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> its leadership argued that diversifying its product portfolio beyond Firefox was necessary to ensure Mozilla’s survival in the long run This always bugged me

> its leadership argued that diversifying its product portfolio beyond Firefox was necessary to ensure Mozilla’s survival in the long run This always bugged me. Are they expecting Firefox to die? If that happened, there would be little reason for Mozilla to exist. The project lives and dies with the browser. Having a "plan B" is complete nonsense and an unnecessary distraction. I'm glad they're shifting focus back on the browser.

skywhopper 3y ago
Agreed. The goal was to create and maintain an open web browser. If the goal of Mozilla is now to ensure Mozilla continues to exist, that's a bad sign.
wmf 3y ago
I hope the idea is for the profits from other products to fund Firefox but so far every attempt has failed.
- mozempthrowaway 3y ago
  The other products are very unprofitable. FF profits actually fund everything else. Search deals on FF are over 80% of revenue yet less than half the company works on FF.
jsheard 3y ago
The monkey's paw outcome is they re-focus on the browser, but follow Opera and Edge in pivoting to Yet Another Chromium Reskin, massively cutting their development costs while technically remaining in the browser market. Hopefully it doesn't come to that but I'm not ruling it out.
- Atotalnoob 3y ago
  This would be very sad. One browser engine would be really bad for the web
  - jsheard 3y ago
    Two with Apple still in the game, but that's no consolation to Windows/Linux/Android users.
  - ildjarn 3y ago
    Genuine question: why is it bad for the web?
    - pcwalton 3y ago
      Because Google completely controls its development.
      - hollerith 3y ago
        I'm having trouble seeing what you mean. Microsoft doesn't employ at least a few hundred developers working on its fork? Ditto Brave? These developers and their managers have no influence?
        pcwalton 3y ago
        Why does mobile Chromium still not have extensions? Why was Manifest v3 pushed so heavily? It's not for lack of resources: those are deliberate decisions made for business reasons. Brave pushed back as hard as possible against Manifest v3, Google refused to budge, and ultimately Google got its way, because Google, the corporate entity, completely controls Chromium's development.
        hollerith 3y ago
        >Brave pushed back as hard as possible against Manifest v3, Google refused to budge, and ultimately Google got its way OK, thanks for that, but Brave's decision might've been informed by the fact that Manifest v2 seems to make the user too vulnerable to purveyors of shady extensions, and is not really needed except for adblocking (or at least I'm unaware of any use cases except adblocking where Manifest v3 does not suffice). Brave comes bundled with an adblocker that can read the uBlock Origin lists, so whether Brave's aforementioned bundled adblocker uses Manifest v2 to communicate with the browser or some other (possibly private) API might not matter. Also, just because the Edge team at Microsoft likes web advertising does not mean it has no influence on the evolution of the Chromium-based browser ecosystem.

skywhopper 3y ago

Agreed. The goal was to create and maintain an open web browser. If the goal of Mozilla is now to ensure Mozilla continues to exist, that's a bad sign.

wmf 3y ago

I hope the idea is for the profits from other products to fund Firefox but so far every attempt has failed.

mozempthrowaway 3y ago
The other products are very unprofitable. FF profits actually fund everything else. Search deals on FF are over 80% of revenue yet less than half the company works on FF.

jsheard 3y ago

The monkey's paw outcome is they re-focus on the browser, but follow Opera and Edge in pivoting to Yet Another Chromium Reskin, massively cutting their development costs while technically remaining in the browser market. Hopefully it doesn't come to that but I'm not ruling it out.

Atotalnoob 3y ago
This would be very sad. One browser engine would be really bad for the web
- jsheard 3y ago
  Two with Apple still in the game, but that's no consolation to Windows/Linux/Android users.
- ildjarn 3y ago
  Genuine question: why is it bad for the web?
  - pcwalton 3y ago
    Because Google completely controls its development.
    - hollerith 3y ago
      I'm having trouble seeing what you mean. Microsoft doesn't employ at least a few hundred developers working on its fork? Ditto Brave? These developers and their managers have no influence?
      - pcwalton 3y ago
        Why does mobile Chromium still not have extensions? Why was Manifest v3 pushed so heavily? It's not for lack of resources: those are deliberate decisions made for business reasons. Brave pushed back as hard as possible against Manifest v3, Google refused to budge, and ultimately Google got its way, because Google, the corporate entity, completely controls Chromium's development.
        hollerith 3y ago
        >Brave pushed back as hard as possible against Manifest v3, Google refused to budge, and ultimately Google got its way OK, thanks for that, but Brave's decision might've been informed by the fact that Manifest v2 seems to make the user too vulnerable to purveyors of shady extensions, and is not really needed except for adblocking (or at least I'm unaware of any use cases except adblocking where Manifest v3 does not suffice). Brave comes bundled with an adblocker that can read the uBlock Origin lists, so whether Brave's aforementioned bundled adblocker uses Manifest v2 to communicate with the browser or some other (possibly private) API might not matter. Also, just because the Edge team at Microsoft likes web advertising does not mean it has no influence on the evolution of the Chromium-based browser ecosystem.