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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#301

I would stop using Firefox if Enzor-DeMeo would block or cripple ad blockers. While it is not my main browser (Vivaldi is), I have 5 installs of Firefox Portable for different things, like one for YouTube, one for testing pages against Firefox and so on.

Mozilla/ Firefox is irrelevant and ultimately doomed to ever smaller numbers.

That's because their users are driven by opinions and principles, and those are the worst, most disloyal kind of users. They're always threatening to leave, and will take the slightest offense to do so.

Chrome wins because its user base doesn't care. The browser is just a tool, not a religion. It's installed, they use it, they're barely aware it exists and most of Joe Public doesn't even know Google makes it.

So sure. For you it's ad blockers. For someone else it's their donation plan. Or Google funding. Or their corporate structure. Or their management.

When your marketing is about something else, other than the product itself, you always end up with edge-case-customers.

People use Chrome because it's the best browser. Less than 3% use Firefox. And all I read from Firefox users is how bad everything is (or will be).

No, Firefox's market share isn't a foil to monopoly (Safari has 5 times more users. Crumbs Edge has twice the users.)

I care about Firefox, but I really just wish all the whiners would just do what they threaten and use something else. But they won't because everything else is worse (for some or other principles reason.)

Now I fully expect to be downvoted because the only people reading this article in the first place are Firefox whiners. Which is kinda my point.

It's pretty hard to recommend Firefox to others when everything written by existing users is so negative.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#302
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which alternatives though? On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives.

> On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives Surely Mac is the only place there is a viable non-Chromium alternative (Safari)?

There is Orion which is built on top of WebKit so you get a lot of the battery life optimisations built into Safari

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#303
> Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

I feel like this question has been valid for almost as long as I can remember (e.g. the Mr. Robot extension incident). I find myself struggling to tell if Mozilla is an inherently flawed company or if it's just inherent to trying to survive in such a space.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#305
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money and everything was great until every corner was taken, the land grab was complete and the time to recoup the investment has come. Once the users were trapped for exploitation, it doesn’t make sense to have a browser that blocks ads. How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and…

while i may agree with the first line, rest are little skewed perspective. > People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions. hate subscription?? may be. if it's anything like Adobe then yes, people will hate. that constant update, is something planted by these corporates, and their behavior manipulation tactics. People were happily paying for perpetual software, which they can "…

People weren't happily paying, there was huge pirate business that was run on porn, gambling ads and spyware revenue. Then there were organizations with lots of lawyers paid by the "pay once use forever" companies to enforce the pay part because people didn't want to pay.

One time fee software ment that once your growth slows down you no longer make money and have plenty of customers to support for free. That's why this model was destroyed by the subscription and ad based "free" software.

The last example is Affinity which was the champion of pay once use forever model, very recently they end up getting acquired and their software turned into "free" + subscription.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#306
post #220
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 i…

In my experience Chrome does not just load faster, but it also uses less memory than Firefox because of its more aggressive tab hibernation that is enabled by default.

On my laptop I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome because it kept filling up all of my RAM resulting in other applications crashing.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#307
post #128
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.

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.

My software stopped working because its drawing on canvas in a way that causes firefox to glitch with hw acceleration enabled. Not one of my customers/users complained

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#308

Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, I guess I can see the temptation to try to regain it by reaching out to others, but doing that at the expense of your core is a terrible business strategy. It's not like those users are all that sticky, they're leaving as Mozilla pisses them off, and likely Mozilla are going to be left wi…

> Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience.

Who is Mozilla's core audience? From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon.

> They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak,

To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would still have lost big since their peak. The market for alternative Browsers isn't as big any more as it used to be.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#309

They have been since a decade. After tripping down on unrelated political activism they do the same with AI. Firefox is only good for getting forked into better browser like Mullvad Browser, LibreWolf and Tor Browser.

How are they funded? Especially LibreWolf? Curious if LibreWolf can survive the next 25 years or even longer than Firefox.

Mullvad at least is funded by their VPN subscriptions.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#310

It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.

> Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.

Alternatives like maybe a fork of Firefox with the adblocker-blocker removed?

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