5 ms·

While true, Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one (contrary to their claims,

by Zuiii 3y ago

While true, Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one (contrary to their claims, most extensions worked fine). I would be really interested in reading the rationale behind their decision. The real one.

friend_and_foe 3y ago
You'll never get the real one unfortunately, because corpos (profit and non profit alike) do everything in marketingpseak and think their customers and users are stupid children that have to be bullshitted into behaving.
- Zuiii 3y ago
  Tangentially related, but your comment reminded me of this classic: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/td-p/16863 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...
  - phatfish 3y ago
    Maybe if author of that comment put as much effort into developing their own browser as they seemed to put into that weird rant we would have a new Chrome competitor which meets their exceptions.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      The entitlement and blatant hypocrisy of Mozilla haters is insane. "Mozilla does weird things to try and diversify their income so that Google cannot shut them down one day randomly if they're finally competitive, but that's not the one blessed thing of committing code to the single blessed repository of Firefox, so instead I'm going to use the browser built by a company that makes all of its money through advertising, explicitly sends pretty much everything you do in their browser to their advertising apparatus, repeatedly pushed unnecessary "standards" that would make it easier to fingerprint users, and is now trying to tee-up a standard that will make it possible to cryptographically prevent users from blocking ads in the future." Come the fuck on
      - friend_and_foe 3y ago
        See you misunderstand me. I don't use chrome. I don't like chrome. chrome mobile doesn't allow extensions either, and pretty obviously to protect google from adblockers. It seems to me that your only argument is chrome is evil, and I never once said I use chrome. You're arguing with someone that isn't here. I don't believe Mozilla cares about the open web. If they did they wouldn't continuously kneecap their users. They use this open web argument to browbeat people into accepting their awful decisions that users don't like, then they do things one after another that have a predictable outcome of reducing their market share. Hard line firefox users make every excuse in the world for why people should tolerate any abuse they throw at people, it's similar to how political parties scaremonger about their opponents. It's grimy. I want to like firefox. I want to use it. It's frustrating seeing it fall like this which is where the anger comes from. It's like having a fuck up brother and when you tell him he needs to quit fucking up he calls you a piece of shit tool of the bourgeoise. Who needs that bullshit in their lives? So I don't feel entitled to Firefox, I use alternatives.
      - Zuiii 3y ago
        Many don't see this way. His criticisms were funny and on point to boot ;)
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      So I could build a web browser with 5 minutes of typing online? Wow.
    - Zuiii 3y ago
      Don't be ridiculous. Voicing his disillusionment in a funny witty way is orders of magnitude less effort than writing an entire browser.
orra 3y ago
> Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one Er, Mozilla marketshare on Android is low because of Google anti competitively bundling Chrome with the Play Store.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Firefox defeated IE which was bundled with Windows at the time. Chrome continues to defeat everyone, including Edge which is bundled with Windows. Firefox's reason for irrelevance today has nothing to do with whether its competitors are bundled with operating systems.
  - orra 3y ago
    Chrome is, and majorly was, pushed by Google websites. Using one near monopoly to create another. Also, Firefox never defeated Internet Explorer. You are misremembering that. Firefox once made impressive market gains despite the anticompetitive competitor bundling. That doesn't mean it's feasible to keep doing it.
  - blackoil 3y ago
    IE team was disbanded and had no release for 5 years.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      IE also never had mountains of supposedly techy people instructing naive users to use Chrome because "it's faster", which was only true in the very beginning, as if saving 200ms per page load is worth putting Google in full control of the internet.
NoboruWataya 3y ago
Disabling extensions had nothing to do with their market share. We have extensions on desktop and they are still being squeezed out there. And judging by some other comments here there is apparently a fork of Firefox for Android that allows extensions - which even I had never heard of until now.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > Disabling extensions had nothing to do with their market share It kinda did because it removed a reason to pick Firefox over its competitors. If Firefox doesn't actually bring anything tangible to the table, why would people pick it over whatever they're currently using (which is likely to be Chrome)? The average user doesn't hate Google like some people do, so a purely ideological argument of "it isn't Chrome" won't work (and didn't work as its marketshare kept declining). Users need tangible, non-niche features to switch.
  - dralley 3y ago
    Mobile Firefox already had shit marketshare when they did the refresh and limited extensions. That wasn't what caused the shit marketshare.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    >It kinda did because it removed a reason to pick Firefox over its competitors. The reason to pick firefox over competitors is because they are the ONLY web browser vendor who isn't actively handicapping the internet. Firefox could smear my face with literal shit every time I use it and it would still be less hostile to end users than, let's see what chrome is doing this week, oh yes, forcing everyone to build attestation systems into the internet so that you eventually will be cryptographically prevented from blocking ads. Jesus. Perspective people
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      > The reason to pick firefox over competitors is because they are the ONLY web browser vendor who isn't actively handicapping the internet. Nobody among regular people cares. Banking on ideology alone is in fact how you end up with a low single-digit percentage of market share. Even if Mozilla actually had your best interests at heart, it still needs to have decent marketshare (including from people who do not know/care about ideology) to actually have any weight in web standards discussions, otherwise Chrome can just ignore it and push whatever agenda they have.

by Zuiii 3y ago

friend_and_foe 3y ago

You'll never get the real one unfortunately, because corpos (profit and non profit alike) do everything in marketingpseak and think their customers and users are stupid children that have to be bullshitted into behaving.

Zuiii 3y ago
Tangentially related, but your comment reminded me of this classic: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/td-p/16863 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...
- phatfish 3y ago
  Maybe if author of that comment put as much effort into developing their own browser as they seemed to put into that weird rant we would have a new Chrome competitor which meets their exceptions.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    The entitlement and blatant hypocrisy of Mozilla haters is insane. "Mozilla does weird things to try and diversify their income so that Google cannot shut them down one day randomly if they're finally competitive, but that's not the one blessed thing of committing code to the single blessed repository of Firefox, so instead I'm going to use the browser built by a company that makes all of its money through advertising, explicitly sends pretty much everything you do in their browser to their advertising apparatus, repeatedly pushed unnecessary "standards" that would make it easier to fingerprint users, and is now trying to tee-up a standard that will make it possible to cryptographically prevent users from blocking ads in the future." Come the fuck on
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      See you misunderstand me. I don't use chrome. I don't like chrome. chrome mobile doesn't allow extensions either, and pretty obviously to protect google from adblockers. It seems to me that your only argument is chrome is evil, and I never once said I use chrome. You're arguing with someone that isn't here. I don't believe Mozilla cares about the open web. If they did they wouldn't continuously kneecap their users. They use this open web argument to browbeat people into accepting their awful decisions that users don't like, then they do things one after another that have a predictable outcome of reducing their market share. Hard line firefox users make every excuse in the world for why people should tolerate any abuse they throw at people, it's similar to how political parties scaremonger about their opponents. It's grimy. I want to like firefox. I want to use it. It's frustrating seeing it fall like this which is where the anger comes from. It's like having a fuck up brother and when you tell him he needs to quit fucking up he calls you a piece of shit tool of the bourgeoise. Who needs that bullshit in their lives? So I don't feel entitled to Firefox, I use alternatives.
    - Zuiii 3y ago
      Many don't see this way. His criticisms were funny and on point to boot ;)
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    So I could build a web browser with 5 minutes of typing online? Wow.
  - Zuiii 3y ago
    Don't be ridiculous. Voicing his disillusionment in a funny witty way is orders of magnitude less effort than writing an entire browser.

orra 3y ago

> Mozilla unfortunately had already forfeited the Android browser market to other competitors by not enabling this day one Er, Mozilla marketshare on Android is low because of Google anti competitively bundling Chrome with the Play Store.

Dalewyn 3y ago
Firefox defeated IE which was bundled with Windows at the time. Chrome continues to defeat everyone, including Edge which is bundled with Windows. Firefox's reason for irrelevance today has nothing to do with whether its competitors are bundled with operating systems.
- orra 3y ago
  Chrome is, and majorly was, pushed by Google websites. Using one near monopoly to create another. Also, Firefox never defeated Internet Explorer. You are misremembering that. Firefox once made impressive market gains despite the anticompetitive competitor bundling. That doesn't mean it's feasible to keep doing it.
- blackoil 3y ago
  IE team was disbanded and had no release for 5 years.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    IE also never had mountains of supposedly techy people instructing naive users to use Chrome because "it's faster", which was only true in the very beginning, as if saving 200ms per page load is worth putting Google in full control of the internet.

NoboruWataya 3y ago

Disabling extensions had nothing to do with their market share. We have extensions on desktop and they are still being squeezed out there. And judging by some other comments here there is apparently a fork of Firefox for Android that allows extensions - which even I had never heard of until now.

Nextgrid 3y ago
> Disabling extensions had nothing to do with their market share It kinda did because it removed a reason to pick Firefox over its competitors. If Firefox doesn't actually bring anything tangible to the table, why would people pick it over whatever they're currently using (which is likely to be Chrome)? The average user doesn't hate Google like some people do, so a purely ideological argument of "it isn't Chrome" won't work (and didn't work as its marketshare kept declining). Users need tangible, non-niche features to switch.
- dralley 3y ago
  Mobile Firefox already had shit marketshare when they did the refresh and limited extensions. That wasn't what caused the shit marketshare.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >It kinda did because it removed a reason to pick Firefox over its competitors. The reason to pick firefox over competitors is because they are the ONLY web browser vendor who isn't actively handicapping the internet. Firefox could smear my face with literal shit every time I use it and it would still be less hostile to end users than, let's see what chrome is doing this week, oh yes, forcing everyone to build attestation systems into the internet so that you eventually will be cryptographically prevented from blocking ads. Jesus. Perspective people
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    > The reason to pick firefox over competitors is because they are the ONLY web browser vendor who isn't actively handicapping the internet. Nobody among regular people cares. Banking on ideology alone is in fact how you end up with a low single-digit percentage of market share. Even if Mozilla actually had your best interests at heart, it still needs to have decent marketshare (including from people who do not know/care about ideology) to actually have any weight in web standards discussions, otherwise Chrome can just ignore it and push whatever agenda they have.