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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#191

Post by embedding-shape »

iso1631 wrote: post #169
p-e-w wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has a market share around 3%. Even most technologists stopped using it long ago. Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. Nothing can kill Firefox, because it’s already dead for all practical purposes.

Wikimedia stats from last year put it at 15% of desktop browsers, ahead of Safari and Edge.

Yeah, every website has different stats about user-agents, depends a lot on the types of users you attract. I bet HN has Firefox usage ratio above 15% for sure, while sites like Instagram probably has way below the global average.

Global browser marketshare never made much sense. You need to figure out what your users use, then aim to be compatible for most of those, and ignore any global stats.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#192

Post by vintermann »

Sorry to get on one of my political hobby horses but...

We actually need to consider the possibility that yes, it is. More precisely, that the new CEO is trying to do that.

It doesn't take a grand conspiracy to join an organisation on false premises. It's totally easy. You can, today, go join a political party without agreeing with them at all, with the intent to sabotage them. Or another organization, including a workplace.

And just like some people just lie for amazingly little reason, I'm increasingly convinced some people do this. Maybe for a sense of control, maybe because they think they'll get rewarded. For every person who holds a crazy belief in public, there's probably one who holds the same belief but doesn't feel the need to let others in on it. As the world gets more paranoid, it'll get worse, open fears are the top of the iceberg.

If Enzor-Demeo ends up tanking Mozilla, there are plenty of people who will be happy with that. It's not as if his career will be over, far from it. Ask Nick Clegg or Stephen Elop. We all need to wake up to the idea that maybe the people who are supposed to be on our side aren't actually guaranteed to be unless we have solid mechanisms in place to ensure it.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#193

Post by drawfloat »

pas wrote: post #100
4gotunameagain wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't really need money. Look at Mozilla's CEO compensation for example. It was 7 million USD in 2022. Seven. Million. For ruining a bastion of the open internet. The problem is the MBAs.

multiple things can be true at once. is that too much money for one person? well, apparently it depends on who do you ask. and even if the board members who approved it might thought it's too much, it still could have been cheaper than to fire the CEO and find a new one and keep Mozilla on track. CEO compensation is usually a hedge against risks that are seen as even more costly, even if the performance of the CEO is…

It's too much money for a non-profit that is failing by all possible metrics and is saying it is struggling for revenue.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#194

Post by Timwi »

iso1631 wrote: post #169
p-e-w wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has a market share around 3%. Even most technologists stopped using it long ago. Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. Nothing can kill Firefox, because it’s already dead for all practical purposes.

Wikimedia stats from last year put it at 15% of desktop browsers, ahead of Safari and Edge.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a correlation between people frequenting Wikimedia websites and people using Firefox. It would be nice to know.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#195

Post by adornKey »

I think the writing for Mozilla was on the wall for a solid decade now. The time to look for alternatives and to switch to other (pretty unknown) niche browsers was at least 5 years ago. I don't even remember the time when I downloaded and used Firefox anymore.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#196

Post by tdeck »

takluyver wrote: post #112
kuschku wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't calculate the expected RoI of killing adblockers if killing adblockers was never considered.

I agree with all the people saying it would drive a lot of the remaining users away, and I hope they don't do it. But I'm not remotely surprised that they considered following what their biggest competitor (Chrome) already did.

Because Chrome was built by the world's biggest advertising company. If the World Wildlife Fund started selling ivory to pay the bills, would that not be surprising?

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#197

Post by jillesvangurp »

I think blocking ad blockers (the whole FFing point of using Firefox is freedom to do use those) would be the shortest path for him out of the door as a CEO.

It's so tone deaf that it is likely to probe the community into drastic action if he were to attempt to push that through. Including probably much of the developer community. I'm talking the kind of action that boils down to forking and taking a large part of the user base along. Which is why that would be very inadvisable.

The problem with being a CEO of a for profit corporation, which is what he is, is that his loyalty is to shareholders, not to users. The Mozilla Foundation and the corporation are hopelessly inter dependent at this point. The foundation looks increasingly like a paper tiger given the decision making and apparent disconnect with its user base which it is supposed to serve.

All the bloated budgets, mis-spending on offices, failed projects, fancy offices, juicy executive salaries at a time where revenue from Google continued to be substantial all while downsizing developer teams and actually laying some off isn't a great look. Stuff like this just adds to the impression that they are increasingly self serving hacks that don't care about the core product: Firefox. This new CEO isn't off to a great start here.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#198

Post by darkwater »

p-e-w wrote: post #137
matwood wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of being CEO/running a business is considering all options, but it doesn't mean it will ever move beyond the ROI/risk phase. Ever read one of the risk assessments in a companies public filings? It's the same thing.

All options that are in line with the organization’s mission. The CEO of an organization like Mozilla even considering blocking adblockers for profit is like the president of Amnesty International considering to sell lists of dissidents to the secret police.

> The CEO of an organization like Mozilla even considering blocking adblockers for profit is like the president of Amnesty International considering to sell lists of dissidents to the secret police.

No, for Amnesty International it would be more like not considering somebody a political prisoner because the country that took the prisoner is a 1st world country and they don't want to expose themselves on a matter that would risk the donations from a certain population.

Yes, that happened in the aftermath of the Catalan attempt at peaceful independence in October 2017 by Amnesty International Spain.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#199

Post by kristjank »

lxgr wrote: post #41

>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission. > It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”. Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M US…

Do you really harbor so much charity towards tech CEOs that you can't see its other meaning as at least equally as likely?

It costs Mozilla literally nothing to reassure its privacy and user-controlled principles. Instead we got a jk...unless... type of response. This is cowardice and like another commenter has said, a negotiation offer disguised as a mission statement.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#200

Post by rbits »

darkwater wrote: post #183
p-e-w wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very strongly depends on which country you live in.

In which country are you seeing that? For me the biggest offender are usually Google products and sometimes the lazy-coded website written by incompetents and whose audience is the tech illiterate (i.e. some websites involving schools/teaching) that just tell you "use latest Chrome just to be sure, download here" to, well, just be sure. Notable mentions for government websites that are like 10 years in the past and t…

I live in Australia and I can't log into government services using my myGov account on Firefox. Works fine on Chromium.
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