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Mitchell Baker needs another house.
Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
231–240 of 286 posts
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens to the Firefox core dev team if the Mozilla Foundation's main revenue source -- the Google search tie-in -- dries up? Google is probably just waiting for the day that Firefox market share is below a threshold of viable competition, at which point they'll pull the plug on the search engine contract and it's game over for the Mozilla Foundation, unless the Mozilla Corporation can step in and save it, which…
It's possible Google will keep paying what is peanuts to them not to be technically an absolute monopoly (by keeping Firefox alive at insignificant usage level)
I think that's what's already is happening and has happening for some time. While google keeps generously funding them (even after the Yahoo debacle), they at the same time sabotage the Firefox market share every way they can (I am talking about actual sabotage, not just being "better", and not just the Firefox market share, they got caught sabotaging the original Edge as well). This way they can still say to regulators around the world that they do not have a quasi monopoly on browser (engines). "Look there is independent Apple and independent mozilla, at least!"
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safari and edge are enough, I doubt google needs Firefox as a competitor like gates needed Apple (and injected funds)
I thought Edge was now a paint job over Chrome?
I'm going off the top of my head here, but you can watch Netflix in 1080p (and 4K I believe, I only have a 1440p monitor) on Edge, to see up to 1080 in chrome or FF you need an extension with 4K not being possible.
I don't know if it is a tech-issue or legal, but since it can be fixed with an extension, I guess it's tech?
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wondered if firefox would actually change default engine if google stops the cash. It would remove some chunk of users at least imo, can firefox really afford it?
They’d change the default for fresh profiles but they wouldn’t dare overwrite existing installs. The former is a minor nuisance that would only cause minor grumbling but not affect market share. The latter would be actively hostile and cause significant loss of trust.
I think last time if you were still on default you moved to the new default.
But it's hard to find a definitive record.
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, just no. they were badmouthing Mozilla because they didn't like mozilla firing their rust resources while they continue to pay enormous amounts for a CEO and other higher ups while Firefox's market share is in a death spiral currently. The only thing that can save it is better branding and "gotta have it features" which Rust can bring, along with stability.
I'm not trying to defend their management, but my opinion here is that they concluded that investing in a new language wouldn't be the best/fastest way to evolve Firefox. Google may have money to invest in a new language, but Mozilla probably needs to be more focused.
The executive pay shows that their conclusions about where money should be allocated have severe issues, so it's hard to trust that choice without more justification.
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe some of those fired engineers could fork it. I'd pay 5$ a month for a non-google organization that is not lead by Marissa and is developing an open browser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Web_browsers_based_on...
They were not asking for a completely random fork, thanks.
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#237It's sad how these valuable optimizations are unknown to the average person. When I hear "the browser" discussed in almost any parlance, the implication is Chrome. It's rare to even hear someone say "Chrome," as it's the defacto choice for the non-mobile web. Convenience breeds ignorance.
Or Mozilla’s leadership was distracted by a bunch of meaningless distractions instead of focusing on unsexy things like this and lost out to a competitor. It wasn’t the users that lost interest in Firefox. It was Mozilla that lost interest in Firefox.
Do you think that focusing on more unsexy things would have helped? It seems to me that it's fundamentally a marketing problem. Many people are not even aware that Firefox exists, despite it being basically as good as Chrome, and in some ways considerably better.
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with your view is that the purpose of most nonprofits, as revealed by their actual spending, is to act as a well-paying job for their administrators and a volunteer/exploitation scheme. They aren’t really about the mission. This is as clear as it could be for Mozilla.
There's a catch-22 in there, a touch of cynicism, which I understand. However, ideally you want well paid employees who are not exploiting volunteers? I doubt there are many stats on this, but my experience is that most nonprofits don't exploit volunteers. Firefox rolls out solid releases and improvements, month after month. Presumably that means that their employees are doing something good somewhere? I know there a…
> However, ideally you want well paid employees who are not exploiting volunteers?
Notice how you said "employees" here. Yes, employees should be well paid. Then, ideally, the high level administration should be kept small and paid similar amounts or only a little bit more than the employees.
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they want to actually improve user experience they can always include uBlock Origin by default - its permissive license should allow this just fine.
I wonder if blocking Google Analytics by default would affect their default search engine deal with Google...
There's nothing stopping them from adjusting the defaults, but I guess users would criticise them for it.
Re: Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or Mozilla’s leadership was distracted by a bunch of meaningless distractions instead of focusing on unsexy things like this and lost out to a competitor. It wasn’t the users that lost interest in Firefox. It was Mozilla that lost interest in Firefox.
Do you think that focusing on more unsexy things would have helped? It seems to me that it's fundamentally a marketing problem. Many people are not even aware that Firefox exists, despite it being basically as good as Chrome, and in some ways considerably better.
ultimately if there value , word of mouth works pretty well .
Firefox does not have a brand visibility problem , no amount of marketing will convince users if the browser is not significantly better. If the value is marginal convenience trumps.
Firefox did not gain market share orginally because they did better marketing than IE. They became big because they built a better product.
Chrome became because of the same reason too. They did a lot of early innovations with per tab process isolation headless or v8 decoupling and myriad to new features giving performance boost and making it possible for projects like electron to exist.
Firefox got a major usage boost post quantum.
If they could rebuild the full stack on rust there will be a massive usage boost.
Mozilla is in a unique position they don't have revenue targets or shareholders to please. They have users, and a single customer who is also their only competitor.
It is no brainier to say largest chunk of investment should have gone there.
P.S. yes google has a unfair advantage, they implement web standards well before it is accepted then force their version by sheer force the market dominance. This is not new IE did it to netscape . However google also owns a lot of the pages people visit. They will optimize their sites for their browser. This is why youtube will always be faster in chrome than firefox.