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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#721

Post by tuankiet65 »

Sebb767 wrote: post #654
Hackbraten wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is the leading browser right now. Chrome isn't even close In what sense? Feature set, user experience, security, stability, performance, developer experience? Genuinely curious. I switched from Chrome last year and have yet to find a single aspect in which I’d say Firefox would lead, with the exception of privacy.

Crash safety. If Chrome crashes, you get one single, short lived pop up to restore your tabs. If you miss it or can't click it for some reason, though luck. Firefox, on the other hand, will simply always reopen your tabs and prompt you, in case the crash was its fault. In fact, losing ~50 open tabs in Chrome was what made me switch.

The tabs are still there even if you miss the prompt. Either press Ctrl-Shift-T, or select the three dots => History and the tabs are there, under the "Recently closed" section. The caveat is that you have to restore the tabs before you've browsed enough pages that the tabs are pushed out of the recently closed tabs. Also, I simulate Chrome crashing by sending SIGSEGV signal to it, but I'm pretty sure this applies even if Chrome crashes for real.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#723

Post by remeq »

betterunix2 wrote: post #578
segphault wrote: post #432

Over the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME. They also ended up following rather than leading on key privacy issues like third-party cookie behavior. In every case, they defended these decisions by saying that they couldn't risk losing users, arguing that these issues weren't h…

"The fact that they've chosen to focus on revenue instead says everything you need to know about how far Mozilla has fallen. " Maybe you have not noticed that money actually matters? Mozilla maintains a global infrastructure for serving Firefox updates and new installs; they have to pay developers to keep up with bugs, vulnerabilities, and new web standards; they have to pay lawyers to deal with the various legal iss…

I don't agree with this point of view. I think that world is slowly evolving towards an age where this point of view is outdated.

There are things for which it makes sense to try and find a different model then traditional profit driven. A web browser is one of those things. It should be a neutral window into a neutral network.

Why doesn't Mozilla try to master donation marketing the way Wikipedia does? I am sure Firefox would have an active and regular donors would the large community of enthusiasts knew that otherwise it would be heading either towards EOL or towards making it commercial

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#724

Post by johnnyanmac »

staycoolboy wrote: post #595
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't think the corporate doublespeak is reason to switch to Chrome, but I do think the corporate doublespeak in this announcement is just awful. When you're doing a layoff, just announce the layoff, show compassion to the affected employees, and if you want to announce other changes, do it in a separate announcement. Putting stuff about the fight against systemic racism in the opening paragraph of a layo…

> inviting a tidal wave of eye rolls. That depends entirely on how the reader feels about diversity. EDIT: I made a claim that the reader's reaction depends on what the reader is thinking, and six people claimed I was wrong, which means they can read minds. Nice. Critical thinking means removing your emotional bias from analysis.

>Critical thinking means removing your emotional bias from analysis.

it also means not immediately dismissing different perspectives.

It is self defeating to remove emotional bias when the statement in question is an emotional plea. That's likely the root of all the reservations you're getting in replies.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#725

Post by The_rationalist »

konaraddi wrote: post #215

The cost of building and maintaining a competitive browser is huge and it's hard for Mozilla/Firefox to compete with Google/Chrome. Firefox saw its monthly active users go down by ~14% in the last 8 months [1]. I think Mozilla should consider stopping Firefox development and fork Chromium to focus on accessibility and privacy (both in and out of the browser). It's far from ideal--there'll only be one popular browser…

Mozilla should consider stopping Firefox development and fork Chromium to focus on accessibility and privacy (both in and out of the browser). Mozilla will die before getting the intellectual maturity to do this.

The cost of building/maintaining Firefox is holding them back from putting more money and effort toward that mission (and I think that's why they're reducing their workforce [2]). Well said!

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#726

Post by war1025 »

gurumeditations wrote: post #710
war1025 wrote: post #683

> I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. I think that train started rolling when they forced Eich out as CEO. Ever since then, Mozilla seems to be less about best-in-class technology, and more about virtue signalling.

“Virtue signaling” meaning standing against homophobia. Just say what you mean.

I was going to say "virtue signalling to West coast liberals", but I decided to shorten things up a bit.

Mozilla doesn't have any more business interest devoting resources to LGBT causes than Chick-Fil-A has a business interest in funding anti-LGBT causes.

The difference is Chick-Fil-A makes money hand over fist and can afford to take its eye off the prize a little. Mozilla doesn't have that same luxury.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#727

Post by The_rationalist »

wanderr wrote: post #370

'The coronavirus pandemic “significantly impacted our revenue,”' - Most of their revenue comes from search engines paying to be the default. Are there any details on why the pandemic would have a significant impact on that?

They are obviously bullshiting

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#728

Post by nojvek »

I wonder why Mozilla can’t make their own meta search engine like duckduckgo and start something like carbonads.

It’s obvious that browser + search engine + ad bids are a money minting machine.

Why is Mozilla not doing that? Depending on Google for revenue is a losing game no?

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#729

Post by The_rationalist »

marta_morena_25 wrote: post #524

Why does Mozilla even develop their own browser? There is inherently nothing wrong with everyone using Chromium as a foundation. Mozilla could use Chromium as renderer while still doing all the privacy preserving stuff they do. There is absolutely no correlation between the rendering engine and privacy. And they few interlinks (fingerprinting, etc.) can very likely be addressed through patches that are rebased over C…

They'll be all fired before they realized that you're spelling the truth. Until them you're condemned to be downvoted in order to lessen the harm on their childish sensitivities. Cognitive biases are indeed powerful.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#730

Post by nojvek »

jacquesm wrote: post #192
gfodor wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common refrain, but is anything but obvious. Focusing on the browser could be a losing strategy. I'd argue it probably is. The trajectory is terrible: the tech is being commoditized (WebKit, Chromium) and the market share picture is bleak. The opportunity cost is huge: maintaining a web engine, one which basically just tries to keep up with the others put out by Google et al, takes armies of people that could perha…

Yes, it is a losing strategy because this is a rearguard action. There are only losing strategies, nothing will turn Mozilla around to be some kind of powerhouse besides what it already is. And that's fine . It doesn't need to be the next singing, dancing platform with bells and whistles. It's a tool. It should do one thing and do that one thing well. FireFox is not a failing product, it is the only product they have…

If they move away from Firefox, Mozilla will just end up as another yahoo.
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