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Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#351

Post by smolder »

paxys wrote: post #154
selfhoster11 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subtitle of the question was "What would you do if you were in charge of Mozilla? How would you save Firefox?" My answer is an attempt at addressing these two questions. My goal wasn't to make Mozilla more profitable, but to ensure that it's focused on what should be its core mission, rather than the mire of sideshows that they engage in at the moment. Also, I don't care how Mozilla the amorphous blob of a corpor…

As a regular end user why do I care about what Mozilla's mission is? Apple makes shiny devices, Google gives me great free services, and in return I use their (perfectly great) browsers. What is one single reason to use Firefox? As long as these large companies continue to put effort into their browsers (which Microsoft didn't do with IE), users are simply never going to switch, the same way no one is using desktop L…

I actually do use duck duck go. There doesn't seem to be any advantage to using G search anymore, the web has reached a critical mass of trash that just overwhelms unspecific searches.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#352

Post by twblalock »

pstuart wrote: post #335
twblalock wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better CEO would not be cheaper, particularly considering that whoever takes the job would be tasked with saving a dying product. High salary and a golden parachute would be required to attract anyone good enough to succeed.

Really? This isn't GM -- it's a web browser. An important one, but even a paltry $1M should be enough to draw in the right talent.

$1m is senior engineering manager compensation in the valley at several companies just a short drive away from Mozilla’s offices. It’s far below CEO compensation.

Anyone who is capable of succeeding as the CEO of Mozilla would be giving up millions of dollars they could easily make elsewhere in the valley if they took only $1m as their comp.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#353

Post by mccorrinall »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

I wish they would gift Thunderbird a few new features, such as Mozilla Account Support. :(

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#354

Post by twblalock »

nus07 wrote: post #345
twblalock wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better CEO would not be cheaper, particularly considering that whoever takes the job would be tasked with saving a dying product. High salary and a golden parachute would be required to attract anyone good enough to succeed.

Someone visionary and humble like Sundar or Satya might work. Preferably an engineer or engineer-minded rather than a lawyer or MBA.

How much money do you think a Sundar or Satya-type person would be willing to accept? Certainly not as little as the current Mozilla CEO is being paid!

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#357

Post by olliej »

Firefox has a bunch of issues these days, but you cannot overlook Google's use of dominance in search, online docs, mail, and video to push people onto Chrome.

When you're hit with "you should use chrome" on all your most common sites, and the sites you use favor Chrome, it's hard for any browser to compete.

I know people like to bash Mobile Safari, some of which is reasonable, it's really important to realize it's pretty much the only reason sites aren't chrome only at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#358

Post by dontblink »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #278
dontblink wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is that a worry? This happened before when IE6 dominated. Firefox was liberation. It can be that again and has set precedent.

There’s no guarantee that lightning will strike twice in this case. When Firefox overtook IE6, Microsoft had been colossally mismanaging IE for years, which meant that IE had become a rusted husk of what it was in its glory days. This made for incredibly strong incentive for web developers to support an alternative, because having to develop for an utterly broken browser for an indefinite period of time was intensely…

This is an interesting argument. But this is effectively stating that Google has to be a good steward. If that is the case, then there really isn't much of a problem afaict (i.e. majority is happy).

If Google is treating devs and users well, there is no reason to switch. It's when they falter on one, migrations can and will occur (given past history as experience).

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#359

Post by [deleted] »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #196
unethical_ban wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a FF fanboy but I have moved to Vivaldi for mobile. Two issues persist for me on FF mobile, even the nightly version: * Scroll lag/tearing on many websites which doesn't occur with Chromium engine * Reloading of tabs when I return to them, vs. leaving them as-is until I request a reload. This is abominable behavior. So I installed Vivaldi and then blocked the domain on my pi-hole to prevent the daily checkins the…

FF implements what they call 'smart sizing' on Android. The basic principle is the larger the amount of disk space available (on Android they use disk caching) the larger the cache size. You can inspect this dynamically on your device in 'about:cache'. I am violently critical of FF's current direction but to be fair to FF the reloading of tabs is a compromise to deal with how little disk space there usually is on And…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#360

Post by dontblink »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #237
dontblink wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is that a worry? This happened before when IE6 dominated. Firefox was liberation. It can be that again and has set precedent.

What makes you think so? The DRM industry's answer to the previous waves of DRM and DRM-breaking was Denuvo. The copyright cartel's answer to copying via digital bypassing and the analogue hole was to make it all but mandatory to cryptographically secure every single element in the chain between their own servers and the pixels on our displays, and refuse to serve HD content if your hardware and software won't implem…

But there is no forcible capture of an audience. Users can download and use a browser pretty easily.

Even in the Denuvo case, there is still pirate activity on games that employ it (albeit no 0 days).

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