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?

#771

Post by smorgusofborg » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:02 AM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #664

smorgusofborg wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbird has always been their opportunity to demonstrate their stack is a general ecosystem, but it's headaches show that their stack isn't a good ecosystem for anything that isn't Firefox. They shouldn't be trying to build thunderbird for its own sake, they should be demonstrating their equivalent for electron and feel pressured to make it no worse for users than the current Thunderbird, but attractive/stable en…

For the record, I disagree with the assessment that they should be building an Electron email client. Most users are already using a paid/monetised Electron email client, a soon to become Electron client (like is supposedly planned for Microsoft Outlook), or a webmail interface. Electron clients cannot compete on deep technically obscure feature sets, simply because they didn't have 20 years to accumulate them. They…

I think you are using dichotomies inappropriately to invoke the standard biases that have trapped the Mozilla community.

Something that competes with electron is not electron. Non-native includes RLBox which is now going to secure Firefox according to Mozilla. Mozilla is on record regretting thunderbird's poor Integration with the Firefox stack as a trial for thunderbird devs and a tax slowing Firefox engineering.

This holding pattern has gone on and on because no one wants to establish the correct API layer to maintain as an inherent tax for Firefox engineering that enables all F/OSS to reuse the NS* stack correctly with good documentation.

In the long term this means chromium has an ecosystem and Mozilla's stable ecosystem consists of just one browser. However flawed chromium is, it has no competition for most developers and competition with WebKit for a handful.

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

#772

Post by iggldiggl » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:02 AM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #664

smorgusofborg wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbird has always been their opportunity to demonstrate their stack is a general ecosystem, but it's headaches show that their stack isn't a good ecosystem for anything that isn't Firefox. They shouldn't be trying to build thunderbird for its own sake, they should be demonstrating their equivalent for electron and feel pressured to make it no worse for users than the current Thunderbird, but attractive/stable en…

For the record, I disagree with the assessment that they should be building an Electron email client. Most users are already using a paid/monetised Electron email client, a soon to become Electron client (like is supposedly planned for Microsoft Outlook), or a webmail interface. Electron clients cannot compete on deep technically obscure feature sets, simply because they didn't have 20 years to accumulate them. They…

> Thunderbird should remain native.

Er, you do realise that Thunderbird isn't exactly native, either, what with it being based on XUL (or whatever's still left of that these days) and Gecko?

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

#773

Post by crossroadsguy » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:03 AM 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…

> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share)

And people wonder why non-profits and NGOs don’t attract the best talent. This entitled mindset is the why.

That people who want to do good work should earn less. Perfect! Let them pay for their vacation with goodwill and air.

This is especially rich coming from the HN crowd. Everybody wants a revolutionary but in the neighbour’s house.

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

#774

Post by tie_ » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:03 AM UTC

I'm using Firefox fulltime, both on my work and my personal machine. The two things I'd love to see are: - Fix the ever-growing memory usage on Linux - Make it the best platform for using Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Despite PWAs not being a mainstream thing now, there are still a lot of them. Particularly on Linux, a PWA can be the best option for software that doesn't have a native client - e.g. Outlook 365. PWAs have a lot of untapped potential, mainly due to mobile software authors not being familiar with the approach.

With Firefox standing for the open, net-neutral web, it makes sense to me that they would also stand for web-based, cross-platfrom, appstore-neutral apps.

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

#775

Post by npteljes » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:04 AM UTC

pas wrote: post #640

jwond wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify what basic rights you are referring to, whose existence ”the assholes” are trying to erase, and what methods they are using to do so?

Quoted post unavailable.

TIL that he's the CEO of Brave Software.

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

#776

Post by rolandog » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

I think it's fine to hold Firefox to higher moral standards than its competitors, but what I don't like is the general negative vibe in which people criticize it (or Mozilla) for not being perfect. There is always a constructive manner in which we can suggest stuff and I sometimes feel that the criticisms are too derisive and maybe even toxic. We may need to reach a collective agreement that some things, like browsers, should not be tied down to business models, but rather to make them a public tool or utility. Sure, people working to improve it and maintain it should get properly compensated for it, but eventually we will reach a point where no more 'growth' can be squeezed out of a product, and that's when privacy-invasive measures start to creep in (as we've seen with Chrome). So, my argument to save Firefox is to stop trying to make money with it, and perhaps lobby governments around the world to mandate its usage or to add dedicated government IT workers to contribute patches and maintain localization and internationalization (not just for Firefox, but for other FLOSS stuff). It's not a crazy idea, since a lot of countries have rather efficient socialized postal services...

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

#777

Post by npteljes » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #306

throwawayboise wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many elderly grandmothers and other non-technical users give two shits about having multiple profiles in their browser?

I would imagine huge number of non-technical users share a computer and want their own chrome profiles so that they can access their own emails without signing out of their family members. I know my middle-aged parents use Chrome in this way for example, and it would be a blocker for switching them to Firefox.

Is this basically a use case where they don't want to create separate Windows users for some reason, but still would want their own private space in the browser?

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

#778

Post by krageon » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #483

snird wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And she raised her pay while firing essential engineers: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313658-mozilla-fires-2... I'm a firefox user for over 10 years. I think I'm now convinced there is no future, I'll have to start to adapt to another browser now. I'll give Vivaldi a try.

That was the layoff where they got rid of all the rust people? Its going to sound harsh, but they are loosing market share to browsers that didn't have to invent a new language to write a browser in. So, getting rid of those people was probably a positive impact for firefox since they were mostly just yak shaving instead of actually improving the end product. The users don't care if you wrote it in C++ or fortran as…

Rust and servo were how they were innovating, and where a lot of the competitive features came from. By firing them, Mozilla made clear that they do not care about these things. The CEO is quite clearly a parasite hell-bent on extracting as much value as she can before bailing for the next victim.

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

#779

Post by grey_earthling » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:15 AM UTC

mhitza wrote: post #588

sfink wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand what you're reporting correctly, then that's something your OS "included a couple of years back". If you install Firefox from Mozilla's site, it won't have these update problems. What's happening is that your package manager is swapping Firefox's bits out from under it while it's running. Firefox's built-in update system doesn't do that. Which is not to say that I think you shouldn't be using a packag…

Then someone at Redhat was probably bribed by some Googler, cause it only happens with Firefox updates /s Joke aside, Firefox is aware that it's been updated and the new tab states that I have to restart my browser. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of Firefox, I just expect it to have everything it needs to function, in working memory. I've been using Fedora for close to 14 years now, Firefox always installed…

Strictly, Fedora doesn't support doing updates while the system is running (or at least they don't recommend it).

An alternative that might be smoother in this regard: use a flatpak version of Firefox instead. (Firefox is in Fedora's flatpak repo, and on Flathub.) GNOME Software updates flatpak apps in the background, and you just get the new version the next time you open the app.

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

#780

Post by krageon » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

BossingAround wrote: post #331

sebmellen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask peopl…

I don't think this has anything to do with arrogance, this is simply the market value speaking. Ginni Rometty did something similar with IBM; while being a terrible CEO ("IBM was the worst-performing large-cap tech stock during Rometty's tenure, dropping 24%" [1]), she got a whopping $20M per year [2] during her first 7 years of being a CEO, and she got $20M golden parachute [3] upon leaving the shell of an IBM. This…

> This is not arrogance. This is simply the pay of a CEO

You have a social responsibility to take care of the people working below you, which as a CEO is everyone. If you fire them and give yourself a raise, perhaps it is not arrogance but it definitely is gross negligence. No amount of "this is simply the market value" corporate doublespeak is going to change the fact that doing so takes you further and further from being an actual human being. Perhaps this is okay with you, but I think it should be questioned and mocked.