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Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#561

Post by throwaway4200 »

generalizations wrote: post #487
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.

What makes you think Brendan Eich would have been a good CEO? He was CTO of Mozilla during the period that Chrome was eating Firefox's lunch. He was probably more responsible for Firefox product decisions at that time than CEO Mitchell Baker.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#562

Post by openfuture »

rpnx wrote: post #473

My thoughts on this are that every time I see a news piece about Firefox it's about "social justice", some code of conduct controversy, or something else utterly unimportant to web browser selection. Being "Open Source" does nothing for me when Firefox engages in the same crap as other closed source browsers, like Pocket. Mozilla also allowed social issues to take precedence over retaining good engineers. Whether you…

Came here to make this comment. Glad to see it is at the top. Moz://a has lost all trust. Yay for atlas engineering! :)

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#563

Post by selfhoster11 »

takeda wrote: post #459

I'm trying to save it by continuing to use it, and everyone should do so as well. Once it is gone Google will have pretty much absolute control over the web (not that they don't already, but it will be official then).

There's a point beyond which you're just beating a dead horse and turning it into a pulp. Firefox isn't dead yet, but... yet is the keyword.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#564

Post by slig »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #555
slig wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would surely be bad for their 0.5 billion/year deal from Google. Not going to happen.

Do you need $500m/year to maintain a web browser? Cut all the dead weight, rebuild trust, and you could probably do just as well on donations. For one, I'd be donating to Firefox every month, if there were such a fund ringfenced only for Firefox development.

100% agreed, I would too.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#565

Post by hammyhavoc »

artdigital wrote: post #478
sebmellen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask peopl…

You forgot the part that comes after: > By 2020, her salary had risen to over $3 million. In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic. Yikes, makes me also consider just switching off it again

Where would we go though? It's bordering on Chromium-derivative or bust at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#566

Post by Melatonic »

rpnx wrote: post #473

My thoughts on this are that every time I see a news piece about Firefox it's about "social justice", some code of conduct controversy, or something else utterly unimportant to web browser selection. Being "Open Source" does nothing for me when Firefox engages in the same crap as other closed source browsers, like Pocket. Mozilla also allowed social issues to take precedence over retaining good engineers. Whether you…

I use Firefox daily and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What does Mozilla have to do with "cancel" culture? Is there some huge news article I am missing out on or something?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#567

Post by pavlov »

Reboot the project again, like in 2001.

Nobody wanted to use the original open source Mozilla browser because it was a weird groupware suite monstrosity derived from Netscape's code. A few clever people created a standalone browser using the Mozilla engine and called it Phoenix. It was eventually renamed Firefox in 2004.

Start another Phoenix that focuses on being a better, slimmer, faster browser than the Chromium ones, just like the original was a better, slimmer, faster browser than the Internet Explorer monoculture.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#568

Post by teawrecks »

tored wrote: post #552
eigenrick wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this post assumes that Firefox is an inferior browser, and that the cause is mismanagement. But is Firefox an inferior browser? I think it used to be, but over the last couple years, it has made massive improvements in features and performance. I use it in both desktop and mobile, and I prefer it over Chrome. As a software engineer, I rely heavily on my browser for work. For me, the multi-account containers i…

Firefox is inferior still. It has problems with memory, performance, rendering and battery drainage. Every year I switch to Firefox and use it as a main browser. It usually goes for a month and then I need to switch again because Firefox has too many glitches. Firefox has had a bad policy of not fixing the basics first before new features. I do use Firefox as my main development browser still but that is because I’m…

I have the same experience in reverse with chrome. I've been using FF for a few years now with no issues.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#569

Post by throwawaymanbot »

knob wrote: post #480
rpnx wrote: post #473

My thoughts on this are that every time I see a news piece about Firefox it's about "social justice", some code of conduct controversy, or something else utterly unimportant to web browser selection. Being "Open Source" does nothing for me when Firefox engages in the same crap as other closed source browsers, like Pocket. Mozilla also allowed social issues to take precedence over retaining good engineers. Whether you…

Here is my upvote. Although your post is "rough", the truth is quite often as such. Thanks for putting it out there.

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#570

Post by stjohnswarts »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #382
BossingAround wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this has anything to do with arrogance, this is simply the market value speaking. Ginni Rometty did something similar with IBM; while being a terrible CEO ("IBM was the worst-performing large-cap tech stock during Rometty's tenure, dropping 24%" [1]), she got a whopping $20M per year [2] during her first 7 years of being a CEO, and she got $20M golden parachute [3] upon leaving the shell of an IBM. This…

If that's what the market rate is, then let them go work somewhere else. There are hundreds of thousands of individuals capable of doing these jobs making nowhere near as much - plenty of them would do it better.

Look no further than Japan and compare CEO pay vs American companies.
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