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Well, they took over things like Pocket, build that VPN service and Firefox Send and probably founded other projects that are not important to the core of their

Well, they took over things like Pocket, build that VPN service and Firefox Send and probably founded other projects that are not important to the core of their "business". If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now.

walrus01 2y ago
They didn't build a VPN service, they built a wrapper around mullvad, an existing VPN service provider. At least they chose a fairly decent one.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Right, and that seems a relatively modest commitment of resources in the grand scheme of things. And it seems like the implication is supposed to be that those resources came at the expense of sustaining other parts of the browser experience.
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  This whole comment section is full of weird not-true accusations against Firefox in a way that feels really weird to me. Why would anyone want to lie to attack Firefox? Just use genuine facts to express concern, there’s plenty of legitimate concern without hyperbole.
II2II 2y ago
> If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now. I have no idea what the motivations of Mozilla are, but it is important to remember that many players in the industry faded away simply because the industry changes fast and those players failed to anticipate those changes. It is entirely possible that Mozilla was trying to anticipate those changes and ended up making a string of very bad bets.
- wtallis 2y ago
  The "industry change" that would make Firefox fade away would be the death of web browsers in general, replaced by site-specific apps that leave users with no freedom to control how they interact with a site aside from a complete boycott of the site and its app. Resisting that industry change is exactly what Mozilla should have been prioritizing. Nobody wants Mozilla to support or follow that trend.
- mystified5016 2y ago
  Instead they're losing all the advantage they once had by failing to focus on their core. Being one half of a duopoly is a pretty stable position. Just about the only way to lose it is to fuck around and quit playing the game. There's really no external force that could have destroyed Mozilla if they had just stayed focused. Mozilla needed to be a browser company, trying to be an "everything" company was a really stupid move.
- mmooss 2y ago
  What bad bets? Rust?
glenstein 2y ago
People repeat this ad nauseum, but assume away all the critical details that would actually make the argument work. Do we have any assessment, other than people in comment sections randomly just saying so, that any of these actually came at the cost of developer resources on the core browser? I feel like people have heard this repeated so many times that they keep saying it now. All of these issues were real, in 2016. And Firefox did the thing: they rebuilt the browser from the ground up under Quantum, achieving breakthrough performance and stability that everybody was asking for. And in the present day, the differences are real but subtle, and I don't think they have anything to do with the actual drivers of browser market share, which is about Google leveraging its unparalleled position in search and on Android. Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? Once you start saying these things out loud, it becomes clear how nonsensical and vibes-based the whole argument is. It's not to say that there's no concern with the pivot into erosions of privacy commitments. But it doesn't excuse the kind of tulip mania that seems to have spread across hn comment sections in reaction to every mention of Mozilla. I keep pleading with people who perpetuate these narratives to try and make real arguments accountable to our usual standards of causation and substantiation, and they never do.
- wtallis 2y ago
  > Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? No, the argument is that if Mozilla didn't spend so much money on side projects, they wouldn't now be in such a precarious financial situation that they're making a drastic, controversial change with the stated purpose of ensuring their financial future. They might still have been poor stewards of the core browser project's technical development, but at least they'd have enough accumulated savings to continue without selling user data.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Which side projects and how much money? One person in this discussion claims they could live off the interest of $500 million invested in money markets. That's the level of seriousness and credibility so far. Do you have something more substantive, with evidence, or are you just piling on an open source project and the people who work hard at it.

walrus01 2y ago

They didn't build a VPN service, they built a wrapper around mullvad, an existing VPN service provider. At least they chose a fairly decent one.

glenstein 2y ago
Right, and that seems a relatively modest commitment of resources in the grand scheme of things. And it seems like the implication is supposed to be that those resources came at the expense of sustaining other parts of the browser experience.
whamlastxmas 2y ago
This whole comment section is full of weird not-true accusations against Firefox in a way that feels really weird to me. Why would anyone want to lie to attack Firefox? Just use genuine facts to express concern, there’s plenty of legitimate concern without hyperbole.

II2II 2y ago

> If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now. I have no idea what the motivations of Mozilla are, but it is important to remember that many players in the industry faded away simply because the industry changes fast and those players failed to anticipate those changes. It is entirely possible that Mozilla was trying to anticipate those changes and ended up making a string of very bad bets.

wtallis 2y ago
The "industry change" that would make Firefox fade away would be the death of web browsers in general, replaced by site-specific apps that leave users with no freedom to control how they interact with a site aside from a complete boycott of the site and its app. Resisting that industry change is exactly what Mozilla should have been prioritizing. Nobody wants Mozilla to support or follow that trend.
mystified5016 2y ago
Instead they're losing all the advantage they once had by failing to focus on their core. Being one half of a duopoly is a pretty stable position. Just about the only way to lose it is to fuck around and quit playing the game. There's really no external force that could have destroyed Mozilla if they had just stayed focused. Mozilla needed to be a browser company, trying to be an "everything" company was a really stupid move.
mmooss 2y ago
What bad bets? Rust?

glenstein 2y ago

People repeat this ad nauseum, but assume away all the critical details that would actually make the argument work. Do we have any assessment, other than people in comment sections randomly just saying so, that any of these actually came at the cost of developer resources on the core browser? I feel like people have heard this repeated so many times that they keep saying it now. All of these issues were real, in 2016. And Firefox did the thing: they rebuilt the browser from the ground up under Quantum, achieving breakthrough performance and stability that everybody was asking for. And in the present day, the differences are real but subtle, and I don't think they have anything to do with the actual drivers of browser market share, which is about Google leveraging its unparalleled position in search and on Android. Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? Once you start saying these things out loud, it becomes clear how nonsensical and vibes-based the whole argument is. It's not to say that there's no concern with the pivot into erosions of privacy commitments. But it doesn't excuse the kind of tulip mania that seems to have spread across hn comment sections in reaction to every mention of Mozilla. I keep pleading with people who perpetuate these narratives to try and make real arguments accountable to our usual standards of causation and substantiation, and they never do.

wtallis 2y ago
> Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? No, the argument is that if Mozilla didn't spend so much money on side projects, they wouldn't now be in such a precarious financial situation that they're making a drastic, controversial change with the stated purpose of ensuring their financial future. They might still have been poor stewards of the core browser project's technical development, but at least they'd have enough accumulated savings to continue without selling user data.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Which side projects and how much money? One person in this discussion claims they could live off the interest of $500 million invested in money markets. That's the level of seriousness and credibility so far. Do you have something more substantive, with evidence, or are you just piling on an open source project and the people who work hard at it.