4 ms·

Quickly thumbing through my product book for "gaining market segment by making yourself indistinguishable from competition"

• a0123 2y ago
  Yes, but the current design and direction are very clearly not working. You can hardly blame them for trying to emulate what's currently working for everyone else when everything you've tried so far has led to your downfall.
  • pessimizer 2y ago
    Their downfall came when they changed everything that they were doing, and subsequently nuked every reason why someone would prefer firefox other than that they weren't google. They transformed firefox into wonky chrome, even copying superficial UI stuff. And then got very hostile about any criticism of this project, actively destroying all of the goodwill they built up. That alienation of their stubborn, fanatical base took years to accomplish. People would move back to firefox if it were still anything like firefox.
    • palata 2y ago
      Not that I disagree with the alienation of their fanbase. I personally use Firefox mostly because it is not Google, certainly not because it is Mozilla (and to be fair I like the Firefox Containers). But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most of the people I know honestly don't make the difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know. I think Chrome won those people because Google managed to convince them that "Internet == Chrome", not because they consciously chose Chrome as a better alternative.
      • bakugo 2y ago
        > But I am not convinced most people see it like this. Most of the people I know honestly don't make the difference between Firefox and Chrome: they just use what they know. And those people are not Firefox's audience. They don't care about their browser as long as it loads facebook.com, so they're just going to use whatever browser is more popular or pushed harder onto them, which is Chrome. If Firefox positions itself as just a Chrome clone, there's no reason to use it over Chrome. If Firefox wants to survive, it needs to position itself as a niche alternative for people who actually have preferences for what their browser is like, and do not like Chrome. Of course, it won't ever be as popular as Chrome, but that battle was lost a long time ago.
        • palata 2y ago
          > If Firefox wants to survive, it needs to position itself as a niche alternative Or... I'm still hoping that the EU Digital Markets Act may help.
  • rurp 2y ago
    They have been dumbing down Firefox and making it more Chrome-like for years now. I would argue that is the strategy which is clearly not working.