Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#421

Post by ffuxlpff » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #289

graemep wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. I cannot remember the last time I came across one myself.

Reading comments here about problems using Firefox is odd to me as I never run into them. I feel like people are taking about totally different browsers. I don't remember the last time I had page rendering issues or was asked to use a different browser.

Never had this problem - so far - on Linux. Maybe it has something to do with using a sucker operating systems.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#422

Post by danaris » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:31 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #118

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?

Society doesn't get improved by doing incremental work on a browser, and Mozilla's mission is to improve society

Possibly, but that's an absurdly overbroad mission.

Organizations with clear, focused missions are much more likely to be able to achieve them than organizations that want to be everything to everybody.

"Make and maintain Firefox as the best browser for people who care about internet freedom, privacy, and extensibility" would be a perfectly reasonable mission.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#423

Post by pnt12 » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

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…

I'm concerned about the original quote which has a very weak sentiment. "it feels off-mission". Not something strong like "I'm completely against it" or "we'll never do that".

Even better would be similar to the article sentiment: "we could get 150 million now but degrade one of our few features that distinguishes us from other browsers + break a lot user trust, which would bring greater losses in the long term".

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#424

Post by nathias » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

"it feels off-mission" is a very chatgpt thing to say

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#425

Post by bityard » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #289

graemep wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. I cannot remember the last time I came across one myself.

Reading comments here about problems using Firefox is odd to me as I never run into them. I feel like people are taking about totally different browsers. I don't remember the last time I had page rendering issues or was asked to use a different browser.

It's not page rendering issues, usually, since Firefox and Chrome pretty much support all the same things.

What you run into the most is the website saying, hey, it looks like you are not using a browser we have tested against, so we are not going to let you log in. Please come back when you have Chrome, edge, or Safari.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#426

Post by creata » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:35 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #301

qwertox wrote: post #243

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 awa…

> The browser is just a tool, not a religion.

An ad blocker is a very useful tool. Being able to block ads effectively makes the browser much better. I'm not sure how you can call that "religion".

> People use Chrome because it's the best browser.

No they don't. They use Chrome because every Google service nags the shit out of them to use Chrome. People aren't as rational as you make them out to be.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#427

Post by CamouflagedKiwi » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

PurpleRamen wrote: post #308

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #42

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 st…

> Who is Mozilla's core audience?

I am thinking of it as: people who care about privacy and/or an independent web browser. That seems mostly in line with what the Mozilla Foundation's principles are stated to be.

Maybe it's not that. But if not, what is it? How do they otherwise have any positive differentiation versus their competition? It surely can't be claimed to be any sense of "users who want an AI browser" because surely those people are going to use ChatGPT's browser, not Mozilla's.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#428

Post by Krasnol » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

bluehatbrit wrote: post #259

Krasnol wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any prove for Googles influence on their development you outline here?

Google pay Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars each year to place Google as the default browser. It's by far their biggest income stream. In 2023 it was reported as 75% of their revenue. There's no world in which 75% of your revenue coming from Google doesn't influence what you do. Even if it's not the main driver of all decisions, pissing off Google is a huge risk for them.

Soooo...there isn't.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#429

Post by ntoskrnl_exe » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

freddref wrote: post #419

herobird wrote: post #17

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.

It might be financial beneficial once as an up-front payment, but long term, as others have mentioned, really not good for the project to remove the only feature that gives firefox a defensible way to fill it's niche in the market.

That wouldn’t seem so much out of the ordinary, long-term thinking CEO is an oxymoron these days.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#430

Post by neodymiumphish » Wed, Dec 17, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #354

graemep wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. I cannot remember the last time I came across one myself.

Having switched to Firefox about 10 months ago, one thing I notice is every site I visit works but a lot of sites load way slower than Chrome. YouTube is a big one. How much of that is Firefox rendering being worse vs artificial slowdowns by Google owned sites kind of doesn't matter in the end. Objectively it's a slower browsing experience but I solely use it for uBlock Origin.

I've been using Orion browser (WebKit-based with support for Chrome and Firefox extensions) for quite some time and haven't had this issue with YouTube, but I've definitely experienced the same with Firefox. If it's an issue of artificial slowdowns, you'd think they'd apply it to anything not running on Chrome's engine, which makes me think it's specifically Firefox's rendering causing this issue.