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

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

#811

Post by dTal »

dontblink wrote: post #358
kitsunesoba wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no guarantee that lightning will strike twice in this case. When Firefox overtook IE6, Microsoft had been colossally mismanaging IE for years, which meant that IE had become a rusted husk of what it was in its glory days. This made for incredibly strong incentive for web developers to support an alternative, because having to develop for an utterly broken browser for an indefinite period of time was intensely…

This is an interesting argument. But this is effectively stating that Google has to be a good steward. If that is the case, then there really isn't much of a problem afaict (i.e. majority is happy). If Google is treating devs and users well, there is no reason to switch. It's when they falter on one, migrations can and will occur (given past history as experience).

And if Wal-Mart drives the local Mom-and-Pops out of business by undercutting them, that's fine too because people wouldn't switch if it weren't better.

Bootstrapping competitors is hard. Driving your competitors under and then cranking up the heat when the field is clear is a classic strategy.

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

#812

Post by Ourgon »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #769
kelnos wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her logic assumes that another company would actually pay her that much. Given how disastrous her tenure has been to Firefox's user base, I'm skeptical that another company would even want her as CEO, let alone pay her this much.

There's supply and demand here. Any replacement CEO is going to be thinking, I'm trying to beat Google, Apple and Microsoft on a tiny budget and if I dont succeed people will blame me personally for it all, complain about me online and claim that no one else should employ me. That's a gamble for anyone coming in who has better options and so attacks on the CEO for being a failure only help to create a moat and increa…

The replacement "CEO" should be someone like Linus Torvalds, someone who is not in it for the money but for the satisfaction of crushing his opponents where it matters: mind share among developers followed by market share. Someone who does not try to go with the flow of fake virtue and bloated CxO remuneration. Someone real. Someone who has the testicular fortitude to say ¨NO" to the social justice crowd.

Maybe Brendan Eich can come back? Do a Steve Jobs, take back the project and make it into what it was meant to be, primus inter pares among browsers.

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

#813

Post by BrendanEich »

sfink wrote: post #721
throwaway4200 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Brendan Eich would have been a good CEO? He was CTO of Mozilla during the period that Chrome was eating Firefox's lunch. He was probably more responsible for Firefox product decisions at that time than CEO Mitchell Baker.

Point of clarification: Mitchell Baker was not CEO at that time (and never had been). She was chair of the board. The previous full CEO was Gary Kovacs, succeeded by acting CEO Jay Sullivan, then Eich for 9 days.

Mitchell was CEO before John Lilly.

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

#814

Post by account42 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #505
StillBored wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The main problem is that they're not making money with their core product so they need to experiment and innovate to find ways to make money. I agree they probably didn't need to invent rust: that was an happy accident, the kind of things that happen when you have really smart people around. If they had a money making accident we would be talking about something else, but I guess they would need a different type of c…

> The main problem is that they're not making money with their core product so they need to experiment and innovate to find ways to make money.

Firefox is owned by the Mozilla foundation, the corp is only there to help develop it since having developers work directly for the foundation is apparently complicated. Non-profit foundations don't need to find ways to make money with their core product and they should not try to - instead they can seek funding elsewhere, for example from donations and government grants.

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

#815

Post by ashwagary »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #704
ashwagary wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atleast 200% of that payrise makes sense due to inflation. Value of the dollar halved during the past ~10 years.

Unless I calculated wrong 19% in the past 10 years. According to the https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm $100 in January 2012 has the buying power of $124.04 last month.

You seem to imply central bankers are honest and CPI is accurate. This is absolutely not the case and you should update your views.

It used to be a 50% haircut every ~10 years, now its closer to a 50% haircut every ~5 years.

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

#816

Post by Azsy »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #769
kelnos wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her logic assumes that another company would actually pay her that much. Given how disastrous her tenure has been to Firefox's user base, I'm skeptical that another company would even want her as CEO, let alone pay her this much.

There's supply and demand here. Any replacement CEO is going to be thinking, I'm trying to beat Google, Apple and Microsoft on a tiny budget and if I dont succeed people will blame me personally for it all, complain about me online and claim that no one else should employ me. That's a gamble for anyone coming in who has better options and so attacks on the CEO for being a failure only help to create a moat and increa…

I'm extremely curious what you think her job is and what her job actually is. I don't know either one. But I must be waaaaaay of base if 2m+ is a reasonable salary for the workload and responsibility.

And if we want to get conspiratorial, If she thinks her main job is getting the most money out of the Google deal, then Google would be more than happy to pretend shes doing great in the negotiations and pay 5m extra.

The sooner Mozilla loses its dev culture and talent the more power Google has.

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

#817

Post by kasabali »

chasil wrote: post #340
heurist wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I spent a few weeks figuring out how to configure Firefox to work exactly how I want a browser to work, then months happily using it. Then a big update was released and everything broke. I never bothered to get it working again. And despite claims of performance improvements that came with the release, it still chugged slower than Chrome. I would love to use a browser that I can actually configure how I…

From this perspective, the RPM from one of RedHat's derivatives would be the ideal answer - a long term support release. As far as I know, such lengthy support terms do not exist for any Windows releases. Firefox on RedHat 8 will stay as it is until 2029.

This claim is totally fiction.

RedHat has no magic Mozilla sauce, they simply ship Firefox ESR and upgrade it every year. You'll have the same breakage in the end, just yearly instead of monthly.

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

#818

Post by throwawayvibes »

spion wrote: post #526
StillBored wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mozilla didn't really invent Rust, and its looking quite likely that Rust is going to be just as significant of a contribution to the world as Firefox was (long term).

No post body was provided.

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

#819

Post by mcv »

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…

> I don't think this has anything to do with arrogance, this is simply the market value speaking.

What market value? Firefox's market share is down 85%. It's hard to believe there's not someone cheaper and more capable available. This sort of extravagant CEO pay might be excusable if the company is actually booming, but in this case, it really looks like it's just plain greed: loot the company while running it into the ground.

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

#820

Post by mcv »

aeze wrote: post #763
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese CEO salaries are famously very low. The Toyota CEO makes about USD 3.5m. There are other C levels that make 3 times what the Toyota CEO earns in direct compensation. Japanese CEO salaries in general seem to be below USD1m on average.

Those numbers seem so much saner than the US.

Still insane, though. Nobody needs that kind of pay. This is not supply and demand, this is the executive class enriching themselves.
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