3 ms·

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

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.
- kelnos 4y ago
  ... which is often directly related to company size, or at least funding. It's not like Mozilla has all these great independent revenue sources. Google and Microsoft can afford to throw significantly more money at their browser without thinking about how to make any money off of it, or off of related things. Mozilla has no such luck.
sam_goody 4y ago
Stretched too thin? They fired Brendan Eich, who invented JS, led Netscape past IE, and then headed Mozilla. Who, when fired, started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch, in a world already dominated by Chrome, and Safari. I know, I know, Eich donated personal money to some cause that some people on the internet didn't like. But from a business perspective, it was the stupidest thing they could have done, and is the point at which FF went from growth to (fast) loss. (And the cause itself was not justified, especially considering it was a private donation, it was a legal org (not like KK or whatever), and he apologized afterwards. Even if it was a mistake, that should not have been justification for firing him.)
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF On what metric is Brave bigger than Firefox?
- quesera 4y ago
  This is revisionist. Mozilla's mistake was not in firing Brendan Eich (and Brendan Eich was not fired). Mozilla's mistake was in promoting Brendan Eich to CEO. Mozilla employees said ~"we were not totally comfortable with Brendan as a leader in the Technology role, but we recognized his long history with the Org and his Technical excellence, so we kept mostly quiet. But we strongly object to his promotion to CEO and primary representative of Mozilla to the world, because we do not feel that he represents the Org's values and do not believe he will be an effective leader of us." Brendan probably could have returned to his CTO role with little fuss. But he may have had larger aspirations, he may have been sick of working under existing leadership, and he may have been personally disappointed by the Org's vote of no confidence in him. All are 100% reasonable! So he resigned. He was not fired. Yes the board might have "recommended" that he resign, but he would have been crazy (and display poor leadership abilities!) to try to stay in the CEO role after that drama. > and he apologized afterwards Has he? Not really. At least not contemporaneously with the events at Mozilla, and likely not since then. To be clear -- I don't think he should feel the need to apologize for personally-held beliefs. But I don't think it's possible to be a leader of people in any Org while simultaneously holding beliefs that are so offensive to the same people. ... We do agree that Brendan's resignation was a net loss for Mozilla. But he might have not been able to succeed in the Mozilla Org anyway. Even as CEO, he'd have the board to contend with. As CTO, he had the CEO and the board to contend with. If there are effective people in that group, they are not making themselves known.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch Not from scratch. Brave is modified Chromium.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
> Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google It's not about the overall company its about browser team. I'd love to see a comparison of the actual sizes of the teams creating browsers, isn't Safari only a handful of (admittedly extremely talented) people?

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.

kelnos 4y ago
... which is often directly related to company size, or at least funding. It's not like Mozilla has all these great independent revenue sources. Google and Microsoft can afford to throw significantly more money at their browser without thinking about how to make any money off of it, or off of related things. Mozilla has no such luck.

sam_goody 4y ago

Stretched too thin? They fired Brendan Eich, who invented JS, led Netscape past IE, and then headed Mozilla. Who, when fired, started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch, in a world already dominated by Chrome, and Safari. I know, I know, Eich donated personal money to some cause that some people on the internet didn't like. But from a business perspective, it was the stupidest thing they could have done, and is the point at which FF went from growth to (fast) loss. (And the cause itself was not justified, especially considering it was a private donation, it was a legal org (not like KK or whatever), and he apologized afterwards. Even if it was a mistake, that should not have been justification for firing him.)

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF On what metric is Brave bigger than Firefox?
quesera 4y ago
This is revisionist. Mozilla's mistake was not in firing Brendan Eich (and Brendan Eich was not fired). Mozilla's mistake was in promoting Brendan Eich to CEO. Mozilla employees said ~"we were not totally comfortable with Brendan as a leader in the Technology role, but we recognized his long history with the Org and his Technical excellence, so we kept mostly quiet. But we strongly object to his promotion to CEO and primary representative of Mozilla to the world, because we do not feel that he represents the Org's values and do not believe he will be an effective leader of us." Brendan probably could have returned to his CTO role with little fuss. But he may have had larger aspirations, he may have been sick of working under existing leadership, and he may have been personally disappointed by the Org's vote of no confidence in him. All are 100% reasonable! So he resigned. He was not fired. Yes the board might have "recommended" that he resign, but he would have been crazy (and display poor leadership abilities!) to try to stay in the CEO role after that drama. > and he apologized afterwards Has he? Not really. At least not contemporaneously with the events at Mozilla, and likely not since then. To be clear -- I don't think he should feel the need to apologize for personally-held beliefs. But I don't think it's possible to be a leader of people in any Org while simultaneously holding beliefs that are so offensive to the same people. ... We do agree that Brendan's resignation was a net loss for Mozilla. But he might have not been able to succeed in the Mozilla Org anyway. Even as CEO, he'd have the board to contend with. As CTO, he had the CEO and the board to contend with. If there are effective people in that group, they are not making themselves known.
JohnFen 4y ago
> started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch Not from scratch. Brave is modified Chromium.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

> Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google It's not about the overall company its about browser team. I'd love to see a comparison of the actual sizes of the teams creating browsers, isn't Safari only a handful of (admittedly extremely talented) people?