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

Post by zo1 » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:43 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…

Post by glenstein » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:44 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.

Post by kevwil » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:45 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…

Post by shmapf » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

Post by glenstein » Mon, Feb 14, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #254

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…