Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products • Hacker News Board

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

#741

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

vages wrote: post #627

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…

I have to respectfully disagree. It is common for leaders to re-state their entity's reason for being as they bring bad news. See Churchill's speeches during the battle of France, for instance. I think this opening was well-written and clearly communicated Mozilla's purpose. You can blame it for being populist, but don't hate the player, hate the game.

[deleted]

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

#742

Post by stjohnswarts » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #599

renewiltord wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

I think it is possible to market privacy and security to casual users, but it's far more difficult to market anything to the privacy and security crowd. Apple has succeeded in their privacy marketing, I'd argue, because they already have a huge number of casual users.

Yeah I don't think being "privacy centric" has won over apple. It is their hardware/software integration and the mass market appeal they've built on top of their ad campaigns. I use apple stuff everyday and it is as stable as linux for me and much preferred to windows because of the constant invasion of privacy that is Windows 10.

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

#743

Post by Polylactic_acid » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

Mozilla has a lot of obvious extra products they could start that generate real profit. They could start selling a paid mozilla account subscription that gives you a vpn/mail/IM

They have already started this with products like Mozilla Send and Lockwise.

No one is willing to pay for a browser but they are willing to pay for these extra services that plug in to the browser.

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

#744

Post by liability » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:26 PM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #700

GuB-42 wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hate the privacy argument. Anyone can write super-private software, it just needs to do nothing. Anyone can do better than Google when it comes to privacy, especially if you define "privacy" as "don't do what Google is doing". It is almost a tautology: we first define Google as the opposite of privacy and then market yourself as private by not being Google. In order to drive the point, you add some kind of blo…

Bing results are quite good. But i still didn't buy DDG's privacy stuff

The best way to privately search the web is to not use a general purpose search engine in the first place if you can at all help it.

Instead of using DDG's !wiki or googling "wiki [topic]" you can configure a search keyword to send you to Wikipedia's search results page, cutting out the middleman. I have this done for a dozen or so sites I use frequently and this has cut my general purpose search engine usage down significantly.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

This is the sort of privacy enhancing feature that Firefox should streamline and advertise. I wonder if they don't make it known to users because it might influence how much money Google is willing to give them for being the default general purpose search engine..

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

#745

Post by stjohnswarts » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #630

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.

As a user it feels like all of the major browsers have been good enough for quite a while now. Is there anything other than bug fixes and performance improvements happening in that space these days?

web standards are always evolving and updating. A lot of users don't appreciate that it's happening but it is. Firefox and Chrome do a pretty good job of keeping up. Chrome also adds a lot of proprietary additions to push the envelope as well as differentiate Chrome as well.

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

#746

Post by themacguffinman » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #168

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

The major threat for the web is Native Apps. They should find/build/maintain a good alternative for that.

I think they've already tried, their attempt was called "Firefox OS" which ran web apps exclusively. I don't think they have the skill or clout to pull it off. And I don't say that as an insult, not even Google could really pull it off, although they're still trying. Native app performance is too far superior, even now.

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

#747

Post by andruby » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

I was watching Troy Hunt's weekly update[0] where he reveals he's open-sourcing Have I Been Pwned (HIBP). He also talks about the failed M&A process:

   We get all the way with an organisation who we thought was a very good fit.
   [...] which due to confidentiality reasons I have to describe as "a change in
   business operating model" happened that killed the whole [deal], in February.

Mozilla would have been a perfect fit for HIBP. Could it be that the failed M&A partner was in fact Mozilla, who are now revealing their "change in business operating model" (ie: focus on commercial products)?

This comment from 5 months ago has the same idea [1].

[0] https://youtu.be/2-wgY3Fqfos?t=2160

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22471374

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

#748

Post by icefo » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

anonymousab wrote: post #493

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

For me, the feeling of getting kicked in the shins by a diva designer every-other update has risen dramatically in the past few years, as has the prominence of (at least the feeling of) 'closed wontfix dontagree' issues for common and longstanding gripes on the bug tracker and GitHub. The unfortunate nature of a bad feeling is that it will outweigh a positive feeling from another change of equal consequence. I would…

The last update of Firefox mobile really made wonder how it passed QA.

The navigation bar on the bottom is an interesting expiriment but still I quickly moved it back up.

The new tab layout is worse. Each tab need much more space so you can display about half the number of tabs on the same space.

The top sites when you opened a new tab also disappeared. It seems you can put bookmark or something to replace them but the top site feature was really good. I'm likely to want to visit sites I visit the most and that used to be a touch away

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

#749

Post by cambalache » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #695

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.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

Nice way to police language

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

#750

Post by betterunix2 » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

remeq wrote: post #723

betterunix2 wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 Fir…

Wikipedia does not require anything like the technical staff that Mozilla requires, and even Wikipedia has struggled to get by with only donations. Wikipedia does not run on end-user devices and does not have to deal with all the things that entails. A critical vulnerability in Wikipedia is a problem for Wikipedia; a critical vulnerability in Firefox is a problem for everyone who uses Firefox, and it needs to be fixed by someone who is not going to suddenly be swamped at their day job. Wikipedia can ignore new web standards that are not useful for Wikipedia itself; Firefox has to support most web standards to remain useful as a web browser.

The best case for a community-driven Firefox would be for big companies to provide support, either in the form of money or in the form of labor. That is more or less the model that has propelled the Linux kernel. Unlike the Linux kernel, there are few if any companies out there who can point to Firefox as a strategically important project that they are prepared to pay someone to work on, especially given the existence of good, actively-developed alternatives (including Chromium for those who require open source).