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>This feels like a good long term vision for Mozilla. >The browser wars are basically over and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into gett

>This feels like a good long term vision for Mozilla. >The browser wars are basically over and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Let's not just sit back and go "Oh well, they lost nothing they could do" shrug. They built their tech in such an obtuse and opinionated way it's impossible to integrate anywhere else, milked their millions selling off customer data to Google via the default search interface, burned the money on private jets and shockingly overpaid low-talent low-vision executives. Burned engineering talent on a VPN service no one asked for just because it's a good money making scam if you advertize it on the right podcasts, made huge parts of their deep engineering teams redundant. To be perfectly honest the only good long term vision for Mozilla is an empty office or a landfill. Their existence under the current management doomed the internet back to the IE6 era of browser variety. Firefox the browser would be way better off if Mozilla the company didn't exist. Baffles me they have any good will left at all from people who care about the internet. This company will literally do anything else than work hard on their browser.

KingOfCoders 4y ago
To me - as a long term FF user and Mozilla critic - it looks like: Spend money on everything except browser development (>$5 billions!). Market share down the drain. Use the market share as an argument for a lost cause and spend money on everything except Browser development. Ladybird - a browser spearheaded by one person - will expose Mozilla of what it is.
- leidenfrost 4y ago
  I haven't actually looked at it, but I have the feeling that the Firefox code base is godawful and nobody who isn't being paid for a 40 hour weekday actually wants to get involved in it.
  - asldkfjaslkdj 4y ago
    oh google pay a LOT of people to do it. Either outright commits by at-google email addresses, or things like summer of code. All to play catch up with the features they shove on chrome.
  - tommica 4y ago
    > I haven't actually looked at it, but I have the feeling that the Firefox code base is godawful... Damn, didn't know that one can develop skills to evaluate the quality of a code-base by just "feeling" it and not looking at it at all - quite impressive!
- nine_k 4y ago
  Firefox the browser is still a great piece of software, literally unique, and also open-source. Do you think any other company / organization would be able to take over it / fork it and develop it adequately? If so, where would they get the money? Many high-profile open-source projects (e.g. Python, Blender, well, Linux itself) managed to secure corporate sponsorships or donations in a much less toxic way than the Mozilla-Google deal.
  - rvba 4y ago
    Firefox is not unique. It is a reskin of chrome now.
    - nine_k 4y ago
      You are mistaken. It's an entirely different rendering engine, and an entirely different JS engine. You must be mixing it up with MS Edge.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  >Ladybird What’s the deal with serenityOS? Can it be run on bare metal yet, last I checked they only have a way to run it in a vm.
  - jraph 4y ago
    Yes. The browser, though, is very easy to build, requires few dependencies, a few minutes to build and runs fine on Linux. The result is quite impressive. And experimental.
  - gsich 4y ago
    Possible on some devices.
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    The RPi ARM64 port is showing promise, they now have it booting to the desktop.
woodruffw 4y ago
> Let's not just sit back and go "Oh well, they lost nothing they could do" shrug. They built their tech in such an obtuse and opinionated way it's impossible to integrate anywhere else, milked their millions selling off customer data to Google via the default search interface, burned the money on private jets and shockingly overpaid low-talent low-vision executives. Burned engineering talent on a VPN service no one asked for just because it's a good money making scam if you advertize it on the right podcasts, made huge parts of their deep engineering teams redundant. Is any of this actually evidenced somewhere? I'm not aware of Mozilla ever using private jets, and the last time I checked their executive compensation it was on the lower side of average for corporations with their footprint and financials. Maybe there are facts or sources that you aren't presenting, but this as-is just comes off as a screed.
Arainach 4y ago
Bias disclaimer: I've worked on Chrome and Edge, opinions strictly my own >and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Could and should Mozilla have done better? Yes. "Any energy?" is uncalled for, however. There was the entire Quantum rewrite for significant performance boosts (around the time Chrome started getting called out for bad perf). There's containers, anti-tracker tech, and a big privacy push. There is much more they could have done, and my outsider opinion is that Mozilla the organization lost its way and focused too much money and effort on things that don't matter, but it's not like they pulled an IE6 and abandoned Firefox.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  That's how it felt to me too. Stretched too thin. Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google, I can imagine how hard it is to try to thrive or just survive and maintaining a stable path when you're fighting big pockets. I just wished they could rebalance their allocation and focus on simple daily usability things. Just a bit more. ps: for instance, the screenshot tool is brilliant
  - fooker 4y ago
    >Stretched too thin Meanwhile they have had consistently growing revenues and consistently declining number of developers.
    - dblohm7 4y ago
      > Meanwhile they have had consistently growing revenues and consistently declining number of developers. Citation needed? And no, the 2020 layoffs don't count: It's 2023.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    Size of the company is actually irrelevant. What's important is the number of developers they put on the project.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
Mozilla is funded by Google. (i.e. Chrome.)
simon_o 4y ago
Exactly. Mozilla management is the Stephen Elop of Firefox.
majormajor 4y ago
Firefox has certainly improved a lot since 2008. Google has and had major distribution advantages for Chrome; same with Apple/MS and their browsers. I've gone back and forth between FF and Chrome a few times and since the big FF perf improvements several years ago, I don't understand why Chrome is still seen as a wildly better product except for residual Google goodwill among the tech crowd. FF has had much much much more reliable session management / sync for me for years now.
- kokanee 4y ago
  There must be something different about my web use, because I keep hearing anecdotally that Firefox has reasonable performance relative to chrome. My experience is now and has always been that they aren't even close. I'm working on a React app at the moment and just confirmed: some basic operations that are buttery-smooth and instantaneous in Chrome have noticeable delay in FF. No extensions installed in either.
- stevenhuang 4y ago
  Firefox has almost imperceptible jank, but it is there if you squint. Since forever I have a test that firefox always fails at: on first load, or if you haven't right clicked in a while, the context menu takes a perceptible amount of time to show up fully, and within this very short amount of time, you can visually see the menu options cascade out as the CSS engine finishes laying out and rendering the context menu. This kind of jank still happens on latest firefox. It's little things like this that make it feel unpolished. I never observe this behaviour on Chrome.
kibwen 4y ago
> Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. This demonstrates that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
JohnFen 4y ago
> This company will literally do anything else than work hard on their browser. OK, I'm not a fan of Firefox anymore but this isn't the case. They undeniably worked very, very hard and poured a lot of money into the revamp of Firefox.

KingOfCoders 4y ago

To me - as a long term FF user and Mozilla critic - it looks like: Spend money on everything except browser development (>$5 billions!). Market share down the drain. Use the market share as an argument for a lost cause and spend money on everything except Browser development. Ladybird - a browser spearheaded by one person - will expose Mozilla of what it is.

leidenfrost 4y ago
I haven't actually looked at it, but I have the feeling that the Firefox code base is godawful and nobody who isn't being paid for a 40 hour weekday actually wants to get involved in it.
- asldkfjaslkdj 4y ago
  oh google pay a LOT of people to do it. Either outright commits by at-google email addresses, or things like summer of code. All to play catch up with the features they shove on chrome.
- tommica 4y ago
  > I haven't actually looked at it, but I have the feeling that the Firefox code base is godawful... Damn, didn't know that one can develop skills to evaluate the quality of a code-base by just "feeling" it and not looking at it at all - quite impressive!
nine_k 4y ago
Firefox the browser is still a great piece of software, literally unique, and also open-source. Do you think any other company / organization would be able to take over it / fork it and develop it adequately? If so, where would they get the money? Many high-profile open-source projects (e.g. Python, Blender, well, Linux itself) managed to secure corporate sponsorships or donations in a much less toxic way than the Mozilla-Google deal.
- rvba 4y ago
  Firefox is not unique. It is a reskin of chrome now.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    You are mistaken. It's an entirely different rendering engine, and an entirely different JS engine. You must be mixing it up with MS Edge.
vxNsr 4y ago
>Ladybird What’s the deal with serenityOS? Can it be run on bare metal yet, last I checked they only have a way to run it in a vm.
- jraph 4y ago
  Yes. The browser, though, is very easy to build, requires few dependencies, a few minutes to build and runs fine on Linux. The result is quite impressive. And experimental.
- gsich 4y ago
  Possible on some devices.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  The RPi ARM64 port is showing promise, they now have it booting to the desktop.

woodruffw 4y ago

> Let's not just sit back and go "Oh well, they lost nothing they could do" shrug. They built their tech in such an obtuse and opinionated way it's impossible to integrate anywhere else, milked their millions selling off customer data to Google via the default search interface, burned the money on private jets and shockingly overpaid low-talent low-vision executives. Burned engineering talent on a VPN service no one asked for just because it's a good money making scam if you advertize it on the right podcasts, made huge parts of their deep engineering teams redundant. Is any of this actually evidenced somewhere? I'm not aware of Mozilla ever using private jets, and the last time I checked their executive compensation it was on the lower side of average for corporations with their footprint and financials. Maybe there are facts or sources that you aren't presenting, but this as-is just comes off as a screed.

Arainach 4y ago

Bias disclaimer: I've worked on Chrome and Edge, opinions strictly my own >and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Could and should Mozilla have done better? Yes. "Any energy?" is uncalled for, however. There was the entire Quantum rewrite for significant performance boosts (around the time Chrome started getting called out for bad perf). There's containers, anti-tracker tech, and a big privacy push. There is much more they could have done, and my outsider opinion is that Mozilla the organization lost its way and focused too much money and effort on things that don't matter, but it's not like they pulled an IE6 and abandoned Firefox.

agumonkey 4y ago
That's how it felt to me too. Stretched too thin. Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google, I can imagine how hard it is to try to thrive or just survive and maintaining a stable path when you're fighting big pockets. I just wished they could rebalance their allocation and focus on simple daily usability things. Just a bit more. ps: for instance, the screenshot tool is brilliant
- fooker 4y ago
  >Stretched too thin Meanwhile they have had consistently growing revenues and consistently declining number of developers.
  - dblohm7 4y ago
    > Meanwhile they have had consistently growing revenues and consistently declining number of developers. Citation needed? And no, the 2020 layoffs don't count: It's 2023.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Size of the company is actually irrelevant. What's important is the number of developers they put on the project.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago

Mozilla is funded by Google. (i.e. Chrome.)

simon_o 4y ago

Exactly. Mozilla management is the Stephen Elop of Firefox.

majormajor 4y ago

Firefox has certainly improved a lot since 2008. Google has and had major distribution advantages for Chrome; same with Apple/MS and their browsers. I've gone back and forth between FF and Chrome a few times and since the big FF perf improvements several years ago, I don't understand why Chrome is still seen as a wildly better product except for residual Google goodwill among the tech crowd. FF has had much much much more reliable session management / sync for me for years now.

kokanee 4y ago
There must be something different about my web use, because I keep hearing anecdotally that Firefox has reasonable performance relative to chrome. My experience is now and has always been that they aren't even close. I'm working on a React app at the moment and just confirmed: some basic operations that are buttery-smooth and instantaneous in Chrome have noticeable delay in FF. No extensions installed in either.
stevenhuang 4y ago
Firefox has almost imperceptible jank, but it is there if you squint. Since forever I have a test that firefox always fails at: on first load, or if you haven't right clicked in a while, the context menu takes a perceptible amount of time to show up fully, and within this very short amount of time, you can visually see the menu options cascade out as the CSS engine finishes laying out and rendering the context menu. This kind of jank still happens on latest firefox. It's little things like this that make it feel unpolished. I never observe this behaviour on Chrome.

kibwen 4y ago

> Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. This demonstrates that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

JohnFen 4y ago

> This company will literally do anything else than work hard on their browser. OK, I'm not a fan of Firefox anymore but this isn't the case. They undeniably worked very, very hard and poured a lot of money into the revamp of Firefox.