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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#211

Post by b112 »

guenthert wrote: post #186
nialv7 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interpretation is not the problem. Whether he will do it, is actually secondary to the fact that he thinks cutting adblock can bringing in money. No, it will just kill the browser. The fact he thinks otherwise tells me how out of touch he is.

Is it him or is it you? I'd think within the Mozilla organization is a data trove of telemetry which renders a fairly good picture of how many users actually are using ad blockers.

Not sure what your point is? It doesn't matter the number of users, because the GP's point is that those users are going to immediately bail, for a browser thsy supports ad block.

So that extra money will never materialize. And usage numbers will again crater. This is the point.

(You can disagree with that assessment, but that has nothing to do with telemetry, which cannot gauge users hanging around with blocked .. adblockers)

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#213

Post by Brian_K_White »

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…

"feels off mission" exposes how little conviction there is behind this position.

That is a flimsy tissue paper statement about a concept that should be a bedrock principle.

It's irrationally charitable to give it any credit at all. Especially in context where anyone who's awake should understand they need to be delivering an unquestionably clear message about unquestionably clear goals and core values, because this ain't that.

Or rather, it is a clear message, just a different message to a different audience.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#214

Post by kgwxd »

purplehat_ wrote: post #189
sharken wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the current state of the Chrome family of browsers and the anti adblocker stance from Google, i'd think that alone would guarantee Firefox a steady user base. Not sure how users cope with Chrome-based browsers and intrusive ads.

I've tried a few times to convince people in my life who would self describe as "bad with computers" to download an adblocker, but they usually find the friction too high. Adding extensions is unfamiliar for most, and even if it seems very basic for us, the non-tech people I know don't really want to deal with the risk of unknown unknowns from that, let alone switching to a healthier browser. (Perhaps reasonable sinc…

The last time uBlock Origin caused me any pain was a on a toys r us rewards management site.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#215

Post by jwrallie »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #55

Literally only reason to use Firefox is that it still blocks ads properly. If Mozzilla brings AI or removes ad blocks then they are every way just worse Chrome and there is zero reason to use them over Chrome. I guess I should already start porting my Firefox extensions over to Chrome since this ship is sinking stupid fast.

Firefox may say they will not block anything and still end up adopting something like Manifest v3.

Android blocking side loading is more or less in the same ballpark.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#216

Post by wafflemaker »

gr4vityWall wrote: post #119

> Mozilla believes in the value of an open and free (and thus ad-supported) web. > and thus ad-supported What a sad view of the web. Advertisement is a net-negative for society.

Nothing wrong with an unobtrusive, not tracking, banner on a side of a page. Related to what the page is about.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#217

Post by 0dayz »

fijuv wrote: post #105

I think it's too late for Mozilla, since it seems they already squandered most of their good will, userbase and money. At any rate, I think their only good path of to get rid of Gecko. The best would be to replace it with a finished version of Servo, which would give them a technically superior browser, assuming Google doesn't also drop Blink for Servo. It may be too late for this, but AI agents may perhaps make fini…

>The other path would be to switch to Chromium, which would free all the Gecko developers to work on differentiating a Chromium-based Firefox from Chrome, and guarantee that Firefox is always better than Chrome

No they would get fired, unless Firefox found a new big project to earn money from, which at the moment is not very likely.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#218

Post by animuchan »

guenthert wrote: post #186
nialv7 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interpretation is not the problem. Whether he will do it, is actually secondary to the fact that he thinks cutting adblock can bringing in money. No, it will just kill the browser. The fact he thinks otherwise tells me how out of touch he is.

Is it him or is it you? I'd think within the Mozilla organization is a data trove of telemetry which renders a fairly good picture of how many users actually are using ad blockers.

Yep, and that's how he arrived at the $number. If a small number of people were using ad blockers, the cited sum would approach $0 since disabling ad blockers would affect very few page views, right?

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#219

Post by b112 »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #188
sysguest wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well I use it because it can handle 2000 tabs on my m1 macbook air (16gb ram) ... damn do I have adhd?????

Get the OneTab extension. It'll save and close all those tabs. That way you won't have Firefox crashing during startup once you exceed the number of tabs it can handle (a few thousand).

I have 117 thousand tabs, and it starts up fine. Just adjust your shm ratio.

(I'm kidding)

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#220

Post by csin »

dom96 wrote: post #6

Genuinely can someone with knowledge of the business explain why they aren't simply doubling down on making Firefox better? Is there an existential problem facing them that they are trying to solve by adding AI into the browser?

Please enlighten me. How does one make a browser "better" these days?

- They were ahead of the game with extensions. Then everyone copied them.

- They were ahead of the game with tabs. Then everyone copied them.

- They were ahead of the game with containers. Then everyone copied them.

- They are still the best browser to use for an ad free internet experience.

- The only flaw I can think of, is they are not leaders in performance. Chrome loads faster. But that's because Chrome cheats by stealing your memory on startup.

How would you make FireFox better? When you say they should be making FireFox better, what should they be doing? Maybe they should hire you for ideas.

Because to me, they seem to be constantly trying to make FireFox better. It's just hit or miss.

Extensions was a hit. Tabs was a hit. Containers was a hit. They had a shit tonne of misses over the decades. We just don't remember them.

The crypto and ai stuff just happens to be a miss.

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