4 ms·

He gives a bunch of "ways" in which FireFox is (in his opinion) behind Google Chrome. The only "reason" (why) he gives is mentioned very briefly: > With so ma

He gives a bunch of "ways" in which FireFox is (in his opinion) behind Google Chrome. The only "reason" (why) he gives is mentioned very briefly: > With so many former Firefox developers now working on Chrome at Google, perhaps it makes sense that the innovation has been happening in Chrome, not Firefox. The real question we should be asking is what happened to investment in FireFox? Why has mozilla had a hard time retaining or acquiring talent? If the community values the existence of FireFox, and a real (top to bottom) open-source alternative to the IE-Chrome-Safari triumvirate, what can be done to get Mozilla back on track? Most importantly, what happened to Mozilla that it stopped being an innovator and became an imitator? Is it something inherent in it's status as a "not for profit"? Is there something wrong with it's values and goals that prevents it from being truly innovative? Those are intended as mostly rhetorical questions. My point is that the article has a bad title. It should be "Here's How FireFox is Behind Google Chrome" not "Here's Why". "Here's Why" is a much more difficult conversation to have--and I don't pretend to know enough about Mozilla to have any insights or opinions on the matter.

pja 13y ago
Non-profits find it culturally difficult to pay Google-level salaries to developers perhaps?
- numbsafari 13y ago
  That's certainly part of it. Non-profits generally cannot compete with Google in terms of cash. But are there other ways for them to try and attract or otherwise develop talent? Perhaps their current model is insufficient. It's interesting to see that Mozilla has become more involved with Samsung as a technology development partner. Perhaps that is one model.
  - pja 13y ago
    The Mozilla Foundation gets $300 million annually from Google: They can certainly afford to pay some developers Google level salaries if they choose to.
    - numbsafari 13y ago
      Okay, so if it isn't about the money, then what is the reason for losing so many developers to Google? Or is the idea that Mozilla has been losing key people to Google (as mentioned in the OP) not legitimate?
      - Ygg2 13y ago
        If I am to hypothesize, I'd say they are tired of Mozilla's way of doing stuff. But I have to ask to put some hard data behind this, because I hear it a lot, and I don't see much evidence for it.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  I think its more that non-profits find it financially difficult to pay Google-level salaries to developers.
  - pja 13y ago
    Sorry, I thought it was common knowledge that the Mozilla Foundation gets a huge income stream from Google. $300million / year until 2014 according to Wikipedia.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      I'm not sure where the $300 million number comes from (yes, I know you said "Wikipedia", but there are lots of pages on Wikipedia, and neither the Mozilla page nor the Firefox page supports anything close to that number, nor does Mozilla's most recent annual report -- in fact, Mozilla's total annual revenue is only around $160 million.) And the whole point of Google paying Mozilla is that that money is less than the search revenue Google derives from people using Mozilla's browser, which also suggests that its less per user than Google would derive from people using Google's browser -- or, IOW, that the the Google has more to gain by spending additional money on development, assuming they acheive as much in terms of attracting users.
      - pja 13y ago
        Is there a Wikipedia equivalent of 'Let Me Google That For You' ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation You can see their income statement from 2011 on their webpages: TechCrunch reported them here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/mozilla-releases-annual-report-for-2011-revenue-up-33-to-163m-majority-from-google/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/mozilla-releases-annual-rep...
pcwalton 13y ago
> Most importantly, what happened to Mozilla that it stopped being an innovator and became an imitator? Is it something inherent in it's status as a "not for profit"? Is there something wrong with it's values and goals that prevents it from being truly innovative? pdf.js, sweet.js, Persona, asm.js, Rust, and Servo aren't innovative?
- malandrew 13y ago
  Exactly. Mozilla has been working on a lot of stuff that really matters in a long game and for the internet in general. A lot of the OS foundation level features coming to the browser aren't coming from Chrome/Google, but from Mozilla/Firefox and Samsung/Tizen. Check out all the WebAPIs. How many of them are being pioneered by Google? How many by Mozilla? My personal opinion is that both are doing a lot to innovate and a lot for the web, but that they are complementing each other. Google is pushing forward the front-end and how the browser works with current content. Firefox is working to get browsers to the point where they can do many of the same things that operating systems can do today. A lot of that work is not as straight forward as reimplementing what operating systems do, since they often require entirely new trust paradigms because sensitive things are being exposed to the open Internet. It's not a trivial task. Lastly, Rust and Servo matter a lot. You will only be able to get so far with WebKit/WebKit2/Blink/Gecko/Trident, etc. before you start hitting the limit of the architecture of each is capable of. Rust and Servo are being architected from the ground up with the future of computing architecture in mind. This means that they will be behind now, but will jump ahead once Servo is production ready.

pja 13y ago

Non-profits find it culturally difficult to pay Google-level salaries to developers perhaps?

numbsafari 13y ago
That's certainly part of it. Non-profits generally cannot compete with Google in terms of cash. But are there other ways for them to try and attract or otherwise develop talent? Perhaps their current model is insufficient. It's interesting to see that Mozilla has become more involved with Samsung as a technology development partner. Perhaps that is one model.
- pja 13y ago
  The Mozilla Foundation gets $300 million annually from Google: They can certainly afford to pay some developers Google level salaries if they choose to.
  - numbsafari 13y ago
    Okay, so if it isn't about the money, then what is the reason for losing so many developers to Google? Or is the idea that Mozilla has been losing key people to Google (as mentioned in the OP) not legitimate?
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      If I am to hypothesize, I'd say they are tired of Mozilla's way of doing stuff. But I have to ask to put some hard data behind this, because I hear it a lot, and I don't see much evidence for it.
dragonwriter 13y ago
I think its more that non-profits find it financially difficult to pay Google-level salaries to developers.
- pja 13y ago
  Sorry, I thought it was common knowledge that the Mozilla Foundation gets a huge income stream from Google. $300million / year until 2014 according to Wikipedia.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    I'm not sure where the $300 million number comes from (yes, I know you said "Wikipedia", but there are lots of pages on Wikipedia, and neither the Mozilla page nor the Firefox page supports anything close to that number, nor does Mozilla's most recent annual report -- in fact, Mozilla's total annual revenue is only around $160 million.) And the whole point of Google paying Mozilla is that that money is less than the search revenue Google derives from people using Mozilla's browser, which also suggests that its less per user than Google would derive from people using Google's browser -- or, IOW, that the the Google has more to gain by spending additional money on development, assuming they acheive as much in terms of attracting users.
    - pja 13y ago
      Is there a Wikipedia equivalent of 'Let Me Google That For You' ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation You can see their income statement from 2011 on their webpages: TechCrunch reported them here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/mozilla-releases-annual-report-for-2011-revenue-up-33-to-163m-majority-from-google/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/mozilla-releases-annual-rep...

pcwalton 13y ago

> Most importantly, what happened to Mozilla that it stopped being an innovator and became an imitator? Is it something inherent in it's status as a "not for profit"? Is there something wrong with it's values and goals that prevents it from being truly innovative? pdf.js, sweet.js, Persona, asm.js, Rust, and Servo aren't innovative?

malandrew 13y ago
Exactly. Mozilla has been working on a lot of stuff that really matters in a long game and for the internet in general. A lot of the OS foundation level features coming to the browser aren't coming from Chrome/Google, but from Mozilla/Firefox and Samsung/Tizen. Check out all the WebAPIs. How many of them are being pioneered by Google? How many by Mozilla? My personal opinion is that both are doing a lot to innovate and a lot for the web, but that they are complementing each other. Google is pushing forward the front-end and how the browser works with current content. Firefox is working to get browsers to the point where they can do many of the same things that operating systems can do today. A lot of that work is not as straight forward as reimplementing what operating systems do, since they often require entirely new trust paradigms because sensitive things are being exposed to the open Internet. It's not a trivial task. Lastly, Rust and Servo matter a lot. You will only be able to get so far with WebKit/WebKit2/Blink/Gecko/Trident, etc. before you start hitting the limit of the architecture of each is capable of. Rust and Servo are being architected from the ground up with the future of computing architecture in mind. This means that they will be behind now, but will jump ahead once Servo is production ready.