4 ms·

If only they had continued on their trajectory of the early 2010s. When Brendan Eich was still there they seemed to have a clear purpose and identity. A lot of

by 0xpgm 3y ago

If only they had continued on their trajectory of the early 2010s. When Brendan Eich was still there they seemed to have a clear purpose and identity. A lot of interesting stuff was happening: the birth of what would become Rust, PDF.js which is now ubiquitous back when downloading PDFs was the norm, Firefox OS, which somehow found success after they abandoned it, asm.js, the predecessor of web assembly which killed the alternative that Google was championing called NaCl (very few remember it now). Then they just seemed to lose their way I can't tell how

insanitybit 3y ago
And people can shit on Brave (Eich's next browser venture) but the reality is that they're doing a pretty incredible job. TOR integration alone is a pretty radical privacy control, and you can say "oh but crypto" but they're at least trying to figure out how to make money independent of Google, unlike Mozilla. Brave actually tries to create a monetizable web without ads, Mozilla literally relies on the status quo for all of its revenue.
- dralley 3y ago
  >they're at least trying to figure out how to make money independent of Google, unlike Mozilla. Brave actually tries to create a monetizable web without ads, Mozilla literally relies on the status quo for all of its revenue. 1) Mozilla does have alternate sources of revenue, like Pocket and Mozilla VPN. 2) Mozilla had a partnership with Scroll, which was precisely that (a way of funding websites without advertising and taking a slice of that) before it got acquired by Twitter and subsequently dismantled.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    None of those strategies involve changing how the internet works. Website owners generally need to pay for their sites. Currently their payments are subsidized (sometimes to oblivion) by advertising. Mozilla is doing nothing to change that, Brave is. You're right that they perhaps don't want to be reliable on Google themselves, although they are and all other ventures have failed, but that's different from wanting a web that is not driven by advertising.
    - dralley 3y ago
      > None of those strategies involve changing how the internet works. Website owners generally need to pay for their sites. Currently their payments are subsidized (sometimes to oblivion) by advertising. Mozilla is doing nothing to change that, Brave is. But that's exactly what it was... https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/25/exploring-alternative-funding-models-for-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/25/exploring... If you want to argue that they should have done it themselves rather than in partnership, or bought out Scroll, then sure, I agree. Especially given how it turned out after Twitter bought Scroll.
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        Ah thanks, I had never heard of Scroll. I guess it's nice that as of very recently they thought about this problem and then immediately failed.
  - ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
    > 1) Mozilla does have alternate sources of revenue, like Pocket and Mozilla VPN. Not really though. All alternate sources are usually less then 5%. [1] As of 2021, they made 73% of total revenue from Google. [2] Mozilla VPN? You mean the one that refuses to fix CVEs? [3] Yikes. No thanks. 1:https://frankhecker.com/2020/08/15/how-mozilla-makes-money-and-spends-it/ https://frankhecker.com/2020/08/15/how-mozilla-makes-money-a... 2:https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest... 3:https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/03/1 https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/03/1
    - dang 3y ago
      Sorry for the offtopicness (I'm a mod here) - I'm afraid I only just saw these posts of yours from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376466 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37372118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37372118 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367785 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37357369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37357369 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37345115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37345115 (Aug 2023) Those comments broke the site guidelines so badly that I need to let you know that we ban accounts that post like that, and ask you not to do it again—no matter how badly someone else's comments are or you feel they are. We're really trying to avoid having this site burn itself to a crisp, which is what unchecked flamewar leads to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
      - ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
        Fair enough. Couldn't have emailed me though?
        dang 3y ago
        I prefer to post on the site—not to shame anybody, but because it's important for the community to see how HN is moderated and even to be aware that it is moderated. (It's surprising how many regular users don't know that.)
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > And people can shit on Brave (Eich's next browser venture) but the reality is that they're doing a pretty incredible job. It depends on how you look at it. https://www.w3counter.com/trends https://www.w3counter.com/trends
  - BrendanEich 3y ago
    We hide in Chrome's user-agent (too many sites break if you vary it but otherwise are Chromium-based). We're detectable by many means but that site and the other ones such as statcounter do not count us. I post our monthly user counts on "X", I just did September's stats. Here is living thread of threads: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1711480079094837273 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1711480079094837273
  - 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
    Brave has the same user agent as Chrome to avoid being treated differently or blocked outright because of the built-in adblocker and anti-tracking features. It counts towards Chrome in web analytics.
qiine 3y ago
> Firefox OS, which somehow found success after they abandoned it Really can you give some links ?
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  They're talking about KaiOS [0], which is a moderately popular mobile OS (bigger than iOS) in many non-western countries. It's been adopted for super budget phones by Jio, for example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
- lproven 3y ago
  I did. I gave multiple links, including linking back to my previous discussion of this issue.
paulryanrogers 3y ago
Firefox's fall has more to do with expiring browser ballot regulation and Google's increasingly aggressive advertising of Chrome than leadership at Mozilla. No one can compete against the billions Google pumped into Chrome development and marketing. Google is a gatekeeper to the modern web. Even Apple struggles to stay relevant.
- xctr94 3y ago
  These are very important factors, of course. But Mozilla could’ve at least mitigated the disaster. Even amongst engineers Firefox was a hard sell for many years. It took me a long time but even I jumped ship eventually, despite being a die-hard fan with a couple of contributions to Firefox. For a veeeeery long time Firefox was just atrocious to use. And once you’ve moved browsers, there’s not a lot of incentive to go back.

by 0xpgm 3y ago

insanitybit 3y ago

And people can shit on Brave (Eich's next browser venture) but the reality is that they're doing a pretty incredible job. TOR integration alone is a pretty radical privacy control, and you can say "oh but crypto" but they're at least trying to figure out how to make money independent of Google, unlike Mozilla. Brave actually tries to create a monetizable web without ads, Mozilla literally relies on the status quo for all of its revenue.

dralley 3y ago
>they're at least trying to figure out how to make money independent of Google, unlike Mozilla. Brave actually tries to create a monetizable web without ads, Mozilla literally relies on the status quo for all of its revenue. 1) Mozilla does have alternate sources of revenue, like Pocket and Mozilla VPN. 2) Mozilla had a partnership with Scroll, which was precisely that (a way of funding websites without advertising and taking a slice of that) before it got acquired by Twitter and subsequently dismantled.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  None of those strategies involve changing how the internet works. Website owners generally need to pay for their sites. Currently their payments are subsidized (sometimes to oblivion) by advertising. Mozilla is doing nothing to change that, Brave is. You're right that they perhaps don't want to be reliable on Google themselves, although they are and all other ventures have failed, but that's different from wanting a web that is not driven by advertising.
  - dralley 3y ago
    > None of those strategies involve changing how the internet works. Website owners generally need to pay for their sites. Currently their payments are subsidized (sometimes to oblivion) by advertising. Mozilla is doing nothing to change that, Brave is. But that's exactly what it was... https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/25/exploring-alternative-funding-models-for-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/25/exploring... If you want to argue that they should have done it themselves rather than in partnership, or bought out Scroll, then sure, I agree. Especially given how it turned out after Twitter bought Scroll.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Ah thanks, I had never heard of Scroll. I guess it's nice that as of very recently they thought about this problem and then immediately failed.
- ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
  > 1) Mozilla does have alternate sources of revenue, like Pocket and Mozilla VPN. Not really though. All alternate sources are usually less then 5%. [1] As of 2021, they made 73% of total revenue from Google. [2] Mozilla VPN? You mean the one that refuses to fix CVEs? [3] Yikes. No thanks. 1:https://frankhecker.com/2020/08/15/how-mozilla-makes-money-and-spends-it/ https://frankhecker.com/2020/08/15/how-mozilla-makes-money-a... 2:https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest... 3:https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/03/1 https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/08/03/1
  - dang 3y ago
    Sorry for the offtopicness (I'm a mod here) - I'm afraid I only just saw these posts of yours from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37376466 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37372118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37372118 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367785 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37357369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37357369 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37345115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37345115 (Aug 2023) Those comments broke the site guidelines so badly that I need to let you know that we ban accounts that post like that, and ask you not to do it again—no matter how badly someone else's comments are or you feel they are. We're really trying to avoid having this site burn itself to a crisp, which is what unchecked flamewar leads to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
    - ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
      Fair enough. Couldn't have emailed me though?
      - dang 3y ago
        I prefer to post on the site—not to shame anybody, but because it's important for the community to see how HN is moderated and even to be aware that it is moderated. (It's surprising how many regular users don't know that.)
CharlesW 3y ago
> And people can shit on Brave (Eich's next browser venture) but the reality is that they're doing a pretty incredible job. It depends on how you look at it. https://www.w3counter.com/trends https://www.w3counter.com/trends
- BrendanEich 3y ago
  We hide in Chrome's user-agent (too many sites break if you vary it but otherwise are Chromium-based). We're detectable by many means but that site and the other ones such as statcounter do not count us. I post our monthly user counts on "X", I just did September's stats. Here is living thread of threads: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1711480079094837273 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1711480079094837273
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
  Brave has the same user agent as Chrome to avoid being treated differently or blocked outright because of the built-in adblocker and anti-tracking features. It counts towards Chrome in web analytics.

qiine 3y ago

> Firefox OS, which somehow found success after they abandoned it Really can you give some links ?

AlotOfReading 3y ago
They're talking about KaiOS [0], which is a moderately popular mobile OS (bigger than iOS) in many non-western countries. It's been adopted for super budget phones by Jio, for example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
lproven 3y ago
I did. I gave multiple links, including linking back to my previous discussion of this issue.

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Firefox's fall has more to do with expiring browser ballot regulation and Google's increasingly aggressive advertising of Chrome than leadership at Mozilla. No one can compete against the billions Google pumped into Chrome development and marketing. Google is a gatekeeper to the modern web. Even Apple struggles to stay relevant.

xctr94 3y ago
These are very important factors, of course. But Mozilla could’ve at least mitigated the disaster. Even amongst engineers Firefox was a hard sell for many years. It took me a long time but even I jumped ship eventually, despite being a die-hard fan with a couple of contributions to Firefox. For a veeeeery long time Firefox was just atrocious to use. And once you’ve moved browsers, there’s not a lot of incentive to go back.