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The old extension ecosystem is one of the reasons their performance was suffering and their market share was declining. It had declined significantly long befor

The old extension ecosystem is one of the reasons their performance was suffering and their market share was declining. It had declined significantly long before the decision was made to end support for XUL. Ending that support is one of the reasons Firefox's performance is competitive with Chrome again. Your take also ignores the very real anti-competitive factors Firefox is up against. Google relentlessly promoting Chrome across their web presence and paying third parties to trick end users into installing it and setting it as their default for instance: https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj

roenxi 3y ago
It's a fair point, but what is the pitch meant to be now? "We're reskinned Chrome"? If I wanted reskinned Chrome I'd use Brave. Which in fact I do want and do use. Firefox isn't owed a market. Google have proved themselves, so far, to be better stewards of the world's browser engine than the people at Mozilla. It might have a new era in the sun one day, but right now there really isn't much of a niche for Firefox. And the fact that Chrome overran Firefox does sit with the Mozilla, whatever the argument is about competitive practices. Chrome was (likely: still is) just technically better.
- JohnTHaller 3y ago
  > And the fact that Chrome overran Firefox does sit with the Mozilla, whatever the argument is about competitive practices. I mean, Mozilla couldn't afford to pay Adobe, Avast, etc $3 per user to install an unwanted browser for years even if they'd cross the moral and ethical line to do so. So a chunk of that was outside of their control. Firefox uses an entirely different engine underneath. So, from a 'health of the web' perspective, it helps prevent the mono-culture. It also supports extensions on Android, which is quite nice, and syncs my stuff between them. It can't support them on iOS since everything is just Safari Lite underneath.

roenxi 3y ago

It's a fair point, but what is the pitch meant to be now? "We're reskinned Chrome"? If I wanted reskinned Chrome I'd use Brave. Which in fact I do want and do use. Firefox isn't owed a market. Google have proved themselves, so far, to be better stewards of the world's browser engine than the people at Mozilla. It might have a new era in the sun one day, but right now there really isn't much of a niche for Firefox. And the fact that Chrome overran Firefox does sit with the Mozilla, whatever the argument is about competitive practices. Chrome was (likely: still is) just technically better.

JohnTHaller 3y ago
> And the fact that Chrome overran Firefox does sit with the Mozilla, whatever the argument is about competitive practices. I mean, Mozilla couldn't afford to pay Adobe, Avast, etc $3 per user to install an unwanted browser for years even if they'd cross the moral and ethical line to do so. So a chunk of that was outside of their control. Firefox uses an entirely different engine underneath. So, from a 'health of the web' perspective, it helps prevent the mono-culture. It also supports extensions on Android, which is quite nice, and syncs my stuff between them. It can't support them on iOS since everything is just Safari Lite underneath.