3 ms·

Mozilla needs to hear this more often. There is only one browser, because browsers need to be embeddable, and Firefox isn't.

lmeyerov 3y ago
Interesting to work through that On its face, it's a tough sustainability position for an org of Mozilla's size b/c browser revenue - today - is from controlling the search bar (and maybe now payments APIs?). By making Firefox embeddable, Mozilla gives that revenue to whoever is doing the embedding. Ex: Brave <> Chrome engine. Building for embedding developers can be super distracting if no sustainability, which isn't a problem for Google: They still make money from embedding by owning the embedding environments like Android. AFAICT, Mozilla failed to land in sizeable markets there. They tried to own & partner in the embedding envs -- e.g., FirefoxOS -- so maybe the trick is to get a more generous rev share for phone vendors wanting to break free of Google? Historically didn't seem to really work out, but maybe genAI w/ consumer/prosumer-grade UIs is reopening that door. Evolutions like that in turn may take quite an engineering & culture rethink as well, not easy to turn such a big & decentralized ship. I'll keep rooting for them!
- jwells89 3y ago
  I’m not well-versed on the internals of FirefoxOS, but I’m not sure it really counts as embedding because to my understanding, the entirety of the user-facing UI was built with Gecko. Embedding entails usage of the engine with unrelated toolkits, e.g. AppKit/UIKit or GTK. If that’s true, then Mozilla wouldn’t have been making money from Gecko’s ability to embed with FirefoxOS unless the project took a sharp corner and changed UI toolkits.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    The FirefoxOS scenario would be Gecko embedding in FirefoxOS, so Mozilla is their own customer, and makes $ by being the controller of FirefoxOS - OS search, and configuration of browser search It's less likely the handset manufacturer would be able to change search bar defaults in those scenarios, at least without a stronger profit sharing negotiation, as they'd probably be already negotiating a more careful licensing & teaming agreement
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
paulrouget 3y ago
I was part of Mozilla back then. I think we were already talking about making Gecko embeddable in __2003__. But then… looot of things happened, other priorities, competition, bad decisions, etc etc.
mike_hearn 3y ago
Arguably neither is Chrome. Electron, CEF and WebView2 are all forks of it. Google has no interest in a supported official embedding API.

lmeyerov 3y ago

Interesting to work through that On its face, it's a tough sustainability position for an org of Mozilla's size b/c browser revenue - today - is from controlling the search bar (and maybe now payments APIs?). By making Firefox embeddable, Mozilla gives that revenue to whoever is doing the embedding. Ex: Brave <> Chrome engine. Building for embedding developers can be super distracting if no sustainability, which isn't a problem for Google: They still make money from embedding by owning the embedding environments like Android. AFAICT, Mozilla failed to land in sizeable markets there. They tried to own & partner in the embedding envs -- e.g., FirefoxOS -- so maybe the trick is to get a more generous rev share for phone vendors wanting to break free of Google? Historically didn't seem to really work out, but maybe genAI w/ consumer/prosumer-grade UIs is reopening that door. Evolutions like that in turn may take quite an engineering & culture rethink as well, not easy to turn such a big & decentralized ship. I'll keep rooting for them!

jwells89 3y ago
I’m not well-versed on the internals of FirefoxOS, but I’m not sure it really counts as embedding because to my understanding, the entirety of the user-facing UI was built with Gecko. Embedding entails usage of the engine with unrelated toolkits, e.g. AppKit/UIKit or GTK. If that’s true, then Mozilla wouldn’t have been making money from Gecko’s ability to embed with FirefoxOS unless the project took a sharp corner and changed UI toolkits.
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  The FirefoxOS scenario would be Gecko embedding in FirefoxOS, so Mozilla is their own customer, and makes $ by being the controller of FirefoxOS - OS search, and configuration of browser search It's less likely the handset manufacturer would be able to change search bar defaults in those scenarios, at least without a stronger profit sharing negotiation, as they'd probably be already negotiating a more careful licensing & teaming agreement
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

paulrouget 3y ago

I was part of Mozilla back then. I think we were already talking about making Gecko embeddable in __2003__. But then… looot of things happened, other priorities, competition, bad decisions, etc etc.

mike_hearn 3y ago

Arguably neither is Chrome. Electron, CEF and WebView2 are all forks of it. Google has no interest in a supported official embedding API.