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Firefox on the brink?

brycewray.com

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Re: Firefox on the brink?

#591

Post by coldcode »

Semaphor wrote: post #312
robin_reala wrote: post #28

It’s not on the brink, it’s that Firefox shims GA[1] with Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is on by default.[2] analytics.usa.gov uses GA. So you really can’t rely on usage figures that don’t represent the truth of your situation. [1] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/413b88689f3ca2a30b... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-now-ava...

Just to add some anecdata, we have both Google Analytics (if you accept the GDPR tracking request…) and our own internal statistics based purely on useragents. Here are some percentages for November (this is Germany, generally far higher FF usage) Ours: Chrome 37.4% Firefox 24.7% Safari 21.1% Edge 7.5% Opera 2.6% GA: Chrome 39.3% Safari 31.5% Firefox 11.9% Edge 9.9% Samsung Internet 2.9% For us, GA is undercounting F…

My programming blog (https://thecodist.com) sees Chrome 52%, Safari 27%, Firefox 9%, over six months covering a fair amount of the world. I use Plausible. I never found GA to be very reliable.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#592

Post by dralley »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #185
coconut08 wrote: post #46

Mozilla has been a horrible steward for their project. They receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year and I have no idea where this money goes. It also doesn't help that their organization is full of purity testing and social activism nonsense that has nothing to do with making a good web browser. At this point I'm convinced that the reason that google is paying them so much is because they actually know that fi…

It gets spent on awards and grants to non-browser related things that please the CEO and board: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/

The Mozilla Foundation is not the Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla Corporation is the entity that develops Firefox and realizes revenue from Firefox.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#593

Post by Karunamon »

hughw wrote: post #517
28304283409234 wrote: post #500

Please oh dear god just let me pay for Firefox. This isn’t the nineties. I can and will afford it. I pay for Bitwarden, Fastmail, NordVPN, ElementaryOS. Just give me a paid version, Mozilla.

You can make monthly donations to the Mozilla Foundation.

That only results in your money going to miscellaneous secondary concerns and administrative bloat.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#594

Post by dralley »

hughw wrote: post #517
28304283409234 wrote: post #500

Please oh dear god just let me pay for Firefox. This isn’t the nineties. I can and will afford it. I pay for Bitwarden, Fastmail, NordVPN, ElementaryOS. Just give me a paid version, Mozilla.

You can make monthly donations to the Mozilla Foundation.

Not really the same thing. The best thing you could do to fund Firefox is not to donate, but to pay for a service like Mozilla VPN

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#595

Post by fabrice_d »

rchaud wrote: post #371
culi wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on iOS all browsers are forced to use WebKit And how could Firefox possibly complete against default browsers? Is it even worth the investment?

They tried with FirefoxOS almost a decade ago but couldn't find any hardware partners.

FirefoxOS was not stopped by Mozilla leadership due to a lack of hardware partners. The distribution model - mostly through carriers - failed because a key app was not available (WhatsApp) which caused a chicken and egg situation: no sales because no app, no official app because not enough users.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#596

Post by hnbad »

Semaphor wrote: post #403
culi wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's interesting. I wonder if it's done on purpose or if it has to do with the way bots/crawlers are counted

See parent. The default in FF is to shim the GA script

Also GA requires opt-in in the EU (even if some sites try to be clever and illegally make it harder to refuse than to accept) whereas presumably their first-party tracking is done in such a way consent is not necessary (e.g. sufficient anonymization that a data point can not be correlated with the user it originated from). Presumably FF users are more likely not to consent by default to begin with.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#597

Post by pas »

Chabsff wrote: post #69
robin_reala wrote: post #28

It’s not on the brink, it’s that Firefox shims GA[1] with Enhanced Tracking Protection, which is on by default.[2] analytics.usa.gov uses GA. So you really can’t rely on usage figures that don’t represent the truth of your situation. [1] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/413b88689f3ca2a30b... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-now-ava...

Per the article, this is irrelevant. The case being made is that the figure seen by the government falling under 2%, which it is getting close to, will trigger a chain-reaction of consequences that will dramatically hurt Firefox, and it's not clear if Mozilla, the organization, could weather that. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not the figure is accurate in that context. Maybe that can be fixed easily by h…

Well, if the world including whatever governments, institutions, groups, interests, companies, FOSS projects, OS distros, etc... all want to depend only on Chromium, then fine.

If Mozilla can't even play this card, then they should really just shut down.

Or, maybe, like Wikpedia, they should stop begging for more-more-more, and spend what they get wisely.

Not to mention, they could simply start bug bounties and/or crowdfunding for actual deliverables and/or services (ie. a security team).

And if all this fails, then it fails. Maybe we'll simply get a Firemium or Chromefox/fix whatever the name. A fork where adblock works.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#598

Post by hnav »

Mozilla should develop a rudimentary Blink or Webkit mode for FF that allows it to fallback to a better supported engine (with obvious limitations wrt extensions, privacy policy) for select websites. I think once the user has opened Chrome/Safari because something rendered all fucked up in FF, they're likely to keep using it. The telemetry from fallbacks could be used to prioritize compatibility issues and drive down the number of sites that require it. Oh and replace its own netstack with something better like the one from chrome.

Re: Firefox on the brink?

#599

Post by croes »

taylodl wrote: post #205
croes wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you shoot yourself in the foot to teach Mozilla a lesson? We all lose if it's only Chrome.

Last I looked Safari isn't Chrome. Also, anybody can use the Gecko web rendering engine, yet project after project after project has picked the WebKit or Blink rendering engines. And no, I haven't "shot myself in the foot" - when I replaced Firefox I found two great browsers: Brave and Vivaldi. The better question is why you continue to support a compromised organization?

Safari is a niche and is missing features.

And Brave and Vivaldi are based on Chromium, so they help Google that Chromium sets the standards for the web.

You already shot yourself, just didn't recognize yet.

Why do you support a crooked company like Google?

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