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Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

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Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#201

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #174
indymike wrote: post #146

Unpopular opinion: Personally, I'd love to see Mozilla take on Apple in court. Firefox, Gecko rendering engine and all, should be on iOS. Not allowing competing browsers is more anti-competitive than not allowing third party payments for in-app purchases, and would lead to incredible amounts of innovation.

Not unpopular at all around here, except that Mozilla going to court against a behemoth is a sure way to drain all their funding for little to no gain (there’s no evidence that firefox would gain more users with their engine on iOS). Mozilla should use their money to improve their browser on desktop and mobile. Firefox on iOS shows how little Mozilla cares about the platform. For instance, no real adblock, they only…

> Firefox on iOS shows how little Mozilla cares about the platform.

I agree, but also aren’t alternative browsers on IOS still just window dressing? Since the backend is always Safari?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#202

Post by wilkystyle »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #200
wilkystyle wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem, let me clarify: You suggested that the answer to a constant stream of changes was to either "just modify the CSS" or (if it's too much work for too little gain) then you essentially just accept Mozilla's decision. If those are indeed the only other options besides users finding another product, I'd say you answered exactly why Firefox is in decline.

I'm sorry, I still don't understand. This is exactly the way it is with any other browser. If you don't like changes in Chrome for example, you can either modify them, accept their decision, or find another product. And Chrome is not in decline.

> If you don't like changes in Chrome for example, you can either modify them, accept their decision, or find another product. And Chrome is not in decline.

Yes, my point exactly. You can answer "just modify the CSS" every time someone complains about a change in Firefox, but in reality users will find another product instead.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#203

Post by ianbicking »

I think in each step the choices Firefox made usually made sense. As Firefox removed or changed features at each juncture they really tried to choose what would work for the most people. A kind of utilitarian product design. And yet it declined, and the critique here isn't entirely wrong (but I think it's mostly wrong).

Neither the path Firefox took, nor the path described here, would be enough to stop that decline. A bunch of hidden and obscure features that don't make sense in totality is not a great approach.

I personally felt strongly, when I was with Mozilla, that differentiated products would help get out of that quagmire. I never had any influence at a meaningful level - probably my own fault - so the idea never went anywhere. But with multiple products you can provide niche features that are meaningful and attractive. If there are ways to use interacting features to achieve some end that is not a marketable approach: there's no story, there's nothing to attract the user to return after installation. By saying "here's a browser for research" (or studying, watching videos, managing an online store, programming, etc) you come up with an understanding between the user and product maker about purpose.

Chrome had, and still has, a lock on the kind-of-good-enough-for-everyone market. A niche approach like Vivaldi is still less successful than Firefox is today. Firefox needs to find entirely different approaches.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#204

Post by freediver »

dralley wrote: post #177
freediver wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems most of the customers of privacy focused products want all the other features of competitors; most of the times without paying any money This is a business model question, right? Nothing prevents someone from making a great privacy focused browser and actually charging for it vs being directly (Brave?) or indirectly (Chrome, Firefox?) ad-monetized. Also in this context, referring to "customers of privacy f…

> This is a business model question, right? Mozilla has chosen to be indirectly ad-supported vs making a premium (as in paid-for) or a freemium browser as a business model. Nothing prevents someone from making a great privacy focused browser and actually charging for it? Except the fact that nobody (relative to even their current userbase) would use it, and maintaining a browser is incredibly difficult and expensive.…

> maintaining a browser is incredibly difficult and expensive. It would be the death blow to their market share, which would destroy Gecko as a viable browser engine

Assuming 100 people needed for Gecko, and $150k/year annual, world-wide, average developer expense, we come to $15M/year. Mozilla already has about ~$50M/year non-Google revenue from its products (coming from "true" users/customers).

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#205

Post by GekkePrutser »

freediver wrote: post #179
dralley wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a business model question, right? Mozilla has chosen to be indirectly ad-supported vs making a premium (as in paid-for) or a freemium browser as a business model. Nothing prevents someone from making a great privacy focused browser and actually charging for it? Except the fact that nobody (relative to even their current userbase) would use it, and maintaining a browser is incredibly difficult and expensive.…

But then we are in conflict as we want Mozilla to create a superior product but we are not ready pay for it? One of these expectations has to give in then.

I'm very happy to pay money for it tbh. But don't forget Mozilla doesn't even take donations for Firefox. Only for their Foundation.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#206

Post by webmobdev »

bm3719 wrote: post #48

There's a theory in the Free Software community that BigTech sponsorship of Mozilla was intended to bring about the current state of affairs. The idea is that MS, Google, and others really have no reason to donate to a direct competitor. Perhaps they did so because they knew it would give them control. That control was exercised over the years and now Mozilla is more a social justice advocacy organization than a foun…

I completely buy that argument - BigTech (in particular Google) have a huge influence today on Firefox development.

Moreover, Mozilla's Firefox is deliberately hostile to the open source movement too - their code is a convulated mess by design, to discourage others from developing competing products with it. (Remember, that Firefox has provided Mozilla with 100's of millions of dollars - so the excuse of legacy code and all is just bullshit). It's no wonder that both Webkit (Safari) and Blink (Chrome / Opera) are more popular than Gecko (the browser engine of Firefox), with developers. (All that money is just wasted on them ... ).

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#207

Post by lavabiopsy »

wilkystyle wrote: post #202
lavabiopsy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I still don't understand. This is exactly the way it is with any other browser. If you don't like changes in Chrome for example, you can either modify them, accept their decision, or find another product. And Chrome is not in decline.

> If you don't like changes in Chrome for example, you can either modify them, accept their decision, or find another product. And Chrome is not in decline. Yes, my point exactly. You can answer "just modify the CSS" every time someone complains about a change in Firefox, but in reality users will find another product instead.

I'm still not sure what that has to do with Firefox specifically? Those "other products" could very easily be modified versions of Firefox or Chrome, of which there are many. Some of them might even take the time to modify the CSS for you. So it's still unclear what your specific complaint is. Also if you're going to switch products constantly because of a few lines of CSS, that seems like you would always be switching constantly, and would never find one to settle on anyway.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#208

Post by recursive »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #94
dTal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>many properties that don't/didn't work or work correctly with Firefox could be made to magically work if you changed your user agent to Chrome. Pretty damning that Google was never slammed with a huge fine for anti-competitive behavior for that.

Chrome is just the new IE. I've been saying this for over a decade, and facts like just continue to make this clear.

I've been hearing this for the last decade also. I wonder if those saying it were around for the dominance of IE. Chrome is like the opposite of IE. IE didn't ship an update for like 6 years. Chrome ships updates every ~6 weeks.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#209

Post by herf »

Before Chrome launched in late 2008, Google promoted Firefox as the browser to get. That changed when Chrome launched. It's amazing to read about things Firefox did "wrong" right after that in 2009 - correlation just isn't causation here.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#210

Post by cco »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #155
pwdisswordfish8 wrote: post #40

> Then Google decided to make the tabs on top standard for its Chrome browser, which was designed for mobile devices not desktops. On a smartphone it may make sense, as there isn’t room for a full desktop style menu layout. On a desktop it is counterintuitive and breaks workflow with all other programs. Funnily enough, moving tabs to the top is actually one of the few UI changes I actually agree with and find more lo…

The most logical tab position is on the left or right, on desktop, because most of the space on a wide screen display is on the horrizontal axis, and you want to reserve as much vertical space as possible for scrolling websites (which happens vertically, and pretty much cannot be changed at this point, as it is baked into the web). There's an addon for that, but you no longer can hide the default tab bar! So now it j…

So now my tab names are...? Written vertically? I don't think that's the best UI choice.
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