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Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

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Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#51

Post by flukus »

overcast wrote: post #16
rrdharan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> web apps will be able to cover 50-80% of native app use-cases in the next 2-3 years Feels like this has been 2-3 years out for almost as long as "native apps" have existed. Reminds me of the first scene in "Snatch" - Turkish: What's happening with them sausages, Charlie? Sausage Charlie: Five minutes, Turkish. Turkish: It was two minutes five minutes ago.

I think we're really starting to see the saturation point with native apps, particularly on phones. I am so sick of having to install yet another mobile app, for something that basically shows me a bunch of text, pics, and like buttons. 90% of these shouldn't exist. There is a time and place for it, but I think there is going to be a shift to the web app with more OS integration stuff.

We've got the worst of both worlds a lot of the time. Tiny little apps that would be just fine as web pages, and web/electron apps that should be real apps.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#52

Post by flukus »

perryh2 wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #2

So they're laying off 50 people, yet hiring for roughly comparable jobs.[1] [1] https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/

Is it possible that they are collecting resumes online but never hiring or interviewing the candidates? The resumes would be used as evidence that they tried to hire Americans but didn't consider any of the applicants to be qualified. This evidence was used to file visa applications.

Maybe they just let go of whoever was keeping that page up to date.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#53

Post by BuckRogers »

carussell wrote: post #44
remir wrote: post #36

Firefox OS should have competed against Chrome OS, not Android and iOS. Chrome OS is the perfect OS for the masses; lightweight, very secure and stable. A lot of things that used to require dedicated apps can be done in the browser now. Chromebooks are also great machines for schools, much more practical than iPads (in my opinion) and very easy to manage. Mozilla missed the boat.

The thing that's probably second most upsetting about Firefox OS is this: If you say what you've just said right now, you'll be told you have the benefit of hindsight working in your favor. On the other hand, if you had the ability to go back in time to make your argument back then, even with perfect omniscience about how things would turn out, then you would have been subjected to claims that there is no market for…

I had perfect omniscience on this one. At least I thought that was the direction they were taking FirefoxOS. In fact, I sent a product request over to Panasonic to make a FirefoxBook about 6 years ago[0] and made sure I mentioned it to Eich as well[1]. Since they were integrating it into their TVs I figured they were my best bet to push the product idea onto.

I'm a Mozilla fan and wanted a privacy respecting, libre thin-client that kept advertising money coming into Mozilla's coffers so they can continue their mission.

Focusing on that and Firefox was the way. Unfortunately, Mozilla is a little lost.

[0]https://twitter.com/yenic/status/493525970628771842

[1]https://twitter.com/yenic/status/502297565199872000

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#54

Post by bobajeff »

eli wrote: post #48
chris_wot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Google was able to commercialise and sell their product. You don't need hindsight to realise that competing in the phone markplace is the wrong place to start. You start with the desktop and then make gradual adaptions that allow your operating environment work well on tablets, phones and laptops.

There is a lot of competition in the phone market because that's where the customers are. Desktop OSes are becoming less and less relevant.

This is true. It may not be a truth people in professional circles like to here. But PCs used to be mass market consumer products in the 90s (during the internet boom) but now Smartphones, tablets and in some cases set top boxes have taken their place.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#55

Post by overcast »

sidlls wrote: post #30
overcast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're really starting to see the saturation point with native apps, particularly on phones. I am so sick of having to install yet another mobile app, for something that basically shows me a bunch of text, pics, and like buttons. 90% of these shouldn't exist. There is a time and place for it, but I think there is going to be a shift to the web app with more OS integration stuff.

Aren't most of those "native" apps just webapps packaged standalone with some framework anyway?

Just furthers my point.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#56

Post by niftich »

eli wrote: post #48
chris_wot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Google was able to commercialise and sell their product. You don't need hindsight to realise that competing in the phone markplace is the wrong place to start. You start with the desktop and then make gradual adaptions that allow your operating environment work well on tablets, phones and laptops.

There is a lot of competition in the phone market because that's where the customers are. Desktop OSes are becoming less and less relevant.

This is mostly marketing bullshit [1][2] and misses the point entirely. There is competition on mobile because it's a captive market: the device ships with an OS with integration into first-party services like search and maps, and the default first-party app and content store, where the house takes a cut. Whoever controls the platforms gets the eyeballs, thanks to the power of defaults.

Until recently, the highest marketshare desktop OS, Windows, was a utility and not a content-monetizing platform, but Windows 10 brought it up to the level that was long standard on mobile. Google Search, Chrome the Browser, Chrome OS and Chromebooks are Google's progressively vertical takes on inviting a user into the Google data ecosystem in a non-mobile form factor, proving that Windows's weakness was that Google could monetize these users without having to control the hardware, but getting cheap first-party hardware into the hands of people is always a plus.

In all likelihood, the same would've happened to Firefox OS anyway if it had become successful -- the celebrated 'open' mobile OS would be just another entry point into the same exact platforms that managed to rise to prominence on Windows -- a proprietary but laissez-faire ecosystem where anyone could run an application to do just about anything. Over time, a few players bubbled to the top, and now they're shipping their own hardware to cut out the middleman.

[1] http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketi... [2] http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/technology-device-owne...

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#57

Post by computerex »

flukus wrote: post #20
bitmapbrother wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It also ran a lot smoother than android I find that hard to believe considering the reviews I've read on it.

I know, I read the same reviews so I was pleasantly surprised. I even went back to the store a few days later and bought dad his first smart phone for Christmas. It really is quite criminal how slow android is on machines that would have been unimaginably high powered desktops not long ago. Firefox/gecko has always been great on "underpowered" hardware though. A few years ago I bought an unusably slow android tablet.…

To say you are comparing apples to oranges would be an understatement. Your comparison went from kind of making sense to making no sense at all.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#58

Post by Ezhik »

Apocryphon wrote: post #26

Never mind sufficient adoption to challenge iOS/Android, what are the chances any of these other OS's even manages to survive? * Windows Phone * Tizen * Ubuntu Touch * Sailfish OS Honorable mentions: CyanogenMod, Plasma Mobile

CM is dead for sure.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#59

Post by [deleted] »

flukus wrote: post #20
bitmapbrother wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It also ran a lot smoother than android I find that hard to believe considering the reviews I've read on it.

I know, I read the same reviews so I was pleasantly surprised. I even went back to the store a few days later and bought dad his first smart phone for Christmas. It really is quite criminal how slow android is on machines that would have been unimaginably high powered desktops not long ago. Firefox/gecko has always been great on "underpowered" hardware though. A few years ago I bought an unusably slow android tablet.…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#60

Post by Touche »

fabrice_d wrote: post #27

I don't know where journalists get their facts, but this article is terrible. 1) FirefoxOS was killed a year ago. 2) We never attempted to bring FxOS to other kind of connected devices beyond phones and TVs. If they had took the time to check the projects being worked on (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Projects ) they would have understood the activities a bit better. For instance, the device built fo…

Is the layoff part wrong too?
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