5 ms·
This is the fictional hallucination that somehow makes it into every comment section about Mozilla. So let's go through the facts one more time: (1) They spend
by glenstein 11mo ago
This is the fictional hallucination that somehow makes it into every comment section about Mozilla. So let's go through the facts one more time:
(1) They spend more on browser development now than they ever have in their history even after adjusting for inflation.
(2) The majority of things claimed to be "money sinks" don't actually cost that much or siphon resources away from core browser development with some exceptions (we'll get to those).
(3) The market share losses happened from 2010-2015, the side bets era is approximately 2020-2025. The side bets didn't retroactively cause the market share losses.
(4) The narrative that a failure to keep up/push new features drove market share losses paints a picture that's entirely zoomed in on Mozilla and ignores Google leveraging its search and mobile monopolies to muscle its browser onto the map, which likely would have happened regardless of how good Firefox was.
(5) The narrative that the browser was broken and behind is somewhat outdated - it was true in the market share loss era, but then they did the dang thing and launched a major engineering effort, fundamentally rebuilt the major parts of the browser via Project Quantum, a monumental engineering transformation that delivered speed and stability, the thing everyone asked for. It's obviously not perfect, but in terms of performance and stability its certainly good enough to be a daily driver in most cases and not in a state of tragic disrepair.
(6) Despite it being supposedly so obvious, no one can explain what missing browser feature they can add that will restore all their market share overnight.
That said, yes, there are bad things: the dabbling in adtech is bad imo ("privacy preserving ads" seems to be category error), dabbling with AI doesn't seem to have an obvious point in its current iteration, Pocket was understandable as a revenue grower but seems have been a wash and annoyed users and they didn't bother to maintain it, Mozilla nonprofits broader advocacy for privacy seems to be confusing some people, and Firefox OS genuinely did seem to have cost engineering resources at a time that they lost market share. That said, I would love if there was a 10 year old Firefox OS project right now given Google's pushing of developer certification.
So, yes, there's stuff I don't love. I don't feel like this iteration of Mozilla has the innovative spirit of, say, Opera back in its heyday, and it's not as polished as Chrome. But the comment section rhetoric has spilled over into fever dream territory and not is even pretending to map onto any coherent historical timeline, factual record, or story of cause and effect, and often contradictory in its declaration of demands.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- exographicskip 11mo agoThanks for this. Used Firefox since 1.0. Donate to their non-profit arm every month. Chrome is openly hostile to users and Safari is such a vanilla experience with poorly implemented extensions. Until Ladybird drops, I don't plan on switching browsers.
- glenstein 11mo agoSame! I remember when Firefox 2 and 3 were major marketing and media events, and the subject of great excitement from users almost akin to the release of a new iPhone. I think it's unfortunate we got away from that cadence though I'm sure it was for good reasons I don't fully appreciate.
- creatonez 11mo ago> The market share losses happened from 2010-2015, the side bets era is approximately 2020-2025. The side bets didn't retroactively cause the market share losses. I don't necessarily disagree, but there were more than a few things that were before 2020: Firefox OS: 2013 Mozilla caves to Widevine DRM: 2014 Directory Tiles: 2014 Pocket acquisition: 2015 Firefox Focus: 2015 Cliqz experiment: 2017 "Looking Glass" Mr. Robot sponsorship: 2017
- lmorchard 11mo ago> Firefox OS: 2013 Apple wouldn't let Firefox onto the iPhone. Pretty big writing on the wall, there. Turns out it's really hard for a sub-billion-dollar company to succeed with a mobile OS, though, which is why we only really have two left. (Even Microsoft couldn't swing it) > Mozilla caves to Widevine DRM: 2014 Shipping the only major browser that can't play movies, cool cool cool. > Directory Tiles: 2014 Nearly everything on the web visited with Firefox is funded by advertising. The new tab page is one of the least obtrusive surfaces in the browser that still gets seen. Seemed worth a shot to try building an ad stack in that space which tried not to surveil. > Pocket acquisition: 2015 Discovery on the web is hard. Maybe that's a job for a browser? Maybe folks will pay for it? Maybe it can pay folks on the web? > Firefox Focus: 2015 Privacy seems like a good idea. Maybe folks would like a browser that focuses on that? > Cliqz experiment: 2017 That's Brave Search, these days. Lots of folks seem to like it? > "Looking Glass" Mr. Robot sponsorship: 2017 I don't know the whole story there. IMO, looked to me like some earnest folks tried to do something fun but rolled a 1 on the d20 for a critical fail. Footguns abound. Not saying all the above were handled with perfection, but I was there for all of them and there were good folks doing things that made sense at the time. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess?