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Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

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Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful. Yes, Mozilla is different now, yes the CEO makes too much money but if more people used their browser more they might invest more in it in instead of seeing it as a money sink to satisfy people who can’t be satisfied. Seriously, Mozilla cant win. A large voice of people constantly scold Mozilla for anything it does. We’ve heard from Firefox devs on how this ba…

I dont like Mozilla, I like firefox... I am using it right now. One of the reasons firefox is dying is because they are chasing market share and not listening to the users at all. They look at Edge, Chrome, etc and try to duplicate them hoping to peel off users. They look everything under the sun but what the actual users of their actual product want... Us users they just ignore us.

I must be seriously out of touch because I have no idea what is missing from Firefox that you can find in other browsers. Can you at least list off some stuff so I can understand why people are so upset?

I know dropping XUL, plugins, performance have been issues for people. I see the changes they made as necessary to keep the codebase maintainable and improve performance. What else am I missing?

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#182

In a previous thread (these "Mozilla is dead" threads appear perennially) someone pointed out that Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistinguishable from their deployment of privacy-improving features, including stubbing out Google Analytics when "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled. I'm a Firefox user, so I have a vested interest in Mozilla's long term health and financial viability. But "mar…

I posted some stats from our website a few weeks ago [0], GA was heavily undercounting FF compared to our server-side stats based on UAs. One other thing to remember, is to check the falling of desktop usage, because a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small. [0]: https://news.ycombi…

Is GA counting Firefox on iOS as Firefox or Safari?

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense but how is the CxO club running it into the ground exactly? By not being on the default browser on their operating system? By not marketing it on their world used search engine? The community was the biggest factor Mozilla had in its favor and the community jumped to Chrome and here we are. It’s nice that you still use FF but their market share makes it clear that you and I are exceptions.

None taken. I am too old to care too much. From my perspective, what will be, will be. That said, you answer your own question with the very next sentence: I think you would agree that even with hyperbole of two people using FF, its management is not doing a great job ( euphemism ).

I think there are forces in play beyond what the Csuite can control. Microsoft and Google have bigger platforms with more reach. If anything, it explains why Mozilla is trying to expand beyond the browser so they have more ways to reach people and try wooing them into using Firefox.

I’m having a hard time thinking how else you’d market Firefox to regular users beyond word of mouth advocacy. I remember Firefox running TV ads once, no idea how effective that was.

Firefox used to be significantly better than IE which drove adoption but since Chrome is heavily invested in I don’t think Firefox can compete purely by being the better browser. The strategy from the “the good old days” doesn’t work here.

Also, I was looking for a specific example. Saying that the C-Suite is bad because market share is down is not an answer without context of how it could have been avoided which is not obvious. How could they have retained or grown the market share they had?

I’m not saying management bears no responsibility but not all companies fail because of bad management alone. They have big, well funded competitors and platforms users can’t ignore. In particular, Windows, Google Search, Gmail, IOS, and Android. So much browsing is done online and default browsers rule there.

Now you could say Firefox should have come to mobile sooner. Firefox OS was an interesting idea that might have had legs but who knows if it would have caught on. That work required them to divert attention away from the browser and they have a smaller warchest to devote on an idea that might not payoff.

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#184
post #126

"The focus for the future of Mozilla -- according to Mozilla -- is primarily based around Artificial Intelligence services." I sense a great disturbance in the Force...

Last year it was IoT

And hilariously, Mozilla screamed blue-bloody-murder when people asked for Webserial (which they define as a standard themselves!) in Firefox which would make flashing devices much easier, for developers and users.

One asshole Mozilla employee responded with "no, the danger is too great" and spouted a crazy theoretical involving someone's pacemaker getting connected to Firefox and malware blah blah blah.

People pointed out that Firefox access people's cameras and microphones, and Chrome offers Web Serial support and users have to allow the permission and pick a device to connect to, a site can't just connect to any serial device.

Cue handwaving about "we have higher standards than that smelly privacy-violating evil browser."

What a bunch of fucking clowns.

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#185
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their mission isn't to create a browser Aaaand that's why I don't use Firefox.

That makes you part of the problem.

No. It makes Mozilla part of the problem. People getting tired of Mozilla's incompetence and stopping supporting them is just a consequence of that.

I use Firefox. I want to use Firefox. That Mozilla insists on pretending it's not the one single worthwhile thing they do doesn't make it easy.

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#186
post #49

tl;dr: we need an open source browser & infra, and there are candidates. How c[u]ome, with all the power of open source we still do not have an open browser with an open sync infra?. emotions aside, this is dumb (some words cannot be used). Why can't we, as a group, stop complaining, and actually devote real time hours into developing the serenity browser to work as chrome / brave / firefox? Why can't we, use the kno…

I don’t know if we need a new one. Firefox is still a good (the best?) browser IMO. Developing a new one is really difficult and many more intelligent people than me have failed doing it.

But if you feel like you have to act, do so and do a show HN; I’m always willing to give a new browser a try :-)

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#187
Worrying about Mozilla CEO compensation when

1. Mitchell Baker is also chairwoman of the board of the Mozilla Foundation and is a founding member of Mozilla, and receives no stock compensation because there is none to give,

2. Google can definitionally outspend Mozilla on browser development and has used that to cement their market position for over a decade now, and

3. as long as Google is the primary source of Mozilla funding, they can (effectively) kill Firefox at any time, and diversifying revenue / building up a war chest of funds is the only defense against that,

just seems silly to me.

As a former Mozillian I don't like the choices Mitchell Baker has made (AI and services are poor plays IMO) but the obsession with CEO compensation at Mozilla has always smelled less like a genuine concern for alternatives to Chrome and more like holding a smaller player to an unreasonable standard.

A more interesting comparison would compare these numbers to the head of Chrome's compensation, and more specifically Chrome's spending and revenue vs Firefox's.

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#188
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year it was IoT

Before that it was a mobile OS that failed to gain traction.

at least boot2gecko made 1000x more sense than a painfully vague "focus on AI"

Re: Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely view the idea off competing with Chrome - a key chess piece of the company keeping Mozilla around merely as a pet to ward of regulators - as impossible if not counterproductive to their mid-term survival at this point. Which is to say, at some point they might become annoying enough for Google to not want to pay them anymore, and then Mozilla would cease to exist shortly thereafter. So with that in mind,…

No absolutely not... That would be the worst thing for the web. Blink is objectively bad in the first place, and we need more than just chromiumum skins in the market. I wish they would finish and move to Servo. I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based. Everyone consolidating down to Blink and Chromium is about the worst thing that could happen to anyone that desires an open Web

>Blink is objectively bad in the first place

Do you mind explaining this statement?

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