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Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

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Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#71

Post by noirscape »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #54
homebrewer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's precisely the problem people have been talking about for a decade now. If it was just the browser, maybe it wouldn't have lost 90% of its former market share.

Firefox lost market share because of factors outside their control. They'd have to have owned a popular OS or conglomerate of dominant web services.

Firefox lost market share because they kept antagonizing their users. It's easy to read Chrome as the boogeyman to blame for Firefox' failure, but that's... also not correct.

Mozilla is, rather frustrating for those that lead it I'm sure, chosen largely based on principles that people found they couldn't get from Google. Things like "don't profit from me the user", "don't track me" and "don't do things in my browser without me knowing about it". These aren't things people point towards the Chrome browser with because if you expect any of this to not be done by Google, then you're kidding yourself.

Mozilla meanwhile has a pretty wide history of just... doing things that break this promise[0][1][2] (listed is mostly recent stuff, but they have been doing it since forever, going back to the forced Pocket integration).

Chrome users don't care about this stuff (since they already use a Google product), Firefox users by virtue of picking Firefox did. And when it comes to optimization, Chrome does beat Firefox pretty handily, so people started abandoning Firefox because at that point, both Mozilla and Google offer the same value proposition.

Their recent ventures into adtech are probably going to annihilate their biggest potential userbase gain, which is Google tightening the screws on adblockers and uBlock Origin in particular not playing ball with them on it. (UBOL is a joke and the UI by design makes it look like a "kiddie"/unprofessional adblocker.)

Google didn't kill Firefox (they want it alive to avoid antitrust lawsuits). Mozilla did.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497051

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#72

Post by jeppester »

sleepyhead wrote: post #39
_ink_ wrote: post #8

IMHO the EU should step in. Having a browser that is not controlled by big tech should be part of an effort to reduce the dependency on the US.

[flagged]

Attaching the bottle cap is a great idea that prevents unnecessary plastic pollution.

It is an example of the EU doing something reasonable that a private company would never be motivated to do.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#73

Post by notpushkin »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #65
notpushkin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better news are, Mozilla gets around $30 million as investment income ($37M in 2023 [1]). Some people argue that it’s not enough to maintain Firefox but that sounds weird to me. Chromium is not a good alternative: 95% of Chromium commits come from Google. [2] [1]: https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/File:501c3_2023_990_Mozi... [2]: https://chromiumstats.github.io/cr-stats/authors/company_aut...

Chromium is not a good alternative: 95% of Chromium commits come from Google. Or ... Chromium is the perfect alternative ... as long as it remains open source and privacy invasion can be easily stripped out of it. Let Google fund most of the development of a privacy respecting browser (i.e. Brave). And if it doesn't remain open source? Then it's time for a fork --- just like it is now with Firefox. Bottom line: If yo…

> Let Google fund most of the development of a privacy respecting browser (i.e. Brave).

Why would they do that? (I mean, they wouldn’t stop it in one go, but they sure as hell will try to push users off the web.)

> If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also reject Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over the past decade was funded by Google.

Which is exactly the problem :-)

If Chromium can live on without Google – I don’t mind it. My primary concern is Firefox, though.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#74

Post by iggldiggl »

ItsBob wrote: post #57
exploderate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how? Or is your argument "One guy in a basement in Bulgaria could build Firefox for 50 Stotinki."?

Let's do some back-of-a-napkin maths here and see if we could... Just for fun of course :D === ANNUAL COSTS === 20 developers at $150k each = $3M Other staff costs, like pensions etc. = $1.5M Someone in charge of overall project = $250k (this doesn't have to be the case. He could easily be a dev on $150k but lets run with it) Infrastructure for testing and whatnot. Lets say Azure (expensive!) = $1M 2 x Marketing peep…

Firefox has way more than 20 developers. Looking at https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/mots/index.html, if I'm not mistaken in my count, there are currently 147 module owners and peers alone. Some of those might be volunteers, but I think the large majority of them are Mozilla staff. On top of that there are probably a number of further Mozilla staff developers who aren't owners or peers, QA staff, product managers, sysadmins and other support staff…

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#75

Post by ItsBob »

iggldiggl wrote: post #74
ItsBob wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do some back-of-a-napkin maths here and see if we could... Just for fun of course :D === ANNUAL COSTS === 20 developers at $150k each = $3M Other staff costs, like pensions etc. = $1.5M Someone in charge of overall project = $250k (this doesn't have to be the case. He could easily be a dev on $150k but lets run with it) Infrastructure for testing and whatnot. Lets say Azure (expensive!) = $1M 2 x Marketing peep…

Firefox has way more than 20 developers. Looking at https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/mots/index.html , if I'm not mistaken in my count, there are currently 147 module owners and peers alone. Some of those might be volunteers, but I think the large majority of them are Mozilla staff. On top of that there are probably a number of further Mozilla staff developers who aren't owners or peers, QA staff, product mana…

I know they have way more than that but I'd argue that you don't need that many.

Hypothetically, if I was given the money and asked to build a team to fork Firefox I'd be more focused. Way more!

The current devs work on stuff I'd scrap like Pocket, telemetry, anything with AI, and so on. I bet there is a load of stuff in there that I'd want out! There's probably a bunch of things in Firefox Labs they're working on too.

So, I'd argue that 20 good devs (again, a number I pulled out of the air!) split into, say, 4 smaller teams could achieve a shit load of work under the right circumstances, with the right leadership and so on.

I'm currently a senior architect with over 50 devs below me. Most are mid-level at best (not a slur, just where they are in their career!) but the few good ones are very good. A team of 20 of those could pull it off!

It'd be a tall order building a browser from scratch with 20 devs maybe but it's already built.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#76

Post by notpushkin »

noxer wrote: post #70
notpushkin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can invest some money with no strings attached – hey, why not.

Have you asked the people who pay in the end (the taxpayer) if they want that? The very last thing I want my taxes to go to is anything that has "no strings attached". Its by definition a gift and gifting taxes should be a crime.

I wholeheartedly agree, though how to utilize the tax money isn’t the problematic part in the taxation IMO.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#77

Post by jqpabc123 »

notpushkin wrote: post #73
jqpabc123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium is not a good alternative: 95% of Chromium commits come from Google. Or ... Chromium is the perfect alternative ... as long as it remains open source and privacy invasion can be easily stripped out of it. Let Google fund most of the development of a privacy respecting browser (i.e. Brave). And if it doesn't remain open source? Then it's time for a fork --- just like it is now with Firefox. Bottom line: If yo…

> Let Google fund most of the development of a privacy respecting browser (i.e. Brave). Why would they do that? (I mean, they wouldn’t stop it in one go, but they sure as hell will try to push users off the web.) > If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also reject Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over the past decade was funded by Google. Which is exactly the problem :-) If Chromium can live on without Goog…

but they sure as hell will try to push users off the web.

???

Google's revenue stream is almost wholly dependent on the web and the privacy invasion it facilitates. Pushing users off the web would be self defeating.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#78

Post by hagbard_c »

t43562 wrote: post #68
hagbard_c wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State involvement tends to come with strings attached. The EU would insist on the browser to implement mechanisms to ' limit the spread of mis-, dis- and malinformation ' where it is up to the whims of the politicos in Brussels to decide what the populace is allowed to see and what is to be suppressed. To that I say a loud and clear 'thanks but no thanks', I prefer my technology to work for me instead of it being an…

Possibly but right now you're being guided to whatever information makes the most ad revenue. A choice of two compromised mechanisms might be better than none.

No, that is not the issue here - this is not about which sites I frequent but about whether the browser I use to do so tries to keep me from going there. The content of those sites can be influenced by advertising (which I rigorously block, no exceptions) but the browser as of yet does not attempt to keep me from visiting site A nor does it change its contents (other than by means of the content blocker which I have control over) to match some ideological goal. An EU-financed browser could end up doing these things which is why I do not want the EU to get involved in this way.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#79

Post by iteratethis »

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left.

Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox.

Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced devtools, Google having a team of "evangelists", course material is Chrome-based, test-automation, etc. So developers too can ignore Firefox.

Some argue that it's good to have an independent rendering engine. Here too Firefox plays no role at all. The only counter force to Google's web feature roadmap is Apple/Webkit, not Mozilla.

From a privacy preserving perspective, Firefox has no unique value. Install Brave, say no to the one-time crypto pop-up, and you have a very decent and fast browser that also consistently renders along with Chrome and Edge.

I use Firefox. If I ask myself why, it's muscle memory and because uBlock Origin still works.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#80

Post by jqpabc123 »

frontfor wrote: post #33
raincole wrote: post #24

So who are going to fund them? Sorry for being cynical, but this "petition" sounds like telling depressed people to "just be more positive." Sure, just find more revenue streams. Just be sustainable. It's so easy!

Agreed. A world where Mozilla ceases to exist due to lack of funding is arguably worse than the current state.

Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

With less than 3% marketshare, Mozilla doesn't exist now for most people --- mainly just for Google.

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