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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#221

Post by EMM_386 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #127

You'd think that Mozilla has an excess of funding and has covered absolutely all needs in the browser space leading them to branch out like this... but the browser really needs a lot more hands and funding, I honestly can't make sense of this. And Fakespot: they present themselves as a company that focuses on detecting AI-generated content from human-generated content. It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mo…

> but the browser really needs a lot more hands and funding

I had been using Firefox since 2002, when it was called Phoenix.

I switched to a Chromium-based browser because the performance difference was noticable enough, and I am in the browser often enough, to finally throw in the towel and switch.

They have a huge amount of money coming in from Google. Why is this going to acquisitions like this and not towards strengthening the development so that it remains competitive? Or are they, and I am not aware?

If it doesn't remain competitive on things like performance, standards compliance, etc. there are very few reasons for the average user to choose Firefox over any other browser at the moment. The privacy-focus is good, but there are other browsers that do the same on Chromium.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#222

Post by tracker1 »

Arainach wrote: post #104
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This feels like a good long term vision for Mozilla. >The browser wars are basically over and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Let's not just sit back and go "Oh well, they lost nothing they could do" shrug . They built their tech in such an obtuse and opinionated way it's impossible to integrate…

Bias disclaimer: I've worked on Chrome and Edge, opinions strictly my own >and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Could and should Mozilla have done better? Yes. "Any energy?" is uncalled for, however. There was the entire Quantum rewrite for significant performance boosts (around the time Chrome sta…

I just feel that Mozilla has spent way too much on PR, marketing and ventures that make no sense in their space. They got big by being a leader in the browser tech stack, and making tools developers and tech guys wanted to use. That led to the influence over other areas, but advising friends and family to use it.

Mozilla org has completely lost sight of their base. A good 70-80% of their budget should be on their core product development and adjacent products only. The fact that only recently have they discovered, hey, we had this pretty good email client that we let all but die off.

They should separate their core rendering and script engine teams to focus on better embed-ability and security structures. Another team(s) focused on the integration for Firefox as a browser. Another for Thunderbird. The fact that they killed off their Rust efforts, XULRunner and so many other things that could be really useful today is just painful.

Yeah, XUL didn't run great on 1998 hardware, but what are so many apps targeting today, Electron. And now there's a resurgence towards lighter options (Tauri and others) because it kind of makes sense to (re)use a browser rendering engine for general UI development. It's extremely flexible, has a flushed out (if somewhat complex) styling and theming system, multiple language support, complete font rendering, svg rendering, and accessibility support and runs on/under everything under the sun.

Maybe hire on some of the types that have tried and failed to remake email and browsers that have some creative vision on how users actually use these applications, and let them work with the engineering teams to make quality software again. Spend less time on branding, and more time on the core tech. They still have enough brand reach and clout that people will try the new stuff and if it's good, then organic growth can and would work (again).

Hell, if they want to branch out... make a REALLY great email and communications platform that is open-source with a hosted model. How big of a pain is it to self-host many of these things today? If they want to acquire someone, bring in Caddy, Fastmail and/or Zimbra for adjacent tech development.

I only harp on the email and Thunderbird side because two decades ago, they were in a better spot than anyone to offer a competing product to Outlook+Exchange and they just didn't even try. And now even Outlook kind of sucks because the cloud integration is what it is at scale. Leaving a gaping hole where that entire market used to live. A great open-source core product, with a good extensibility model and some commercially licensed integration points could have been insanely popular.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#223

Post by iudqnolq »

kelnos wrote: post #213
iudqnolq wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a gnome bug rather than an ff one, but it's pretty shit on my desktop. It reports absurd ( Edit: s/100ft/10ft after I remembered better

On the desktop, it might be limited in the sources it has. GeoIP is one source, of course, but that's often wrong or too coarse-grained (or distorted by things like VPNs). The BSSIDs of nearby WiFi access points can help make that better, but that depends on you being close enough to APs in its dataset. Most desktops don't have actual GPS hardware.

Of course. But the desktop reports both estimated location and estimated accuracy. I'm complaining about the inaccuracy of the accuracy, not of the location.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#224

Post by JohnFen »

Logans_Run wrote: post #87
blowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment, but I’m curious what “pizzled” means.

NSFW definition (depending on I.T. policies) [1] Pizzle is a Middle English word for penis, derived from Low German pesel or Flemish Dutch pezel, diminutive of pees, meaning 'sinew'. The word is used today to signify the penis of an animal, chiefly in Australia and New Zealand. [2] Interestingly, it is used in medical slang (Dictionary of medical slang -Jacob Edward) and it is defined as exhausted, or to its point: ~…

Hey, I learned a new word today! And an excellent one at that.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#225

Post by tracker1 »

hgsgm wrote: post #177
jrochkind1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An open source phone OS would have literally changed society. If it had succeeded. Alas it did not. I don't know why not. But it was not a wrong goal.

AOSP is open source, and open source user facing systems are available (Lineage, Graphene)

Even then, it's really limited in terms of hardware, and the application support isn't that great either without the google services that are typically deployed. I don't lay it on Mozilla though.

I think that FirefoxOS could have been great if they'd kept up the development a few more years. Much like XULRunner was a bit ahead of it's time... The hardware got better enough over a few generations, that if it ran on current phones or even last gen it could be pretty good.

I'm running a Pixel 4a, and current Android runs like hot garbage at times, I've got an older Pixel 2XL that needs a new battery... I'd like to take both and put something more open on them to at least play with.

Unfortunately, Mozilla doesn't understand how Firefox even got to be where it was at its' height. They seem to think it's just about marketing buzz. They got to #1 on organic growth alone. By creating something better than the alternatives at a technical level. They need to do that again, but also need some creative types to steer the ship as well. I'm still mad about how they let Thunderbird die on the vine, and if any related tech could have been their ongoing revenue stream it could have been in that space.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#226

Post by dblohm7 »

fooker wrote: post #145
agumonkey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it felt to me too. Stretched too thin. Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google, I can imagine how hard it is to try to thrive or just survive and maintaining a stable path when you're fighting big pockets. I just wished they could rebalance their allocation and focus on simple daily usability things. Just a bit more. ps: for instance, the screenshot tool is brilliant

>Stretched too thin Meanwhile they have had consistently growing revenues and consistently declining number of developers.

> Meanwhile they have had consistently growing revenues and consistently declining number of developers.

Citation needed? And no, the 2020 layoffs don't count: It's 2023.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#227

Post by tracker1 »

timtom39 wrote: post #109
jzb wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaning hard into delivering content that you can "trust" would be an interesting direction for Mozilla. I suspect that will put some crosshairs on Mozilla as an organization, though. While that would be good for users, there will be folks who don't like the idea of spotting fake content or doing any labeling of content...

Given their complete reliance on google for funding and biased political stance. I don't think they are in a great position to deliver content you can "trust".

While I do agree to some extent. I think the vast majority of the tech side of Mozilla who work on the products and not the marketing are more concerned about the tech. I only wish they got the bulk of funding, and Mozilla org would cut way back and let the products speak for themselves for a while. If they hadn't spent so much trying to find other funding and revenue streams, they could have had decades of runway to work on improving their software.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#228

Post by negative_zero »

progmetaldev wrote: post #220

I see a lot of people here complaining that Mozilla isn't spending enough of its money on the development of Firefox, but a lot of that money comes from their Google deal. If Firefox started to gain market share over Chrome, do you think that Google would continue to fund them, and if not then who would?

I believe that the sentiment is that Google funds Firefox despite it's now poor market share as "antitrust insurance".

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#229

Post by dblohm7 »

derefr wrote: post #191
unethical_ban wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Pocket was that it was a separate brand name with a weird UX. If it had been branded as a new "reading list" feature native to Mozilla I don't think it would have caused a stir. I use Vivaldi now for two reasons: One, it is better than Firefox Mobile, and two, I like the ergonomics of its bookmarks and reading list sync. Having the ability for the browser to be a suite isn't crazy.

> If it had been branded as a new "reading list" feature native to Mozilla I don't think it would have caused a stir. I imagine Mozilla's thinking there was that they should position the feature so that people who already use Pocket will realize that Firefox isn't adding a separate reading list (like the Safari one nobody uses), but rather that you can just sign into your existing Pocket account in Firefox, and see y…

> I imagine Mozilla's thinking there was that they should position the feature so that people who already use Pocket will realize that Firefox isn't adding a separate reading list (like the Safari one nobody uses), but rather that you can just sign into your existing Pocket account in Firefox, and see your existing Pocket reading-list.

That was pretty much how it was viewed at the time (I worked at Mozilla during the Pocket acquisition). It was seen as, "we were going to build our own reading list, but let's just buy this instead and integrate it as /the/ reading list for Firefox."

I agree that the external perception was different, and remains so to this day.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#230

Post by orra »

tracker1 wrote: post #222
Arainach wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bias disclaimer: I've worked on Chrome and Edge, opinions strictly my own >and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Could and should Mozilla have done better? Yes. "Any energy?" is uncalled for, however. There was the entire Quantum rewrite for significant performance boosts (around the time Chrome sta…

I just feel that Mozilla has spent way too much on PR, marketing and ventures that make no sense in their space. They got big by being a leader in the browser tech stack, and making tools developers and tech guys wanted to use. That led to the influence over other areas, but advising friends and family to use it. Mozilla org has completely lost sight of their base. A good 70-80% of their budget should be on their cor…

> The fact that only recently have they discovered, hey, we had this pretty good email client that we let all but die off.

... You think Mozilla don't focus enough on Firefox, so you think they should spend more money on Thunderbird, which is an app in an almost-nonexistent market (desktop email)?

Some folks are just never happy with Mozilla.

Firefox has massively improved in recent years. WebExtensions being async prevented horrific freezes that used to happen. Rewriting components in Rust, and using web assembly for native libs, are both good for security. And WebRender was revolutionary.

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