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Eich was CTO of the Mozilla Corporation since its founding in 2005 until 2014, during which Firefox market share slid from its peak at 30% to 13%. What would E

Eich was CTO of the Mozilla Corporation since its founding in 2005 until 2014, during which Firefox market share slid from its peak at 30% to 13%. What would Eich have done as CEO to turn around Firefox that he wasn’t able to do as CTO for nine years? That said, Brave has innovated and had some VC-fueled success. I just don’t see him as the Firefox savior some people do. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2009-2023 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2009-...

BackBlast 3y ago
A lieutenant is not the captain. As a lieutenant, I don't get to just go do whatever. I advise, I provide options, I make calls that don't to up to the CEO level. I pick tech stacks, I pick how to do the things we decide to do. But the final call on what we are doing is the captain's. Especially about the fundamental direction like how to acquire users, markets we target, and how to acquire revenue.
BrendanEich 3y ago
Brave is not "VC-fueled". Small seed funding which we transcended long ago. But if we were, you'd be practicing a variation on the Genetic Fallacy. Do better. I know a few HN haters fixate on me as cause of all problems at Mozilla, but if they were playing fair, they'd give me some credit for growing Brave to ~60M MAU or (better metric) 24.5M DAU. A lot of these users came from Firefox. So I can grow a browser, I've done it three times at least. But elsewhere I've written that Mozilla wouldn't have let me do what was needed, in my speculative opinion. Brave doesn't advertise itself in the User-Agent: header, so statcounter lumps us in with Chrome.
- BrendanEich 3y ago
  Also, I was at Mozilla from founding in 1997 (yes, I'm a co-founder -- unlike Mitchell Baker), official news in 1998, and spinout as 501c3 in 2003. What you cherry-pick as my CTO role from 2005-2014, as if I were some new hire in 2005 who had nothing to do with Mozilla before then or from inception, nevertheless covers a lot of Firefox growth -- we peaked in 2010 or 2011. So blaming me for decline vs. Chrome is grossly unfair, but I sense an irrational animus on your part.

BackBlast 3y ago

A lieutenant is not the captain. As a lieutenant, I don't get to just go do whatever. I advise, I provide options, I make calls that don't to up to the CEO level. I pick tech stacks, I pick how to do the things we decide to do. But the final call on what we are doing is the captain's. Especially about the fundamental direction like how to acquire users, markets we target, and how to acquire revenue.

BrendanEich 3y ago

Brave is not "VC-fueled". Small seed funding which we transcended long ago. But if we were, you'd be practicing a variation on the Genetic Fallacy. Do better. I know a few HN haters fixate on me as cause of all problems at Mozilla, but if they were playing fair, they'd give me some credit for growing Brave to ~60M MAU or (better metric) 24.5M DAU. A lot of these users came from Firefox. So I can grow a browser, I've done it three times at least. But elsewhere I've written that Mozilla wouldn't have let me do what was needed, in my speculative opinion. Brave doesn't advertise itself in the User-Agent: header, so statcounter lumps us in with Chrome.

BrendanEich 3y ago
Also, I was at Mozilla from founding in 1997 (yes, I'm a co-founder -- unlike Mitchell Baker), official news in 1998, and spinout as 501c3 in 2003. What you cherry-pick as my CTO role from 2005-2014, as if I were some new hire in 2005 who had nothing to do with Mozilla before then or from inception, nevertheless covers a lot of Firefox growth -- we peaked in 2010 or 2011. So blaming me for decline vs. Chrome is grossly unfair, but I sense an irrational animus on your part.