Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

apeace wrote: post #99

iteratethis wrote: post #79

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…

How does Brave survive financially?

> How does Brave survive financially?

Crypto [1].

[1] https://brave.com/wallet/

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

#112

Post by regularjack » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

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!

The petition should instead be asking Mozilla to allow people to directly donate to Firefox development.

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

#113

Post by FireBeyond » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

nativeit wrote: post #108

theandrewbailey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code, offices they don't need, commercial products that flop, monetization schemes that fail, etc. Mozilla already solicits donations, but I wonder if people who donate to them know tha…

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Not the OP...

To me I think the issue is "how can Mozilla be self-sufficient without Google?", and that means tightening their focus.

Those things should all get effort, energy and investment - but maybe Mozilla doesn't need to be the one driving it (to that point, maybe Mozilla can advocate for Google funding those things directly?).

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

#114

Post by t43562 » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

hagbard_c wrote: post #102

t43562 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could but a national government is more likely to block sites at the ISP level. Also ... private companies can block things they don't like, such as competitors...or alter their search rankings.

Currently Firefox does not do any of those things out of the .deb / .tar.gz . I'd like to keep it that way, hence my resistance against involvement by parties which have shown to be either susceptible to or directly calling for censorship. This is also one of the many reasons why I wanted to see Mitchell Baker disappear from the organisation as she clearly was calling for active censorship. I frankly do not understan…

Governments are not necessarily all about politics - the electricity system isn't and the road network isn't.

Private organisations that have great power over important bits of the internet are also not necessarily politically neutral and there is no level to control them.

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

#115

Post by kebokyo » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

Something that this petition does not mention at all are possible alternatives to Google search as the default search engine. If Google isn’t the default, who should be the default?

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

#116

Post by paulryanrogers » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

redserk wrote: post #62

paulryanrogers wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Word of mouth worked fine in Firefox’s favor for a few years. I switched to Chrome years ago because it ran so much smoother than Firefox, and anecdotally I know of many others who did the same. With the switch, so did the recommendations.

This was before website's and OS's were consistently nagging people to switch to their own browser. And when the everyday browsing experience varied more among different browsers.

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

#117

Post by paulryanrogers » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

noirscape wrote: post #71

paulryanrogers wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Normal users like my parents were completely unaware of all of these shenanigans. They do notice sites and their OS's nagging them to use Chrome/Edge/Safari.

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

#118

Post by UncleEntity » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

t43562 wrote: post #66

ponow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if centralization with one big company weren't enough, now we're not even satisfied with one country, but a block of them. Yikes. Nope, run in the opposite direction. Unsuck from any teat.

a block of countries is what makes them far less worrisome. They're too busy competing with each other - none is going to want the others spying on it's own citizens for gain.

Is that the same as a republic of independent states?

As long as the EU doesn't have the equivalent of the Commerce Clause then, sure.

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

#119

Post by theandrewbailey » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

nativeit wrote: post #108

theandrewbailey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code, offices they don't need, commercial products that flop, monetization schemes that fail, etc. Mozilla already solicits donations, but I wonder if people who donate to them know tha…

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Let me repeat myself:

> All I ever wanted from Mozilla was a browser

Firefox is the best alternative to a Chromium/Google dominated web. As long as Firefox isn't kicking ass and being used by, say, 20% of web users, I argue that Mozilla shouldn't be doing anything else. This is especially prudent when a large part of Mozilla's (and therefore, Firefox's) funding is in jeopardy.

So, yes, I have a problem with Mozilla doing events right now, no matter what event it might be, short of a major product launch.

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

#120

Post by dismalaf » Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

bugtodiffer wrote: post #106

dismalaf wrote: post #96

Mozilla will never do so willingly. Organizations always grow, since the entire point of an organization is to exist for the sake of its stakeholders. The bigger it is, the better for stakeholders. Willingly burning 85% of your revenue and downsizing isn't something that stakeholders want. Odds are Mozilla will simply die and their browser with it, since the Chromium based ecosystem is much more robust.

I think you are confusing organizations and companies. Yes, under capitalism, companies only exist to reek in profits, but from a non-profit organization you'd expect something else...

Stakeholders include employees, and it is all organisations.

NGOs and government organisations follow the same pattern. They all expand, hire, and the people within each org all have a vested interest in the organization expanding and keeping them all employed, given raises, etc...