I agree with Mozilla, but they have bigger internal problems than external ones. They started losing market share back whenever and their response was to try and clone Chrome as closely as they could. So now the options are we can either use semi-Chrome with less resources behind it or real a Chrome-based browser (plug for Brave!).
They're in a strategic dead end, the reasons to pick Firefox are very slim. They should have committed harder to being extension-heavy. At least then they'd be interesting and even if niche they'd have a niche to operate in. Now it is just hard to see why they should be relevant. It is helpful to have someone complaining about what everyone else is doing wrong, but they don't need the budget they have to do that. I manage to fill that role on a pro-bono basis.
What do you mean by extension heavy? In my experience, Firefox has the best extension ecosystem amongst all browsers. It took them quite long to get that to work on mobile, but even there you could use all extensions already on a developer build for years.
Especially with the manifest v3 changes, which will basically break adblockers on Chrome-based browsers, I can't imagine ever using something else than Firefox.
> They're in a strategic dead end, the reasons to pick Firefox are very slim.
This is such a wrong statement and has nothing to back it up. Why is it first.
Firefox has:
- much higher customization options (huge)
- different features such as multi account containers
- a different profit model not based on ads and intrusion. Mozilla is not acting like a monopoly and trying to force people to watch their ads.
- A different engine.
- a better strategy for Ram
- a different UI
- and much more.
Some of us, have enjoyed Firefox for aged and will keep doing so. We're power users and not people who act like popularity due to external marketing capabilities and default pushing is reason enough to say "other browsers should not be relevant".
Wtf is your comment, honestly.
Now, if you want to talk about Mozilla missing their money for US culture wars (Rep vs Dem) and issues unrelated to tech, then i agree. But technology wise, Firefox is a very easy case to make.
Here is the company that mothballed development of its own phone, laid of a chunk of Servo developers, gets huge payments from Google, overpays it executives then whinges about unfair behaviour from the Big Three.
If it wasn't for the Firefox addons I've come to depend on whose developers have stuck with Mozilla inspite of their bullshit, I would have switched to Chrome ages ago.
Wondering why there aren't more companies taking a more activist role like (former) Mozilla or maybe Signal? There's an abundance of successful mid-sized companies that have deep OS roots and would have the brainpower to step up. Dependence on key players shouldn't be a hindrance, Mozilla had that always. Epic would be a bad example, they took the fight for their own exploitative empire.
> Epic would be a bad example, they took the fight for their own exploitative empire.
No, Epic is a good example, at least if they would have been successful in their objective. Financial motivation of companies or individuals is definitely the best cause for anti trust as it clearly shows someone is really affected rather than anti trust which just sounds good on paper.
They are at 3%?! I didn't know I'm witnessing the death throes of the company. It looks like it will take a while, and I'm sure for some people, they will still benefit from it, but I don't see how they will come back.
If I'm not mistaken, I saw that same 3% figure recently and didn't have much faith in the data. It was based on Google Analytics data and, for one thing, can't account for the fact that a decent number of Firefox users likely use it to avoid Google and would have GA blocked.
It doesn't have a super convenient breakdown, but Chrome Desktop is at 28.9% and Firefox is at 4%. If you remove the mobile shares you arrive at around 10%.
Yes. Their share has been declining since 2009. Or to put it into perspective, we are as far away from peak Firefox as peak Firefox was from the first release of Netscape in 1994.
The issue that needs to be added, but might get my github account banned, is failing to fire Mitchell Baker.
She's overseen a disastrous plummet in marketshare and a deliberate move in strategy away from firefox -- ff was not mentioned in recent strategy updates [1], and they've now decided to play at AI and early-stage venture fund. Skills at which Mozilla has no demonstrable competence.
The only real value they have is a fig-leaf for Google to pretend they don't have a browser monopoly, and at some point I expect that value to expire.
Would new leadership have changed this? I don't know, but keeping your job after overseeing an utter disaster and not at least once trying new leadership is incompetent.
Mozilla should be the last entity talking about playing at all, they do nothing and expect everything.
In the same timeframe from 2016, brave created a browser, which actually protects user privacy by blocking all trackers and ads, developed new privacy enhancing measures like cookie isolation, localhost access permission, and much more.
Then they created an independent search engine, with ai integrated using their own index and hardware, and now they have their own ai service which respects privacy.
In the same time Mozilla falls really short, yes they released Firefox quantum, but nothing major other than that, and of course nothing that actually protects users privacy because they are afraid of google.
And that's how they lost their passionate users, while also not realizing that the average user doesn't care since chrome just works and causes no major problems for them
Because they made all the mistakes that anyone trying to bootstrap a indie mobile OS tends to make.
Someone should take the "here's why your antispam plan won't work" form, and turn it into "here's why your non-Google/Apple mobile OS will never get traction".
Those mistakes chiefly being starting at the low end and not doing anything to make the platform particularly more interesting than what was already out there. Users don’t talk about budget devices and developers don’t talk about mediocre platforms, and so the positive dev-user feedback loop needed to kickstart a platform never materialized.
I think a third totally new platform could be established even today, but it’s going to take smart planning and flawless execution to make happen.
Mobile OS's have the worst case of the chicken and egg problem. Nobody will buy a device with your OS unless there's apps for it, and nobody will make apps for it unless there's users.
How do you solve this problem? Mozilla is too small to do it, and even Microsoft has seemingly given up.
The reality is that you're going to fight with the two richest companies on Earth, on a field where commercial relationships with OEMs (phone manufacturers) matter more than anything else - and OEMs like to talk with big, reliable companies, not scrappy startups. Your competitors have a 15/20-year head-start, in a field where such head-starts are practically unsurmountable. Your OS will be judged on its first few releases, which means you better have it on a beefy flagship phone; except no decent OEM is going to bet their flagship on your unproven OS, so they're going to give you a second- or third-rate model instead, which will make your OS feel slow and glitchy. Oh, and you can't make any real money from the whole effort, because otherwise they will go Android.
Readit News
They're in a strategic dead end, the reasons to pick Firefox are very slim. They should have committed harder to being extension-heavy. At least then they'd be interesting and even if niche they'd have a niche to operate in. Now it is just hard to see why they should be relevant. It is helpful to have someone complaining about what everyone else is doing wrong, but they don't need the budget they have to do that. I manage to fill that role on a pro-bono basis.
Especially with the manifest v3 changes, which will basically break adblockers on Chrome-based browsers, I can't imagine ever using something else than Firefox.
This is such a wrong statement and has nothing to back it up. Why is it first.
Firefox has: - much higher customization options (huge) - different features such as multi account containers - a different profit model not based on ads and intrusion. Mozilla is not acting like a monopoly and trying to force people to watch their ads. - A different engine. - a better strategy for Ram - a different UI - and much more.
Some of us, have enjoyed Firefox for aged and will keep doing so. We're power users and not people who act like popularity due to external marketing capabilities and default pushing is reason enough to say "other browsers should not be relevant".
Wtf is your comment, honestly.
Now, if you want to talk about Mozilla missing their money for US culture wars (Rep vs Dem) and issues unrelated to tech, then i agree. But technology wise, Firefox is a very easy case to make.
If it wasn't for the Firefox addons I've come to depend on whose developers have stuck with Mozilla inspite of their bullshit, I would have switched to Chrome ages ago.
I think I'm just too lazy to.
And they are absolutely right to complain about unfair behaviour
No, Epic is a good example, at least if they would have been successful in their objective. Financial motivation of companies or individuals is definitely the best cause for anti trust as it clearly shows someone is really affected rather than anti trust which just sounds good on paper.
It doesn't have a super convenient breakdown, but Chrome Desktop is at 28.9% and Firefox is at 4%. If you remove the mobile shares you arrive at around 10%.
Dead Comment
She's overseen a disastrous plummet in marketshare and a deliberate move in strategy away from firefox -- ff was not mentioned in recent strategy updates [1], and they've now decided to play at AI and early-stage venture fund. Skills at which Mozilla has no demonstrable competence.
The only real value they have is a fig-leaf for Google to pretend they don't have a browser monopoly, and at some point I expect that value to expire.
Would new leadership have changed this? I don't know, but keeping your job after overseeing an utter disaster and not at least once trying new leadership is incompetent.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mark-surman-mozilla-25-y...
In the same timeframe from 2016, brave created a browser, which actually protects user privacy by blocking all trackers and ads, developed new privacy enhancing measures like cookie isolation, localhost access permission, and much more.
Then they created an independent search engine, with ai integrated using their own index and hardware, and now they have their own ai service which respects privacy.
In the same time Mozilla falls really short, yes they released Firefox quantum, but nothing major other than that, and of course nothing that actually protects users privacy because they are afraid of google.
And that's how they lost their passionate users, while also not realizing that the average user doesn't care since chrome just works and causes no major problems for them
Someone should take the "here's why your antispam plan won't work" form, and turn it into "here's why your non-Google/Apple mobile OS will never get traction".
I think a third totally new platform could be established even today, but it’s going to take smart planning and flawless execution to make happen.
How do you solve this problem? Mozilla is too small to do it, and even Microsoft has seemingly given up.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/why-the-death-of-the-firefo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance
The reality is that you're going to fight with the two richest companies on Earth, on a field where commercial relationships with OEMs (phone manufacturers) matter more than anything else - and OEMs like to talk with big, reliable companies, not scrappy startups. Your competitors have a 15/20-year head-start, in a field where such head-starts are practically unsurmountable. Your OS will be judged on its first few releases, which means you better have it on a beefy flagship phone; except no decent OEM is going to bet their flagship on your unproven OS, so they're going to give you a second- or third-rate model instead, which will make your OS feel slow and glitchy. Oh, and you can't make any real money from the whole effort, because otherwise they will go Android.