Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#251

Post by horsawlarway » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #133

horsawlarway wrote: post #33

This is my personal opinion only, so take it with a grain of salt. ---- Mozilla can't save Firefox. It's not that Firefox can't be saved, but rather that Mozilla as an organization is not capable of doing so. My take is this - Despite a history of being relatively privacy friendly, the vast majority of funding for the organization comes directly from Google (To the tune of ~90% of their total funding, straight from G…

>Mozilla needs a replacement funding plan because Google can essentially turn the lights off at any point by simply refusing to pay them for search at next contract renewal. And then Bing/Yandex/Baidu buys the rights, and all that changes is the amount they get. It'd drop if Google publicly vowed they won't bid on it anymore, but there's also the possibility that someone like Yahoo pays more than Google like what hap…

I think Google is fairly arbitrarily deciding how much money to give to Mozilla (and it's roughly their current OpEx) - They aren't just buying search, they're also buying "competition" in the browser space.

Further, the kind of transition where Firefox might gain users from Chrome isn't instantaneous, and it turns out users have a preference here (most users don't want to have google removed from Firefox - they still prefer it. Mozilla is quietly testing a program to use Bing as the default, just to see how loud the feedback is: https://www.pcgamer.com/firefox-is-conducting-a-study-to-see...)

So there's a tension here that's beyond just enterprise deals.

Last - that deal didn't actually work out very well for Yahoo, and that was when Firefox had nearly 15% of the browser market (vs ~8% today).

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#252

Post by a-dub » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS

firefox lost out from me because some sites didn't work correctly, so i'd say that the first right move would be to really see what can be done to win over more developers as the browser they use for primary development. both firefox and chrome have good developer tools, but how much further could firefox be taken? how much community outreach might land firefox on more web developer desktops? are there corporate barriers to getting firefox on more professional web developer desks? how might they be removed?

also, have viable competitors for both chromebooks and android.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#253

Post by bradyo » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #154

selfhoster11 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subtitle of the question was "What would you do if you were in charge of Mozilla? How would you save Firefox?" My answer is an attempt at addressing these two questions. My goal wasn't to make Mozilla more profitable, but to ensure that it's focused on what should be its core mission, rather than the mire of sideshows that they engage in at the moment. Also, I don't care how Mozilla the amorphous blob of a corpor…

As a regular end user why do I care about what Mozilla's mission is? Apple makes shiny devices, Google gives me great free services, and in return I use their (perfectly great) browsers. What is one single reason to use Firefox? As long as these large companies continue to put effort into their browsers (which Microsoft didn't do with IE), users are simply never going to switch, the same way no one is using desktop L…

With enough investment, Firefox could also innovate and introduce features that aren't in Chrome or Safari to actually win users back

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#254

Post by dralley » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #87

paxys wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are answering the question "how can Mozilla make more money", but that wasn't what was asked. Mozilla as a whole is profitable already, and revenues have been growing close to 100% year over year. As a company they are in great health. Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct c…

The real (and often downvoted) answer is that Mozilla compromised on their core values. A "death by a thousand cuts", as it were. For me, it started back when "sponsored tiles" were first announced in 2014. On the surface it was obviously advertisements, but many defenders tried to argue that it was a "good thing" Then there was the proprietary Pocket extension baked into the browser with no easy removal. Again, many…

> The real (and often downvoted) answer is that Mozilla compromised on their core values. A "death by a thousand cuts", as it were.

I expect it's downvoted because it's laughable. 99% of browser users don't give a shit about those things. If a poll were to be taken of the HN users who switched to Chrome, I doubt even a quarter would cite that as the reason.

It was indeed a death by a thousand cuts, but the thousand cuts were

* popup advertisements for Chrome on the frontpage of the most visited website on the planet

* Google paying off Adobe, AVG, Avast and others to make their installers include Chrome using disgusting dark patterns

* Android, the collapse of desktop browsing in comparsion to mobile browsing, and people that will just default to using the same browser on their laptop/desktop as on their phone

* Netflix DRM that didn't work on Firefox for a few months

* Youtube, Google Meet and Google Docs refusing to work properly on Firefox

* The word "Google" becoming as synonymous with simply using the internet as the internet explorer icon was in the 2000s

* Chrome was and to some extent still is legitimately snappier than Firefox

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#255

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

I would happily support this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#256

Post by selfhoster11 » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #201

nwah1 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could pivot to compete with the Big Tech conglomerates in general. Provide their own suite of integrated tools, search engines, communication platforms, and so on. But with a privacy-focused and ad-free approach. DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this. They could go further, and remain relevant and viable in the way that DDG is, even if they never again are the most popular browse…

The last thing Mozilla needs is to spend more time pretending they're a big tech company and can compete with those guys. They should focus on Firefox (as GP said), not build a communication platform that will then fail versus Signal/WhatsApp/Hangouts/Teams/etc.

Yup. Someone else will likely do a better job building those. Mozilla's (and only Mozilla's) core competency is browser building, and they should stick to it. Anyone can build a communicator, but building a full browser engine is becoming a forgotten skill.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#257

Post by baq » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:23 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #127

Shared404 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. Unfortunately, that reason (browser engine diversity)is compelling to people who understand the situation, but not general consumers - and it's impossible to make general consumers care, unless maybe Firefox went for an edgy "rebel against the man"…

I feel like I understand the situation but I'm doubtful that browser engine diversity is compelling. It seems like duplicate effort. As long as Chromium accepts pull requests, what's the problem with browser monoculture? (In case it's not clear, I'm asking in earnest. I'm not trolling.) - - - - edit: Okay, pull requests alone are not enough, but the objections y'all are raising seem like they could all be answered by…

> As long as Chromium accepts pull requests, what's the problem with browser monoculture?

you've ansewered yourself: as long as chromium accepts pull requests. the day firefox dies, chromium stops accepting pull requests.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#258

Post by elforce002 » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:23 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #142

They should copy everything DuckDuckGo android browser does and develop in this direction. Basically default mode should decruftify all the websites you visit. Destroy all the known garbage on websites that doesn't serve browsing expeirience just tracking and advertising. Have an easily accessible slider to adjust level of this intervention for current website so you can turn all the crap back on if site doesn't work…

Nice. I use DDG on mobile browser and Brave/DDG on Desktop. I can't navigate without shebangs anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#259

Post by emn13 » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:23 PM UTC

dontblink wrote: post #225

emn13 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the uBlock author: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... I'm not sure how critical this is in practice; but the way this evolved may be a symptom of the fact that Blink's authors' motivations align less well with those of an ad-block user than Firefox's authors' motivations do. The worry of course is that once there truly are no competing rendering engines, that google will no l…

But why is that a worry? This happened before when IE6 dominated. Firefox was liberation. It can be that again and has set precedent.

Browsers are complex. Just because Netscape managed to commit corporate harakiri in just the right way to leave a spoiler for Microsoft behind doesn't mean that'll happen again. The web is quite different now from then, and much more centralized. If google were to dominate; or to simply share the pie in a non-competitive truce with apple, well, users would have very little leverage over google/apple whenever new developments were to slowly evolve the web into a whatever benefits the corporate bottom line over users interests; for instance by tracking users or playing gatekeeper. Note that that can happen even now, but more insidiously: by _preventing_ evolution that might protect users from exploitation.

Browser complexity is an issue in a more direct, plainly technical way too. Even from a purely technical perspective it's just nice to see alternatives, and the world is a big place; the extra investment spread over the now huge online economy is surely worth simply the extra reliability that such reproducibility brings to design of the web fundamentals and discovering new, useful platform features.

If you only have one implementation, it's very easy to accidentally have oversights in the spec that in effect render the true spec "whatever the browser does"; and while I applaud the pragmatism in that approach, I don't applaud the design-by-coincidence that then results in some pretty bad api's being permanent gotcha's in new webdev. Some of the API's that resulted from MS + apples more... "innovative" moments are pretty terrible, and here to stay.

Basically: having a bit of competition is just a good idea for all kinds of reasons, especially when the downsides are... well what exactly? Why would you want a blink monoculture?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#260

Post by butlerm » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:23 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #148

At least in my eyes and I suppose in the eyes of other techies and open Web idealists: Because Mozilla became just another classic corporation that's laser-focused on extracting value for shareholders and executives and nothing else. A year or two ago an article about Mozilla made the rounds here: executives collecting fat bonuses (and some leaving afterwards?). Some mere months later they fired a lot of people. Is t…

A board of directors is more important for a non-profit organization than for a for-profit one. They are part time, serve in a non-executive role, and are in charge of the overall direction of the enterprise, and for a non-profit organization are usually supposed to represent the general, public interest since non-profits have no shareholders to represent. The Mozilla Foundation is a 501(c)(3) and so that goes double for them.