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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

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Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#51

Post by bmcn2020 »

jeswin wrote: post #48

Mozilla must put the advocacy bits aside and focus on the core product. Perhaps the problem with a non-technical CEO is that the advocacy and new shiny stuff is given as much importance as the invisible (and insanely complex) work that makes a browser fast and safe. A total failure of strategy here - if the leadership couldn't find other revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves. Instea…

I'm not sure. I think advocacy is a core part of its USP -- Mozilla is privacy-friendly, and that's an important point, especially as all internet users, even average consumers, are being constantly hit over the head by how data-hungry these huge corporations are.

It's an uphill battle, sure, and there are a lot of things to overcome, but I'm not so sure I'd blame the leadership on this entirely.

I'd blame the market...for now.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#52

Post by freshsqueeze »

brador wrote: post #26

I still don’t understand how they spend 500M a year with so little to show for it. What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world? Nothing. I still can’t copy urls From multiple selected tabs without an extension. What we need is a group to step up, create a new browser, capture the 500M/year payday and put the money to work.

This is true. Mozilla knows well how to market to the tech crowd with the "we're the saviors of the internet, privacy, everyone else is evil" marketing. For the billions burned, you'd expect a lot more. The internet browsing experience feels the same as it did 10 years ago.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#53

Post by randompwd »

cxr wrote: post #49

Five years ago it was clear that possibly the best thing that could happened to the future of Firefox, Mozilla, and the Web would have been for Mozilla Corporation to have gone belly up. But we're past the point where that might do any good with respect to salvaging Firefox or Mozilla's name. Mozilla Corporation's role today is to siphon away any attention or enthusiasm that might otherwise be directed towards the id…

100% this. Mozilla needs to move out from SV. Their boards,executives & managements are way too cosy with other execs.

Firefox has been absolutely decimated by Chrome.

When MS(Seattle) was the monopolyin web browser, Mozilla (SV) being in SV worked great. Time to move Mozilla out & to be honest, it's probably time for Mozilla HQ to leave USA.

Chrome didn't do anything Mozilla could have done if they had put the vast majority of their funding into the browser instead of pet projects.

Dear Mozilla execs, stop thinking of yourselves as thought leaders. The browser is the fundamental way to access the internet. This is where 99% of your focus should be. Keep iterating and making it better and easier to consume, protect and develop with Firefox.

The last 10 years of firefox have been embarrasing tbh.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#54

Post by ghevshoo »

Yesterday I started donating $10/month to the Mozilla Foundation. TIL it’s not the Mozilla Foundation that develops Firefox.

I stopped using Chrome when they added the “feature” that logging into gmail was the same as logging into the browser.

If there was a little notification to the top right in the Firefox with a link to “pay”, even if it was optional, there is some proportion of users who would. And I would bet that your average Firefox user is an order of magnitude more likely to do this than your average chrome user.

So I wonder why they don’t do this? I’ve had similar frustrations for other products I get for free that I wanted to pay for.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#55

Post by KingOfCoders »

Brakenshire wrote: post #29
causality0 wrote: post #2

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

25% seems like much too high a number for the group you’re talking about. I’d be interested to see some data on level of technical engagement and knowledge, but in my experience a large percentage of users don’t even have a clear idea of what a browser is. The reason Firefox has lost market share in my opinion is because: i) Chrome is pushed by Google.com, which has a near monopoly on search ii) Chrome was bundled an…

I left FF several times for being slow, being a memory hog, dropping extensions, not adding power features (vertical tree tabs) and come back from Chrome for ideological reasons. I might not be the core audience or user group, but I have not left because of i.) - iv.).

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#56

Post by KingOfCoders »

TimSchumann wrote: post #3
causality0 wrote: post #2

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

I find it hard to disagree with this sentiment. I don't use firefox as my main browser because it's better than Chrome, I use it because it's not google.

" I use it because it's not google. "

Me too.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#57

Post by tester756 »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #45
outadoc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because…

"Firefox would just be slow as hell" Why is that? The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards. I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me (except HTTPs). Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) They broke exetensions several…

>Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF)

How many is many?

I'm using up to 10-20 and it never felt slow on worse setup.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#58

Post by orra »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #45
outadoc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because…

"Firefox would just be slow as hell" Why is that? The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards. I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me (except HTTPs). Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) They broke exetensions several…

The old extensions were synchronous and ran in the GUI thread. Running firefox with extensions on a HDD would freeze all the time for me, before electrolysis.

There also was not a good security model.

WebExtensions fixed these problems.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#59

Post by toyg »

mrweasel wrote: post #46

The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market? Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in se…

This would likely require the bulk of Mozilla to be based in Europe. It could be achieved for sure, but it would take years to transfer the relevant knowledge. I don't expect MoFo and MoCo leadership to be willing to entertain such possibilities, considering how "valley" their outlook seems to be.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#60

Post by joepie91_ »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #45
outadoc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because…

"Firefox would just be slow as hell" Why is that? The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards. I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me (except HTTPs). Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF) They broke exetensions several…

> Why is that?

Because Firefox's "powerful extension model" basically constituted direct access to its internals, which prevented the Firefox developers from making the architectural improvements that were so sorely needed to make it performant.

> Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM (writing this from FF)

Admittedly I'm on Linux, but I currently have approximately 7800 tabs open (no, that is not a typo). Firefox is a little laggy in its UI, but Chrome has never even managed to have more than a few hundred open without becoming unusable, so I'd say that Firefox is doing fine here.

Interestingly, the slowdown actually seems to originate from rendering the tab bar, not from the tabs themselves.

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