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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

#221

Post by woodruffw »

sharps1 wrote: post #177
woodruffw wrote: post #67

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…

There is definitely a downward usage trend from Mozilla own stats. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

Right; nobody is claiming that Firefox is doing well. But that downward trend is not proportionate with the claimed global downward trend; it's much smaller.

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

#222

Post by rglullis »

freedomben wrote: post #165
rglullis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt that is true. Speaking from the experience of working in a project that tried to build "enterprise Chrome OS, but based on Firefox instead", I can tell you that Firefox is still a lot harder to fork and customize than Chromium is.

thanks, I'm sure there were more factors involved than just the firing, so that would make a lot of sense. Given your experience, If one were to fork Firefox entirely from Mozilla, very loosely, if one were a non-profit dedicated to just the browser and not trying to build a diversified company around it, what type of funding do you think an org would need to keep up with web technology changes and build a foundation…

No idea, because honestly part of the reason our project failed was that we he had zero in-house knowledge of browser internals.

Mind you, our idea was to build a "browser-based OS", which meant at the time that our initial design was customize Ubuntu to the point that it could boot straight into a single-user windowless Firefox and to build all the "shell" as extensions. (I wrote a bit about on https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clo...)

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

#223

Post by PsylentKnight »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #143
janmo wrote: post #135

Firefox will make a massive comeback if chromes kicks out Adblocker next year.

I would love to believe that.. Same as next year will be the year of mass adoption of Linux by consumers. Yet history and trends point in the other direction

The recent Unity-Godot debacle would seem to indicate to me that titans aren't invincible. They can do a lot of harm to themselves when they overestimate how much people want or need their product.

Switching from Chrome to Firefox isn't even nearly as difficult as switching from Unity to Godot (or say, from Windows to Linux). For the average user, Chrome and Firefox are functionally identical. If Chrome kicks off Adblocker, Firefox will be obviously better for a lot of people.

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

#224

Post by sirwhinesalot »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #75
esafak wrote: post #45

Now may be a good time to support new browsers like Arc.

It's built on WebKit and this does not bring any diversity to the browser market, it's no different from Chromium-based browsers

WebKit isn't Blink anymore. The only thing keeping WebKit alive is apple's tight grip on the iOS browser engine, and that will likely be a thing of the past soon. Once that's gone, it's all going to be reskined chromium.

Since I think apple should open up iOS more, I hope WebKit develops a healthy marketshare outside of that ecosystem.

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

#225

Post by sharps1 »

evasb wrote: post #57
throwawa14223 wrote: post #39

If they're trying to get rid of Firefox, then can I support whatever spin-off organization is just Firefox?

They did with Thunderbird, and Thunderbird is becoming better.

Thunderbird rejoined Mozilla - from Wikipedia

“ On January 28, 2020, the Mozilla Foundation announced that the project would henceforth be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corporation, in order to explore offering products and services that were not previously possible and to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations.[69][70]”

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

#226

Post by PsylentKnight »

evasb wrote: post #19

People complain all the time and nothing changes. She doesn't care and in a month everybody forget that Firefox is in dire straits. Google's Chromium project push new standards every month or so, and web developers are fast to adopt these standards and don't care about testing it on Firefox anymore. The Chromium monopoly is already a reality.

I've been using Firefox for years and rarely run into websites where something works on Chrome but not Firefox. The only one I can think of is my apartment's payment portal, and that website is just generally awful.

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

#227

Post by pasttense01 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
chrisco255 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brendan's personal political donations were his own business unless he made it some organizational goal or priority for Mozilla, which he never did.

> Brendan's personal political donations were his own business Eh, a CEO is a quasi-public figure. Those weren't his personal business entirely. (Consider a gay employee at Mozilla or partner.) That said, the solution was chastisement and a public apology. Not termination.

There was no evidence that Brendan discriminated against gay employees at Mozilla.

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

#228

Post by Riverheart »

Levitz wrote: post #208
Riverheart wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could try being supportive instead. But hey, the current strategy has worked out so well thus far, please continue until the market share reaches 0. Mitchell really seems to care about these comments. Oh wait, she probably doesn’t read HN does she? Oh, but the Firefox devs probably do. Well I’m sure they’re just as moved and powerful enough to affect the kind of change you want to see in the organization.

>Oh wait, she probably doesn’t read HN does she? Oh, but the Firefox devs probably do. All the more reason to insist that Firefox is the important bit then? What does a Firefox dev get from "Ah yes sure we only care about Firefox, but if that's what Mozilla wants to do they have all my support in continuing their path to irrelevancy"

I’m unconvinced that Firefox can compete purely by being the better browser now that Chrome exists and I hear no one complaining about Brave doing more than just a browser (crypto, ads, brave wallet, brave vpn, brave talk, brave search) so even Brendan doesn’t believe that a browser without diversification can compete and likely would have done the same stuff the current CSuite did if he were in charge. You might argue he’d have done a better job of it, picked better products but still would happen.

Brendan choosing to build on Chrome instead of Firefox probably says more about Chrome’s dominance than Firefox’s technical merits. If all Firefox was lacking was better leadership improving it would’ve been easier. If it was a technical issue that’s probably money that needs spent but doesn’t move the needle which is why the current CSuite doesn’t address it either. Or maybe it was just to get away from the stigma around Firefox that doesn’t exist in Chromeland.

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

#229

Post by AndrewKemendo »

echelon wrote: post #168
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lead those threads in the past with hopes that someone would give a glimmer of hope Honestly, this news/post made me lose the final shred of hope I had. :/

The best thing we can do for the web at this point is talk to our politicians about the incredible power that Google and Apple wield. They either need to be split up, or their platforms entirely opened up to competition via standardization [1], first class third-party support [2], no more preferential dogfooding [3], and no more ad sales protection rackets [4]. [1] Google no longer unilaterally pulls on web standards…

I mean between them, MSFT they have totally captured congress

Unless people start running for office that won’t just do what corporations want then it’s futile.

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

#230

Post by ksjskskskkk »

fabrice_d wrote: post #199
CharlesW wrote: post #53

Governments have been creating web/native/mobile apps for some time, which is a trend that continues to accelerate. Firefox continues to limp along but seemingly can't even retain its most ardent fans, and there's no sign of this changing. What if the EU were to fork Firefox (Openfox?) and fund its evolution of a privacy-first alternative? Among other benefits, this would: • Help ensure that key digital infrastructur…

In concrete terms, what would this fork change compared to current Firefox? Just shouting "privacy-first alternative" is pretty vague. Also, good luck getting enough sustainable funding for that kind of project from the EU. Most of EU funding for OSS project is spread out to lots of projects, with relatively small amounts - Gnome got $1M recently and celebrated as a "big" milestone. I'm not saying that this is bad, b…

for one: not giving in to every google whim.

recent examples: address bar becomes search bar. referrer header always sent cross domain with full url. webextensions3. hundreds of apis that only benefit ad "viewability" detectors. removal of websocket permission (like you have for notification etc). etc

soon: adding Floc

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