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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#81

Post by nialv7 »

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…

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.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#82

Post by nottorp »

hhh wrote: post #35
iLoveOncall wrote: post #11

Unfortunately Firefox is basically already dead, it has an incredibly small market share and it will never grow again because their leadership is affected by the corporate mind virus. I know most HN users are on Firefox, but they should get used to an alternative now, not when its inevitable death happens.

do you have a source for hn users being mostly firefox users?

i can guess that a lot of them are ublock origin users

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#83

Post by colesantiago »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #25

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.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#84

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

concinds wrote: post #43
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?

You can't monetize a browser. They have to keep trying to create new products, but they inevitably fail. Pocket, FirefoxOS, Persona, all dead. This new stuff will fail too, because Mozilla has no USP and no way to create a best-in-class product in any market. So they rely on imitating what everyone else is doing, but with more "crunchy" vibes ("values", "trust", "we're a nonprofit") because that's the only angle they…

> You can't monetize a browser.

You very much can if all the competitors are either a) ad-ridden, ai-infested, bloated monstrosities or b) don't provide the functionality people want. In that case, there's apparently lots of demand which could easily support either a pay-once or a low-subscription-fee model.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#85

Post by shakna »

mrtksn wrote: post #46
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.

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…

> The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money

Huh? Nexus was funded by CERN.

Newsgrounds was never investor funded.

Yahoo! Directory was just two guys, and you paid to be listed. There were no investors involved.

WebCrawler was a university project. Altavista was a research project.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#87

Post by rvba »

concinds wrote: post #43
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?

You can't monetize a browser. They have to keep trying to create new products, but they inevitably fail. Pocket, FirefoxOS, Persona, all dead. This new stuff will fail too, because Mozilla has no USP and no way to create a best-in-class product in any market. So they rely on imitating what everyone else is doing, but with more "crunchy" vibes ("values", "trust", "we're a nonprofit") because that's the only angle they…

They dont have to.

They could be lean and focus on firefox only.

Now they get 150m from google, spend just a part on firefox and rest on failures and hobby projects to get promoted.

If they were focued on core business, 1) they would have a war chest 2) they could leave off donations

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#88

Post by braebo »

ghusto wrote: post #68
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.

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

Use Brave the privacy is better than Firefox already.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#89

Post by falcor84 »

theasisa wrote: post #37
jowea wrote: post #8

A decent chunk of the users who bothered installing an adblock would also be bothered enough to install a FF fork with adblock, so I doubt the revenue increase would be much. As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?

Do any of these forks have the ability to sync, either with Firefox or something self hosted? Or are they all just basically reskins with a single toggle added or such?

Good point. I'd actually be happy to pay a couple of bucks a month for a good syncing solution based on an open source protocol, to make it easier for me to use the same history and preferences across browsers, IDEs and other such tools. It's actually a similar need and setup to that of a password manager, so I wonder if this is something Bitwarden could take on.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#90

Post by rvba »

colesantiago wrote: post #13
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?

What does "doubling down on making Firefox better?" mean? What can Mozilla Firefox do to make their 500 million without Google?

They dont need to spend millions on other products and politics for start.
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