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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?

#871

Post by BrendanEich »

throwaway4200 wrote: post #561
generalizations wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.

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.

"throwaway" is fitting, given the quality of this comment. I was CTO from 2005 (when we incorporated Mozilla Corporation for taxpaying reasons; before that I had a Chief Architect title; I was also on the Mozilla Foundation board) through 2014. Firefox market share grew until 2011. Whatever the causes of Firefox peaking then, if you blame me for the fall during my last three years there, you can credit me for the rise from 2004-2011. Use a consistent yardstick.

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

#872

Post by StillBored »

zeepzeep wrote: post #787
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But is Firefox an inferior browser? Several APIs that make powerful web applications possible are missing (e.g. WebUSB, various filesystem access APIs) and Firefox generally tends to lag behind Chrome when it comes to new APIs/web features. The lower market share means that many web sites don't support it properly. For example, I need to keep a Chrome profile around for Zoom since the button doesn't even show up on…

> Firefox generally tends to lag behind Chrome when it comes to new APIs/web features Sometimes that is because chromium just implements anything they want and it's not in the spec.

And this is one of those places where FF could break with the pack. Sure implement webGL/usb/whatever but provide a simple browser and page enable/disable function for those people who aren't interested in having random websites sending rogue mining code to their GPUs, or various other API's that have questionable merit if you goal is a simple browser API/surface/function.

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

#873

Post by StillBored »

ChristopherDrum wrote: post #684
panarky wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are It sounds like you do give a shit that they care about "social justice" and you don't want to use their browser because of that? Or are there specific features / functionality / performance / security issues that prevent you from using Firefox and are somehow caused by the worldview of the developers?

I am someone who does give a shit about not wanting to reward assholes. There is one thing I think is worth noting. There's always all of this talk about, "It's the talent that matters, not the social justice stance of a developer. Keep the talented assholes; don't hire for social justice posturing!" Well, I'm waiting to see all of those displaced "talented assholes" band together to create a product so compelling it…

Being an "asshole" is not a white or black thing. Do you use linux? Because for many people, Linus is considered an asshole.

So, I've worked for a lot of effective asshole in my life, I may not have always liked them but I almost always respected what they were achieving.

So, sure someone is against gay marriage, i'm sure if you look carefully you can find uncomfortable things about anyone. I mean for some people just flying a US flag is a uncomfortable because it represents a country that still hasn't come to terms with genocide against the native people and imported slavery, as well as an economic system that rewards people for behaviors far more offensive than whether someone believes in gay marriage.

I've been sitting through my own companies D&I training for the past year or so, and the most important takeway I've gotten is something one of the trainers said, taken out of context... "We all need to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable"

So, if you damage your org over something did on their own time serving their own opinion your no better than them. Yes people trying to tell others what to do with their own personal lives (in their own personal bedrooms) is pretty sick, but so is getting into peoples private beliefs that they aren't wearing on their shoulder.

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

#874

Post by takeda »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #673
takeda wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the reason it's losing market share is because people are stop using it, including technical people. I personally find it superior to Chrome.

People didn't stop using it in a vacuum. There were powerful internal and external factors for those reasons, and unless they can stabilise the internal factors (which are the only ones they can control), they are a sitting duck.

A lot of what I see is laziness. Using what's most popular and afraid of investing time to switch (even though it's really not that much effort). A lot of those people are technical and are even here regularly.

This is slowly becoming another Microsoft Internet Explorer where all users will lose on this.

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

#875

Post by grey_earthling »

prmoustache wrote: post #851
grey_earthling wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you actually took the time to setup firefox to your liking once? Yes. I use Firefox pretty much exclusively. I'm saying that the first-run experience, and the amount of setting up it takes to make Firefox less intrusive, illustrate that Firefox is not as focused on being a useful tool as I would like.

Compare that to browsers having more market share and firefox isn't any more intrusive or less focused at being useful. Chrome is totally shitty in stock form as well unless you love ads and don't care about privacy.

Oh, of course! I'm most definitely not saying Chrome, Edge or Safari are better. I'm saying Firefox is just as bad.

I mean, the fact we're even discussing whether or not Firefox is more or less user-hostile than Google and Microsoft illustrates my point perfectly :)

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

#876

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

krageon wrote: post #783
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.

> Japanese CEO salaries are famously very low. The Toyota CEO makes about USD 3.5m I'm genuinely curious: Do you not see how insane it is that you believe this is low? Earning even a tenth of that would be stratospherically high.

It’s all relative. Compared to their western counterparts, these numbers are low.

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

#877

Post by marcosdumay »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #458
marcosdumay wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I gave-up on editing about:config. As soon as I do it, the non-dismissable "let's reset your profile" message pops up again. There's no point.

The second setting disables this message.... But it seems like you have already given up.

Yep, I gave up way too early. Thanks.

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

#878

Post by emn13 »

dontblink wrote: post #360
selfhoster11 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think so? The DRM industry's answer to the previous waves of DRM and DRM-breaking was Denuvo. The copyright cartel's answer to copying via digital bypassing and the analogue hole was to make it all but mandatory to cryptographically secure every single element in the chain between their own servers and the pixels on our displays, and refuse to serve HD content if your hardware and software won't implem…

But there is no forcible capture of an audience. Users can download and use a browser pretty easily. Even in the Denuvo case, there is still pirate activity on games that employ it (albeit no 0 days).

I mean, we don't need competition, sure. But we also have a social structure that utterly depends on competition for economic efficiency. I'm not seeing the popular up-swell for communism quite yet, so until that happens, having privately owned monopolists act not just as single providers of critical goods and services, but also control access to information about those goods and services, and the publications reporting about those goods and services, and getting to pick which shops get to even open their doors, and the roads to those goods and services, and the banking system you need to pay for em... you know, that might just weaken your negotiating position. You just might get shafted.

These aren't the weak little monopolies of times past, stuff like standard oil - these new setups are much more clever, and much more pervasive, and much more powerful.

Oh hey, as it turns out tech companies are making obscene profits (so much for economic efficiency!), and we've given them little legal monopolies by implementing copyrights, patents and contract law in just the right way to make competition almost impossible. Startups competing with them need great luck, huge pockets, a brilliantly found niche - and even then they'll probably just get bought or simply fail.

I mean I get that browsers are just one small element of the whole puzzle. But on the other hand, it's also one of the few where avoiding lock-in might still be fairly easy. I don't blame anybody for using chrome - use it myself on occasion - but I'll avoid it as long as it's at least easy to do so.

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

#879

Post by BrendanEich »

endemic wrote: post #861
pers0n wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF user since it was called the Phoenix Project. Donating money isn't going to help them. It might help them look good to some techies that follow that information, but otherwise most wont care. Mozilla needs to focus on other products to use in tandem w FF. Email service that is private, VPN (i think they have a partnership), Thunderbird, zoom like platform. They need office/business solutions most likely. Devtools,…

I know their phone project fizzled, but I wonder if there's a market for a Chromebook competitor. Position it as a privacy-respecting product for schools. Introduce kids to the idea that Chrome != The Internet.

https://www.kaiostech.com/ is the lineal descendant of FirefoxOS. It got to scale on the same plan: attack the low end of the Android market where the fatter, more recent versions do not fit.

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

#880

Post by Siira »

Melatonic wrote: post #621
travem wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely rooted in the experience with Brendan Eich who had a long history with Mozilla, was appointed as CEO and then (due to his personal political contributions, mainly Proposition 8 related) essentially forced to resign as CEO due to the accompanying backlash - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...

According to wikipedia he now an "ardent" anti-masker for Covid and now people are trying to get him to step down from Brave browser. Does this guy just not learn?

Masks have little to do with browsers.
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