Live data from Hacker News

Thank you, Chris

blog.mozilla.org

41–50 of 229 posts

Re: Thank you, Chris

#42
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part will be doing it while not running afoul of the ethical standard that they have set for themselves, and so many of us hold them to. It's easy to increase market share if you're willing to play dirty and have lots of money to throw around. When you have neither... well, I'd hate to be the new CEO.

They need a killer feature. Firefox used to be the only better alternative to IE. Then Chrome came along and it used to be the best at tabs and resources. Then Brave came along with automatic ad-blocking. Firefox needs to match the competition and surpass it. What would the next killer feature be?

On mobile people need to know that uBlock Origin works the same as on the desktop.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#43
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part will be doing it while not running afoul of the ethical standard that they have set for themselves, and so many of us hold them to. It's easy to increase market share if you're willing to play dirty and have lots of money to throw around. When you have neither... well, I'd hate to be the new CEO.

They need a killer feature. Firefox used to be the only better alternative to IE. Then Chrome came along and it used to be the best at tabs and resources. Then Brave came along with automatic ad-blocking. Firefox needs to match the competition and surpass it. What would the next killer feature be?

Privacy!

Rethink the whole thing from the ground up with privacy in mind. This includes transparency to whats going on under the hood, an integration of important plugins (your average video downloading plugin is likely siphoning all kinds of information), sandboxing, privacy-aware defaults, and banning and blacklisting a whole lot of known crap!

Re: Thank you, Chris

#44
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it. At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive. Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a…

I'd be happy to support Mozilla financially, but I'm too lazy to go figure out how to do it. Link me to a Patreon, or shove some subscription model more prominently in my face, Mozilla.

https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount...

There's a monthly option right there

Re: Thank you, Chris

#45

Chris was great from what I have seen, but I think Mozilla needs a CEO that knows how to increase market share.

Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it. At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive. Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a…

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality.

I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#46
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it. At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive. Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a…

I'd be happy to support Mozilla financially, but I'm too lazy to go figure out how to do it. Link me to a Patreon, or shove some subscription model more prominently in my face, Mozilla.

It sounds like a matter of time before they introduce a paid plan for Firefox Accounts, with e.g. a higher limit on Firefox Send, a VPN service, and the fuzzy feeling of supporting improving the web.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#47
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving has a negative connotation

Does it? What alternative accurate wording would you suggest? Everything else I can think of is euphemism. Leaving a job is ... leaving a job. It doesn't say why .

Handing-off (to XYZ), stepping down from his role, retiring as CEO, etc.

I would say none of those are euphemisms, they just put the emphasis on the reason why as opposed to the act of leaving itself

Re: Thank you, Chris

#48
post #38
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i duno. the other day i used a friend's computer without an adblocker and searched google for "AWS". i could not see a link to amazon AWS on the results page. it was under 5 ads for azure, gcp, and some other crap. i mean, i use an adblocker on my own devices and had no idea it had gotten that crazy. it was horrifying. the non tech-savvy people are clicking god knows what and fueling a massive industry of identity th…

But that adblocking there is not uBlock is it? It is not controllable by me and can be turned to "acceptable ads" any day. If it only let mobile to use extensions like FF does.

of course, but what makes brave unique is that its blocking is native. only 10% of users have an adblocker (us techies live in a bubble) -- 90% of people have no idea what uBlock is. also ublock could be turned to "acceptable ads" too -- it already happened (i'm assuming you're talking about uBlock "origin")

Re: Thank you, Chris

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again no explanation, this is childish.

HN's guidelines have been developed over 10+ years and give good guidance as to what kinds of comments are well-received here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I really like those guidelines! Could you please enlighten me on which one did I break?

Re: Thank you, Chris

#50

Chris was great from what I have seen, but I think Mozilla needs a CEO that knows how to increase market share.

When Firefox decimated Internet Explorer in the 2000s, it was just... better. And I think Chrome had some fairly obvious gains over Firefox and IE which led it to gain market share. I was an early adopter of Chrome, but that was in the days before Google seemed so sinister... I use Firefox now because I care about privacy, and I'd rather use a browser developed by a non-profit that cares about that as well. But I sus…

Firefox was a lot better than IE, but decimated is not the right word. I think it had about 25% market share at its peak?

Chrome might be better than Firefox for some use cases, but the difference is definitely not as big as it used to be between Firefox and IE. Yet its market share is way higher.

Which leads me to think it's not (just) about being better. I'd guess lock-in/cross-product marketing is another major factor.

Post reply on HN