alternative to Safari/Chrome. A little below that, they list their new 5 areas to focus on and ... no mention of Firefox there. [1]https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-mozilla/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-...
- leetnewb 4y ago
  Browsers don't generate revenue and Mozilla needs revenue to fund development of Firefox. Mozilla's competitors fund the development of browsers with revenue from other products. For Mozilla to effectively compete in the browser market, Mozilla needs revenue from other products.
  - musicale 4y ago
    Unfortunately those other products are nothing special and Mozilla seems happy to damage Firefox by adding ads for Pocket.
  - jujube3 4y ago
    Browsers do generate revenue, though. As per https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-mozilla-2022/ https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-mozilla-2022/ In its 2020 financial results, the most recent available, Mozilla listed its total revenue as $496 million, with royalties from search deals equaling $441 million The issue is that Mozilla, inc. is not happy with being a browser vendor and wants to go "beyond the browser" (as their management puts it.) Therefore, they use the browser revenue as a piggy bank for other projects like a rebranded VPN service, a bookmark storing service (Pocket), etc. and let the browser wither on the vine. In my opinion, if Firefox was owned by a company that liked and wanted to focus on Firefox, it would not be in a death spiral right now. But instead it's owned by a company that wants to use the browser as a cash cow while its market share collapses. And when it finally dies they'll just point at Chrome and say "there's nothing we could have done, Google is too big." Never mind the fact that Firefox beath IE which was also funded by a megacorporation.
fruffy 4y ago
It seems this is because the company has broadly shifted focus to softer social issues rather than technical topics. Mozilla keeps struggling with market share and users are anguished to see that their (former) favorite browser is investing resources in topics they find to be a distraction. At least that is my interpretation. Mozilla is not addressing the same audience any longer, a lot of which is technically-minded folk on HN, Reddit, /g/, etc.
hairofadog 4y ago
I think for the same reason that nobody is as critical of the Star Wars movies as the most die-hard Star Wars fan, or the same reason that nobody hates anybody as much as ex-spouses hate each other after a marriage gone wrong.
wolverine876 4y ago
Most such behavior is people following a herd. Firefox isn't the hot thing, so like last year's clothes, is ridiculed by people wanting to be (geek-)fashionable.
- HKH2 4y ago
  Do you remember Firefox pushing its limited edition themes (or whatever pretentious label they used)?
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    How does that disprove my assertion? It seems to be the behavior I described?
    - HKH2 4y ago
      Mozilla is following the herd too. I don't attack Firefox because it's not trendy, but because Mozilla is trying to be, and doesn't seem to know who its users are. As someone who used Firefox for 15 years, I stopped believing that they know what they're meant to be doing.
potta_coffee 4y ago
I enjoy Firefox and I'm still thankful but a lot of Mozilla's actions over the last year or so have degraded the product. In particular, mobile Firefox gets worse with every update. I haven't contributed to the vitriol but imagine that could be part of the reason.
musk_micropenis 4y ago
david_allison 4y ago
Personally: It's hypocritical to state that you're privacy focused, especially when telemetry is enabled by default, and doesn't inform the user that this is the case. I feel Mozilla has lost its way. 'delightful' in the title feels manipulative.
causality0 4y ago
Because Firefox constantly announces nearly pointless features it may or may not continue to support while it refuses to even acknowledge its major problems and slowly bleeds out into irrelevance. Firefox feature announcements are like when your alcoholic husband who won't take his heart pills or get his turn signal fixed throws a catered party to show everyone his new five-iron. I badly miss smiling at that little Firefox icon my taskbar and I'm tired of being re-invited to watch the decline.
musicale 4y ago
I think many people on HN feel that Firefox used to exist to serve the user and has lost its way, while Chrome always existed to serve Google and continues to do so.
deleted 4y ago
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xirdstl 4y ago
This is also offtopic, but I cringe when software companies use the word "delight" when describing their software.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Also modern and/or beautiful. If a third-party decides to write that, fine but praising your own work to this degree is rather annoying.
nialv7 4y ago
Really? What about extension manifest v3? The axing of jpeg XL?
_8j50 4y ago
It's the only alternative and Mozilla usually seems clueless and wasteful of precious resources. Hatred of Google domination is the fuel that fires the passion against Mozilla's random wasteful decisions really. Although in this specific case, I think what they're doing is great personally. The worst thing they did was firing the servo team for me. It's like Sun microsystems before Oracle ruined them, seeing a great org get ruined. I don't get it but the phenomena is not unique to mozilla. Signal is another example, they start doing great but then they need to find value outside of doing what is useful to customers and taking care of their core product. Valuing short term gains when you're big but nowhere big enough to take risks like they're taking. I feel like with the right prioritization firefox can totally decimate Chrome in just one year.
klondike_ 4y ago
A few things: It all started when they ousted Brendan Eich over some controversial political donations. I don't agree with this decision but Mozilla was catching a ton of bad PR so it was probably the only option. Right wing types have had a hateboner for Firefox ever since. For technically minded people, Mozilla lost a lot of credibility when they laid off many engineers working on innovative projects like Servo. Firefox development has been stagnant ever since, and they rarely push new non-cosmetic features.
- Yhippa 4y ago
  I'm sure there are people like Larry Ellison who give money to right-wing causes. Why don't people like him get ousted but Eich did?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    You can't easily cancel billionaires and remove them from things they own. You can absolutely remove people from non-profits (and replace them with your friends and funnel money into your other friends' projects).
belorn 4y ago
There is a lot of comments here that demonstrate how people feel today in regard to Mozilla (in particular) but also Firefox. The one thing I think is missing is the historical aspect. I think many here is both old enough but also remember how Mozilla and Firefox came into popularity during the time when Microsoft and Internet Explorer dominated the market, with Mozilla beating the closed and monopolistic designs with openness and community. People installed Firefox, people developed websites that worked for Firefox, other donated time and money, and little by little Firefox started to win over Microsoft. And then Mozilla changed direction, changed focus, changed their political direction, and slowly became something very different from what people joined that many years ago. People don't have that kind of personal history with Chrome. There are still criticism when Chrome does updated, but that is usually related to the relation between google and chrome with things like preventing ad-blocking.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  This is a fairly good summary for me, at least. Firefox used to be an awesome standards focused alternative to the bloatware that was Internet Explorer. But that's not really what Firefox is anymore, under the current direction of Mozilla Corp. Lately, the goals seem to be about copying Chrome (things like killing XUL in favor of webext, jumping on similar UI themes, Forcing bloatware into the browser by integrating things like pocket, laying off most of the dev team for servo, etc). Basically - the current vision of Mozilla just really doesn't line up with what got me interested in Firefox as a younger dev. Am I glad Firefox is still around? Fuck yes. But I'm glad in the same sense that I'm glad Safari is still here - alternatives to chromium are healthy. But it's lost a lot of the luster it had. The focus just isn't on making a great browser that empowers users (not to discredit the folks working on it). The focus shifted to a multi-project revenue based model exactly like all the other for-profit companies (of which Mozilla Corporation definitely is). And not only is that not great for me as a user of the product - they aren't even doing it all that well, which is like watching the project sell its soul for pennies on the dollar. So really - it's absolutely the history. I expect better from Firefox than I do from Chrome, and I'm not really a fan of Mozilla Corp at all. Too much talk, too many buzzwords, too much money spent like a typical corp.
deleted 4y ago
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ilyt 4y ago
Disappointment mostly. FF went from de facto browser to "my employer isn't even obliged to support it for clients because market penetration is below 5%". Like, containers are nice feature.... and I ran out of things to praise them for. Quantum finally caught on speed but broke stuff I used, and limited plugins so now I can't have vertical tab bar normally, existing tab bar addons have to shove themselves into sidebar. ...which means every time I Ctrl-H it gets replaced with History! and disappears completely when I enable it again! Wasn't a problem before but someone decided "plugin replacing everything you see on site is fine, but modyfing browser window? BIG NONO". I even had to dig in some files to hide the actual tabs because of course plugin can't be possibly allowed to do that. They had also few PR blunders like auto-installing some addon for promotion some time ago, or the fact they bundled pocket with it. I mean it's a nice service that I used before anyway but people complained Mozilla decided to essentially force-install a plugin in it. While before they were leader, now they are catching up, all while getting involved in some random stuff instead of making better browser. And the fact marketshare is low also means some sites just subtly break from time to time.
shakow 4y ago
> What causes this effect? Because in 2020: https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e... Because in 2022: http://techrights.org/2022/02/17/mozilla-salaries/ http://techrights.org/2022/02/17/mozilla-salaries/ All the while slashing the headcount of actual engineers, canning the very promising Servo, canning Android extensions, slowing down the development on Firefox (how long has been the new Android Firefox in beta now?), and spending most of their lavish resources on half-assed, badly sustained random initiatives there an there (Pocket, VPN, Monitor, ...). Frankly, IMHO, the Mozilla foundation is the current scam of the century when it comes down to the Open Source world.
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gnicholas 4y ago
When are there posts about Chrome, other than the rage-filled threads about manifest v3?
bubblicious 4y ago
The data seems to indicate the opposite? For ex look at the top 30 firefox threads in the past year: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=firefox&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... > "I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome" > "Reasons to ditch Chrome and use Firefox" and a lot of threads highlighting new features for FF Compare that to the top 30 chrome threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=chrome&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... > "Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening" > "PSA: uBlock/AdBlocks on Chrome to lose function thanks to Manifestv3" > "Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab" > "Chrome allows websites to write to the clipboard without the user’s permission" etc
thiht 4y ago
I had the same thought. This article is about cool features in Firefox, and the 3 top comments are about unrelated stuff and/or just toxic. HN is disappointing sometimes.

by worble 4y ago

mgkimsal 4y ago

Possibly a sense of betrayal? There was a time when FF seemed like it had a future of being a large player in the browser market. Hanging in single-digit usage seems like that time has come/gone, yet we continue to see loads of things that are... ancillary to that earlier dream of 'being #1' (or just a larger player). Some announcements are 'nice', but almost all seem to point to 'too little too late' for the original dream. I say this as someone who uses chrome/ff/safari daily, and threw a 'Mozilla release party' (with a Mozilla cake!) back when Mozilla hit 1.0, and donated early on to FF/mozilla. They seemingly squandered years becoming less and less relevant to day to day usage, and it bugs some folks. On top of that, we get treated to press releases and social media tidbits now and then of "we're laying off dozens/hundreds of people, and our CEO makes millions of dollars". Depressing to see what it's become vs what people expected years ago...

nyolfen 4y ago
speaking from a distance, mozilla has long struck me as one of these parasitized open source orgs like wikimedia, famous for one piece of software or project but stuffed to the brim with bureaucratic careerists who contribute nothing
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  I dunno, when I started as a junior dev I really appreciated mozillas js guides and other webdev related documentation. They just seemed to have top notch stuff that made me respect the foundation, since they didn’t need to go out of their way to produce such a communally helpful thing. I’m sure to a webdev that already had a ton of experience they might’ve thought it was a waste of their donation money or whatever but I personally got a lot of benefit
  - musicale 4y ago
    The MDN documentation is great actually.
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      1 great thing for 30 terrible ones.
      - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
        I dunno, like I said the docs were helpful to me when I was new, but probably less so to someone who never needed a reference in the first place. I can imagine maybe I just am not the people who benefit strongly for 30 “terrible” things. Like this ocr stuff doesn’t benefit me at all, but you know, I bet it’ll be hugely useful to some people. Idk this position just seems a little narrow minded and negative nancying.
        danielheath 4y ago
        Nup, I still use MDN constantly after 10+ years of regular JS work.
  - notatoad 4y ago
    MDN is still the gold standard for web docs, but my understanding is that Mozilla fired most of the people responsible for it [1] and it's currently run as a joint project with funding from microsoft, google, and various other companies who contribute to it. the list of MDN advisory board members [2] is a good reference for what companies are actually leading MDN these days [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90539632/mozilla-vows-mdn-isnt-going-anywhere-as-layoffs-cause-panic-among-developers https://www.fastcompany.com/90539632/mozilla-vows-mdn-isnt-g... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/MDN_Product_Advisory_Board https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/MDN_Product_Adv...
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  This is probably a direct result of the toxic polemic that invades every article published about Firefox.
solarkraft 4y ago
You're right, I feel betrayed. Not because the browser is behind (it is), but because Mozilla seems much more interested shilling in random proprietary shit than working on the browser. I know they're in financial trouble. But how they spend what's left doesn't make it look like they're interested in surviving that much, only management salaries. If one of the major chromium skins supported tree style tabs I'd long be gone.
notatoad 4y ago
speaking only for myself personally, this is pretty much it. i'm not intentionally coming into the threads and badmouthing firefox, but i get why people want to - it feels like they've very deliberatly set the perception of their brand as being "the good guys" in comparison to chrome/google, and they haven't really been living up to that. they're essentially just another corporate browser development firm, same as chrome, edge, opera, brave, etc, but they try to project the vibe of being the saviours of the internet. and at one point it seemed like they might be, but now we all understand that they're not. of late, it feels like they've come to the conclusion that their browser can't actually compete on merit, so they're leaning into the reputation of mozilla of old. but they're not the mozilla of old, they're just another company doing corporate things and collecting that fat paycheque from google for search engine placement.
- janfoeh 4y ago
  I would argue that the fact they even have a "brand" has been a fork in the road. It used to be a bunch of people writing a piece of software for whatever damn reason they had, and that was enough to produce something notable and worthwhile. You'll have a hard time convincing me that anything so fundamental has changed that this cannot still be enough. The moment anyone does, I'll leave the net for good, because then all truly is lost.

wryun 4y ago

Chrome is understood to be controlled by a profit-seeking corporation. If people are using Chrome, they're mostly ok with this. Firefox is controlled by a not-for-profit which is dedicating to making the internet a better place. People who would also like to make the internet a better place tend to get quite worked up when they feel Mozilla is not doing what they'd do. (Disclaimer: I mostly happily use Firefox)

luckylion 4y ago
I'm a Firefox user, too, but let's keep the facts straight: Firefox is controlled by the Mozilla Corporation, a profit-seeking corporation. That corporation is owned by the Mozilla Foundation, but they want to make money with Firefox to fund their other projects, they're not there to fund the development of Firefox.

noicebrewery 4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some light brigading going on from rivals. There's also some really lazy frontend devs out there that get indignant about testing on Firefox. Chrome is the new IE and Google is the new Microsoft. They make up their own standards on a whim, which thanks to market dominance everyone is forced to follow. They collect user data without permission. They waste computer resources. They push people towards other Google products in an anti competitive way. Mozilla has made some dumb mistakes here and there but it pales in comparison to the very serious threat that Chrome, and Chromium in general has to the free web and to users. It's worth noting that the complaints below have nothing to do with the article, which shows a pretty promising tech, and are just bagging out FF because just as you said, that's what happens on HN.

pessimizer 4y ago
> Mozilla has made some dumb mistakes here and there but it pales in comparison to the very serious threat that Chrome, and Chromium in general has to the free web and to users. The company that owns Chrome is nearly the sole financial support of Firefox.
- morvita 4y ago
  Which is also based entirely on their market dominance. I'm 100% convinced Google continues handing millions of dollars a year to Mozilla so Google can point at Firefox as competition when the regulators come knocking.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    I suppose it's better than the alternative...
- Steltek 4y ago
  I must have missed all that revenue coming to Google from "Chrome+" subscriptions. Google can't allow Firefox to die because it would raise questions about Google's own funding of Chrome.
4y ago

dec0dedab0de 4y ago

Because it used to feel like Firefox was on our side. At some point over the last 20 years it started to feel like they didn't care about us anymore. It felt like they cared more about attracting others than keeping us around because they know we're stuck without any viable alternatives. Everybody has always known Chrome was evil, so no one bothered getting an emotional attachment, at best the only argument anybody had in favor of chrome was that it was fast.

pessimizer 4y ago
> It felt like they cared more about attracting others than keeping us around And worse, they weren't (and aren't) even attracting others, so their antagonism towards their long-term users was even less justified.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Colorways anyone?
kelipso 4y ago
> at best the only argument anybody had in favor of chrome was that it was fast Literally the only thing I and probably most people care about. 99.9% of the time I spend using a browser is browsing, so speed is pretty much the only thing I care about..
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I switched to FF because it was faster than IE. Then it became slow, and I found chrome. Then I switched to chrome because it was faster, and that's the end of the story. I tried FF once on a work MacBook. It installed, but wouldn't launch. Uninstalled and haven't looked back since. I could probably make it work for me again, and it might be alright. Chrome just works, though, and my workflows all just work. I literally have no reason to switch... Until January. Once manifest v3 rolls out, i will be very interested to see just how badly hampered ublock becomes.
causality0 4y ago

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

Maybe because people in the know think that Chrome is pure evil and Firefox should be the shiny knight in golden armor to behead the evil monster, but in reality it's a clown disguised as a knight. The announcement reads: "more than 1 billion people around the world who live with disabilities." And with the new ocr image feature they will all become Firefox users, just watch the usage statistics in the next few months. That's why.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I'm pretty sure the OCR thing is just enabling a recent-ish, built-in Mac and iOS platform feature (I bet it already worked on FF iOS, in fact, since that's Webkit under the hood). Thought it is a pretty great feature, to be fair.
kdmccormick 4y ago
This is exactly the vitriol that GP is talking about. Yes, their market share is low, and yes, they're working on accessibility features anyway. Why does that bother you so much?
- luckylion 4y ago
  They could be working on other things instead. If your car is missing a wheel, you can absolutely add a wheel chair ramp in the back, and that will improve the experience for some people who might potentially be drawn towards your car, but it's not going to sell your car on the mass market, because your car is missing a wheel.
  - cokeandpepsi 4y ago
    What the are you going on about? non-sense analogies? this a press release about an accessiablity features allowing firefox to support images to text when using a screen readers, and screen reader performance improvements the press release was written by someone who is blind and worked on the feature
    - 4y ago

cosmotic 4y ago

Firefox team has a history of making huge, sweeping UI changes which users absolutely hate. Chrome has remained largely unchanged since its first version. Users that chose Firefox because of the way the UI works at that moment often have the rug pulled out from under them.

BlackLotus89 4y ago

Yeah I'm a firefox user and I don't click on posts about chrome. This is just a guess, but maybe everyone left using firefox does so because they believe in a free and open web and privacy and wish for firefox to succeed, but often feel disappointed when many news about firefox seem like step backwards. I for one am ok with how firefox is right now, it could be better, I hope that mozilla invests more in firefox, but I'm still holding out for alternatives like ladybird even if they are years away from being a usable alternative. Anyway just my 2 cents

i_am_proteus 4y ago

I use Firefox, except when I need to look at a web site that was developed by people who don't care about Firefox users. When I see Firefox roll out features that don't really change anything, all the while steadily losing market share, I'm disappointed. But I also can't think of anything Mozilla could do to fight the dominance of Chrome and Safari, so I guess it's not that disappointing.

adamrezich 4y ago

your point might've been more salient if you'd waited for said vitriol to actually materialize before posting

macspoofing 4y ago

I don't think the hate is directed towards Firefox, but rather Mozilla. I know I lost faith in Mozilla when they posted a blog entry a couple years ago to detail reasons behind their restructuring and what their renewed focus is, and made it seem like Firefox was an afterthought [1]. Choice quote: >Mozilla exists so the internet can help the world collectively meet the range of challenges a moment like this presents. Firefox is a part of this. *But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests.* (emphasis mine) What other products? The entire organizational focus should be centered on Firefox so that it can meaningfully compete with Chrome, as Firefox is the only truly open alternative to Safari/Chrome. A little below that, they list their new 5 areas to focus on and ... no mention of Firefox there. [1]https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-mozilla/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-...

leetnewb 4y ago
Browsers don't generate revenue and Mozilla needs revenue to fund development of Firefox. Mozilla's competitors fund the development of browsers with revenue from other products. For Mozilla to effectively compete in the browser market, Mozilla needs revenue from other products.
- musicale 4y ago
  Unfortunately those other products are nothing special and Mozilla seems happy to damage Firefox by adding ads for Pocket.
- jujube3 4y ago
  Browsers do generate revenue, though. As per https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-mozilla-2022/ https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-mozilla-2022/ In its 2020 financial results, the most recent available, Mozilla listed its total revenue as $496 million, with royalties from search deals equaling $441 million The issue is that Mozilla, inc. is not happy with being a browser vendor and wants to go "beyond the browser" (as their management puts it.) Therefore, they use the browser revenue as a piggy bank for other projects like a rebranded VPN service, a bookmark storing service (Pocket), etc. and let the browser wither on the vine. In my opinion, if Firefox was owned by a company that liked and wanted to focus on Firefox, it would not be in a death spiral right now. But instead it's owned by a company that wants to use the browser as a cash cow while its market share collapses. And when it finally dies they'll just point at Chrome and say "there's nothing we could have done, Google is too big." Never mind the fact that Firefox beath IE which was also funded by a megacorporation.

fruffy 4y ago

It seems this is because the company has broadly shifted focus to softer social issues rather than technical topics. Mozilla keeps struggling with market share and users are anguished to see that their (former) favorite browser is investing resources in topics they find to be a distraction. At least that is my interpretation. Mozilla is not addressing the same audience any longer, a lot of which is technically-minded folk on HN, Reddit, /g/, etc.

hairofadog 4y ago

I think for the same reason that nobody is as critical of the Star Wars movies as the most die-hard Star Wars fan, or the same reason that nobody hates anybody as much as ex-spouses hate each other after a marriage gone wrong.

wolverine876 4y ago

Most such behavior is people following a herd. Firefox isn't the hot thing, so like last year's clothes, is ridiculed by people wanting to be (geek-)fashionable.

HKH2 4y ago
Do you remember Firefox pushing its limited edition themes (or whatever pretentious label they used)?
- wolverine876 4y ago
  How does that disprove my assertion? It seems to be the behavior I described?
  - HKH2 4y ago
    Mozilla is following the herd too. I don't attack Firefox because it's not trendy, but because Mozilla is trying to be, and doesn't seem to know who its users are. As someone who used Firefox for 15 years, I stopped believing that they know what they're meant to be doing.

potta_coffee 4y ago

I enjoy Firefox and I'm still thankful but a lot of Mozilla's actions over the last year or so have degraded the product. In particular, mobile Firefox gets worse with every update. I haven't contributed to the vitriol but imagine that could be part of the reason.

musk_micropenis 4y ago

david_allison 4y ago

Personally: It's hypocritical to state that you're privacy focused, especially when telemetry is enabled by default, and doesn't inform the user that this is the case. I feel Mozilla has lost its way. 'delightful' in the title feels manipulative.

causality0 4y ago

Because Firefox constantly announces nearly pointless features it may or may not continue to support while it refuses to even acknowledge its major problems and slowly bleeds out into irrelevance. Firefox feature announcements are like when your alcoholic husband who won't take his heart pills or get his turn signal fixed throws a catered party to show everyone his new five-iron. I badly miss smiling at that little Firefox icon my taskbar and I'm tired of being re-invited to watch the decline.

musicale 4y ago

I think many people on HN feel that Firefox used to exist to serve the user and has lost its way, while Chrome always existed to serve Google and continues to do so.

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xirdstl 4y ago

This is also offtopic, but I cringe when software companies use the word "delight" when describing their software.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
Also modern and/or beautiful. If a third-party decides to write that, fine but praising your own work to this degree is rather annoying.

nialv7 4y ago

Really? What about extension manifest v3? The axing of jpeg XL?

_8j50 4y ago

It's the only alternative and Mozilla usually seems clueless and wasteful of precious resources. Hatred of Google domination is the fuel that fires the passion against Mozilla's random wasteful decisions really. Although in this specific case, I think what they're doing is great personally. The worst thing they did was firing the servo team for me. It's like Sun microsystems before Oracle ruined them, seeing a great org get ruined. I don't get it but the phenomena is not unique to mozilla. Signal is another example, they start doing great but then they need to find value outside of doing what is useful to customers and taking care of their core product. Valuing short term gains when you're big but nowhere big enough to take risks like they're taking. I feel like with the right prioritization firefox can totally decimate Chrome in just one year.

klondike_ 4y ago

A few things: It all started when they ousted Brendan Eich over some controversial political donations. I don't agree with this decision but Mozilla was catching a ton of bad PR so it was probably the only option. Right wing types have had a hateboner for Firefox ever since. For technically minded people, Mozilla lost a lot of credibility when they laid off many engineers working on innovative projects like Servo. Firefox development has been stagnant ever since, and they rarely push new non-cosmetic features.

Yhippa 4y ago
I'm sure there are people like Larry Ellison who give money to right-wing causes. Why don't people like him get ousted but Eich did?
- luckylion 4y ago
  You can't easily cancel billionaires and remove them from things they own. You can absolutely remove people from non-profits (and replace them with your friends and funnel money into your other friends' projects).

belorn 4y ago

There is a lot of comments here that demonstrate how people feel today in regard to Mozilla (in particular) but also Firefox. The one thing I think is missing is the historical aspect. I think many here is both old enough but also remember how Mozilla and Firefox came into popularity during the time when Microsoft and Internet Explorer dominated the market, with Mozilla beating the closed and monopolistic designs with openness and community. People installed Firefox, people developed websites that worked for Firefox, other donated time and money, and little by little Firefox started to win over Microsoft. And then Mozilla changed direction, changed focus, changed their political direction, and slowly became something very different from what people joined that many years ago. People don't have that kind of personal history with Chrome. There are still criticism when Chrome does updated, but that is usually related to the relation between google and chrome with things like preventing ad-blocking.

horsawlarway 4y ago
This is a fairly good summary for me, at least. Firefox used to be an awesome standards focused alternative to the bloatware that was Internet Explorer. But that's not really what Firefox is anymore, under the current direction of Mozilla Corp. Lately, the goals seem to be about copying Chrome (things like killing XUL in favor of webext, jumping on similar UI themes, Forcing bloatware into the browser by integrating things like pocket, laying off most of the dev team for servo, etc). Basically - the current vision of Mozilla just really doesn't line up with what got me interested in Firefox as a younger dev. Am I glad Firefox is still around? Fuck yes. But I'm glad in the same sense that I'm glad Safari is still here - alternatives to chromium are healthy. But it's lost a lot of the luster it had. The focus just isn't on making a great browser that empowers users (not to discredit the folks working on it). The focus shifted to a multi-project revenue based model exactly like all the other for-profit companies (of which Mozilla Corporation definitely is). And not only is that not great for me as a user of the product - they aren't even doing it all that well, which is like watching the project sell its soul for pennies on the dollar. So really - it's absolutely the history. I expect better from Firefox than I do from Chrome, and I'm not really a fan of Mozilla Corp at all. Too much talk, too many buzzwords, too much money spent like a typical corp.

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ilyt 4y ago

Disappointment mostly. FF went from de facto browser to "my employer isn't even obliged to support it for clients because market penetration is below 5%". Like, containers are nice feature.... and I ran out of things to praise them for. Quantum finally caught on speed but broke stuff I used, and limited plugins so now I can't have vertical tab bar normally, existing tab bar addons have to shove themselves into sidebar. ...which means every time I Ctrl-H it gets replaced with History! and disappears completely when I enable it again! Wasn't a problem before but someone decided "plugin replacing everything you see on site is fine, but modyfing browser window? BIG NONO". I even had to dig in some files to hide the actual tabs because of course plugin can't be possibly allowed to do that. They had also few PR blunders like auto-installing some addon for promotion some time ago, or the fact they bundled pocket with it. I mean it's a nice service that I used before anyway but people complained Mozilla decided to essentially force-install a plugin in it. While before they were leader, now they are catching up, all while getting involved in some random stuff instead of making better browser. And the fact marketshare is low also means some sites just subtly break from time to time.

shakow 4y ago

> What causes this effect? Because in 2020: https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e... Because in 2022: http://techrights.org/2022/02/17/mozilla-salaries/ http://techrights.org/2022/02/17/mozilla-salaries/ All the while slashing the headcount of actual engineers, canning the very promising Servo, canning Android extensions, slowing down the development on Firefox (how long has been the new Android Firefox in beta now?), and spending most of their lavish resources on half-assed, badly sustained random initiatives there an there (Pocket, VPN, Monitor, ...). Frankly, IMHO, the Mozilla foundation is the current scam of the century when it comes down to the Open Source world.

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gnicholas 4y ago

When are there posts about Chrome, other than the rage-filled threads about manifest v3?

bubblicious 4y ago

The data seems to indicate the opposite? For ex look at the top 30 firefox threads in the past year: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=firefox&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... > "I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome" > "Reasons to ditch Chrome and use Firefox" and a lot of threads highlighting new features for FF Compare that to the top 30 chrome threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=chrome&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... > "Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening" > "PSA: uBlock/AdBlocks on Chrome to lose function thanks to Manifestv3" > "Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab" > "Chrome allows websites to write to the clipboard without the user’s permission" etc

thiht 4y ago

I had the same thought. This article is about cool features in Firefox, and the 3 top comments are about unrelated stuff and/or just toxic. HN is disappointing sometimes.