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I wonder if someone is going to pick up the mantle that Mozilla dropped. One of the FAANGs, maybe Oxide?
Does Mozilla not make enough money to sustain long term investments?
What's the focus of Mozilla now given the layoffs of Rust,MDN,Wasmtime and Servo? Is Mozilla/Firefox becoming VPN company?
They're refocussing on the user experience of the browser. They're stopping their more developer friendly endeavours and research projects such as servo. The VPN client and Pocket are just ways to make money to fund browser development. Firefox itself does not and can not make money (and not from lack of trying). It turns out people don't want "ads", "nags" or "suggested content" in their browser.
Mozilla has decided to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as a business strategy.
The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser. They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway. It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market…
I recently switched from Firefox to Vivaldi. Just because:
1. I got tired of nagging compatibility issues with websites that I can't easily do with out (e.g. bank and stock broker).
2. I dabbled with Opera once upon a time, and liked it. I don't trust Opera's current Chinese ownership, but the original developers formed this new company and their (Chromium-based) browser is quite nice.
However, I still don't like the fact that Vivaldi is proprietary and closed-source. I would love to have a browser that is both built on a Chromium core, AND built for privacy by a trustworthy open-source company.
If Mozilla would fill this niche, then I'd be back tomorrow. They've already sort of dabbled in this area, with their Chromium-based "Firefox Focus" browser for mobile devices. But that's a very thin shell with no features.
I wish they would just acknowledge reality, throw in the towel on Gecko, and build an awesome Chromium-based browser. Microsoft managed to do it seemingly overnight, surely Mozilla could as well if they so wanted.
FIREFOX'S VALUE-ADD IS NOT GECKO! It's all of the functionality layered on top of that engine.
Mozilla has decided to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as a business strategy.
The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser. They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway. It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market…
It certainly serves not only consumers, but also businesses well to have firefox (and mozilla) so web standards don't get dictated by a single private entity.
Does Mozilla not make enough money to sustain long term investments?
Mozilla Corp currently doesn't make much money at all, hence their problems. The majority of their funds come from a recurring Google donation, which has to be renewed every few years.
What's the focus of Mozilla now given the layoffs of Rust,MDN,Wasmtime and Servo? Is Mozilla/Firefox becoming VPN company?
They are going to push their VPN, Pocket and Lockwise like never before. They are also going to focus on their incubator hoping for a big win.
Firefox the browser will start to stagnate, and in five years or so they'll switch to WebKit.
The focus is now not the browser or the browser engine. It's selling Fix-the-Internet type products that have a dash of security theater baked in.
Does Mozilla not make enough money to sustain long term investments?
They make 90% of their revenue from Google paying to have Google be the default web search on FF. A deal which is expiring in 2021 and hadn't yet been renewed.
"Mozilla and Google are expected to extend their current search deal for another three years, multiple sources have told ZDNet."
"Terms of the new deal were leaked to this reporter after Mozilla announced plans to lay off more than 250 employees on Wednesday".
"Mozilla officials are expected to announce the search deal's extension later this fall, in November".
I wonder if Rust has enough momentum to sustain itself now.
Looks like Lin Clark was one of those affected:
https://twitter.com/linclark/status/1293207099766431744
edit: fortunately I'm wrong and need to read more carefully.