5 ms·

Mozilla is much larger than the browser.

mrweasel 2y ago
True, but they only have like maybe three products that most people care about: Firefox, Thunderbird (maybe), and the MDN.
- kevingadd 2y ago
  Just to provide one example, if Firefox suddenly no longer has bookmark/history/password syncing because Mozilla has refocused on its core products (Firefox/Thunderbird/MDN), suddenly you'll see Firefox's market share dwindle even more, because ordinary users are accustomed to every browser having a bunch of bells and whistles like profile syncing. The set of features people expect from a modern browser is really big now. To their credit, the Mozilla web standards people actively fought against a lot of the scope creep like "webpages should be able to flash firmware to USB devices" or "webpages should be able to talk to MIDI keyboards" but they lost, and now those are things a web browser is expected to do. Keeping up with all the scope creep is expensive.
  - aragilar 2y ago
    I'm not sure how sync for firefox isn't part of focusing on firefox?
    - kevingadd 2y ago
      I've seen people argue that Mozilla shouldn't be offering cloud services and should just build a browser that never phones home to any servers at all, whether it's telemetry, automated updates, or profiles. I think all of those are part of shipping a modern browser, personally. Maintaining all those cloud services raises your company's operational costs a lot, you now need people on-call 24/7 to maintain everything, you need webdevs who can wrangle postgres or redis or whatever, you need security experts to make sure the cloud stack is secure end to end, etc. So I think it's also fair for people to call this cloud stuff out as a cost center for Mozilla.
      - aragilar 2y ago
        Which cloud services? I don't see how automated updates nor sync count as "cloud services" (and I'll note that the sync server used to be open source, so you could pull from the community like Mozilla claims to be part of).
- mmooss 2y ago
  Rust, formerly.
fsflover 2y ago
Isn't most of the money goes to the browser anyway?
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  A very large portion of the money goes directly into the pockets of senior managers who, based on Mozilla's dismal and falling market share, add absolutely no value to the business. More than 1% of revenue (not profit; revenue) goes straight into the pocket of the CEO.
homebrewer 2y ago
And that's precisely the problem people have been talking about for a decade now. If it was just the browser, maybe it wouldn't have lost 90% of its former market share.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Firefox lost market share because of factors outside their control. They'd have to have owned a popular OS or conglomerate of dominant web services.
  - acdha 2y ago
    Or we need effective antitrust regulation. Firefox would be in a very different position if Google hadn’t been allowed to make the YouTube experience worse for Firefox users (promises around WebM, proprietary web components) along with the heavy marketing push.
  - redserk 2y ago
    Word of mouth worked fine in Firefox’s favor for a few years. I switched to Chrome years ago because it ran so much smoother than Firefox, and anecdotally I know of many others who did the same. With the switch, so did the recommendations.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      This was before website's and OS's were consistently nagging people to switch to their own browser. And when the everyday browsing experience varied more among different browsers.
  - noirscape 2y ago
    Firefox lost market share because they kept antagonizing their users. It's easy to read Chrome as the boogeyman to blame for Firefox' failure, but that's... also not correct. Mozilla is, rather frustrating for those that lead it I'm sure, chosen largely based on principles that people found they couldn't get from Google. Things like "don't profit from me the user", "don't track me" and "don't do things in my browser without me knowing about it". These aren't things people point towards the Chrome browser with because if you expect any of this to not be done by Google, then you're kidding yourself. Mozilla meanwhile has a pretty wide history of just... doing things that break this promise[0][1][2] (listed is mostly recent stuff, but they have been doing it since forever, going back to the forced Pocket integration). Chrome users don't care about this stuff (since they already use a Google product), Firefox users by virtue of picking Firefox did. And when it comes to optimization, Chrome does beat Firefox pretty handily, so people started abandoning Firefox because at that point, both Mozilla and Google offer the same value proposition. Their recent ventures into adtech are probably going to annihilate their biggest potential userbase gain, which is Google tightening the screws on adblockers and uBlock Origin in particular not playing ball with them on it. (UBOL is a joke and the UI by design makes it look like a "kiddie"/unprofessional adblocker.) Google didn't kill Firefox (they want it alive to avoid antitrust lawsuits). Mozilla did. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robot-arg-plugin-firefox-looking-glass https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497051
jisnsm 2y ago
And I don’t care about anything but the browser. They should stop wasting money on things that I don’t care about.
- sfink 2y ago
  The government should stop wasting money on things that I don't care about. (Especially the regulatory things that apply to me personally.)

True, but they only have like maybe three products that most people care about: Firefox, Thunderbird (maybe), and the MDN.

kevingadd 2y ago
Just to provide one example, if Firefox suddenly no longer has bookmark/history/password syncing because Mozilla has refocused on its core products (Firefox/Thunderbird/MDN), suddenly you'll see Firefox's market share dwindle even more, because ordinary users are accustomed to every browser having a bunch of bells and whistles like profile syncing. The set of features people expect from a modern browser is really big now. To their credit, the Mozilla web standards people actively fought against a lot of the scope creep like "webpages should be able to flash firmware to USB devices" or "webpages should be able to talk to MIDI keyboards" but they lost, and now those are things a web browser is expected to do. Keeping up with all the scope creep is expensive.
- aragilar 2y ago
  I'm not sure how sync for firefox isn't part of focusing on firefox?
  - kevingadd 2y ago
    I've seen people argue that Mozilla shouldn't be offering cloud services and should just build a browser that never phones home to any servers at all, whether it's telemetry, automated updates, or profiles. I think all of those are part of shipping a modern browser, personally. Maintaining all those cloud services raises your company's operational costs a lot, you now need people on-call 24/7 to maintain everything, you need webdevs who can wrangle postgres or redis or whatever, you need security experts to make sure the cloud stack is secure end to end, etc. So I think it's also fair for people to call this cloud stuff out as a cost center for Mozilla.
    - aragilar 2y ago
      Which cloud services? I don't see how automated updates nor sync count as "cloud services" (and I'll note that the sync server used to be open source, so you could pull from the community like Mozilla claims to be part of).
mmooss 2y ago
Rust, formerly.

fsflover 2y ago

Isn't most of the money goes to the browser anyway?

bigfatkitten 2y ago
A very large portion of the money goes directly into the pockets of senior managers who, based on Mozilla's dismal and falling market share, add absolutely no value to the business. More than 1% of revenue (not profit; revenue) goes straight into the pocket of the CEO.

homebrewer 2y ago

And that's precisely the problem people have been talking about for a decade now. If it was just the browser, maybe it wouldn't have lost 90% of its former market share.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Firefox lost market share because of factors outside their control. They'd have to have owned a popular OS or conglomerate of dominant web services.
- acdha 2y ago
  Or we need effective antitrust regulation. Firefox would be in a very different position if Google hadn’t been allowed to make the YouTube experience worse for Firefox users (promises around WebM, proprietary web components) along with the heavy marketing push.
- redserk 2y ago
  Word of mouth worked fine in Firefox’s favor for a few years. I switched to Chrome years ago because it ran so much smoother than Firefox, and anecdotally I know of many others who did the same. With the switch, so did the recommendations.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    This was before website's and OS's were consistently nagging people to switch to their own browser. And when the everyday browsing experience varied more among different browsers.
- noirscape 2y ago
  Firefox lost market share because they kept antagonizing their users. It's easy to read Chrome as the boogeyman to blame for Firefox' failure, but that's... also not correct. Mozilla is, rather frustrating for those that lead it I'm sure, chosen largely based on principles that people found they couldn't get from Google. Things like "don't profit from me the user", "don't track me" and "don't do things in my browser without me knowing about it". These aren't things people point towards the Chrome browser with because if you expect any of this to not be done by Google, then you're kidding yourself. Mozilla meanwhile has a pretty wide history of just... doing things that break this promise[0][1][2] (listed is mostly recent stuff, but they have been doing it since forever, going back to the forced Pocket integration). Chrome users don't care about this stuff (since they already use a Google product), Firefox users by virtue of picking Firefox did. And when it comes to optimization, Chrome does beat Firefox pretty handily, so people started abandoning Firefox because at that point, both Mozilla and Google offer the same value proposition. Their recent ventures into adtech are probably going to annihilate their biggest potential userbase gain, which is Google tightening the screws on adblockers and uBlock Origin in particular not playing ball with them on it. (UBOL is a joke and the UI by design makes it look like a "kiddie"/unprofessional adblocker.) Google didn't kill Firefox (they want it alive to avoid antitrust lawsuits). Mozilla did. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robot-arg-plugin-firefox-looking-glass https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497051

jisnsm 2y ago

And I don’t care about anything but the browser. They should stop wasting money on things that I don’t care about.

sfink 2y ago
The government should stop wasting money on things that I don't care about. (Especially the regulatory things that apply to me personally.)