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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#801

Post by psychoslave »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #353
throwaway613745 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used Firefox as my default browser through thick and thin for damn near two decades. If Mozilla killed andblocking extensions I’d switch to Helium Browser in a heartbeat since they’re maintaining manifest v2 support for uBO and even ship it OOTB. The web is unusable without a proper Adblock.

> The web is unusable without a proper Adblock. It's a privacy nightmare as well. Few people reason how much data they give away to a host of shady companies just by letting ads display.

It's kind of crazy that a popup like "we and our 1244 partners want to share your data to better serve you". That's the kind of dystopian event you would think only visible as caricatural SF, but it's the kind of thing one can actually see on a daily level just browsing around.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#802

Post by ionwake »

gitaarik wrote: post #760
ionwake wrote: post #39

I dont know how anyone could take mozilla seriously after they integrated google analytics into it about 10 years ago for no reason I can fathom. It immediately made me think somethings off, and I never used it again. Instead I thought screw it and just went nuts deep into chrome, atleast it was more functional. ps - ( apparently mozilla took it out sometime later , but to me the damage to its reputation was done)

And so switching to a browser created by the world's biggest advertising company is your solution? Interesting

yes I explained the irony it’s clear you missed if you read my comment again you will understand that I decided to opt for full functionality albeit at the expense of loss of total privacy after being let down my Mozilla.

If you’re still struggling you can use an llm to try and explain my comment to you.

All the best buddy

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#803

Post by danaris »

littlestymaar wrote: post #782
danaris wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way you can possibly view Safari as "the modern day IE" is if you consider the authoritative source for What Features Should Be Supported to be Chrome. You should probably think about that for a bit, in light of why IE was IE back in the day.

> The only way you can possibly view Safari as "the modern day IE" is if you consider the authoritative source for What Features Should Be Supported to be Chrome. No. Safari is the modern IE in the sense that it's the default browser on a widely used OS, and it's update cycle is tied to the update of the OS itself by the user, and it drags the web behind by many years because you cannot not support its captive user-b…

> drags the web behind by many years

But this can only be by comparison to something. And Apple is very good at keeping Safari up to date on the actual standards. You know—the thing that IE was absolutely not doing, that made it a scourge of the web.

So if it's not Chrome, what is your basis for comparison??

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#804

Post by EbNar »

saubeidl wrote: post #176

It feels like the only reasonable path forward would be for the EU to buy Mozilla and fund it as a public resource. Capital extraction is fundamentally opposed to user freedom. If we want an open web, we, the people need to be maintaining it and not rely on MBA types to do it for us.

No, thanks. I don't want my taxes to fund a(nother) failed Corp. If they aren't able to stay afloat (after 20 years of miliking billons from the evil Google), just let them sink.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#805

Post by notepad0x90 »

observationist wrote: post #499
notepad0x90 wrote: post #470

I think people are wildly overreacting. There is a new CEO and he wants to make a splash so the throws around "AI" that's it. Of course there will be AI related features in firefox, there already are! Wait and see what the actual specifics are before reacting? Also, a small minor detail here: We're not paying for firefox! why are so many people feeling entitled? Mozilla has to do something other than beg Google to su…

>>> Also, a small minor detail here: We're not paying for firefox! why are so many people feeling entitled? Mozilla has to do something other than beg Google to survive. Because some of us have supported, donated to, advocated for, and participated in the firefox and mozilla communities over the years, and feel betrayed by the abandonment of principles, kowtowing to adtech surveillance "features", and overall enshitt…

I think all of firefox's alternatives depend on firefox as an upstream. firefox itself has low adaption right now. I'm all for any approach that isn't google/chrome being the only browser standards driver. This type of knee-jerking doesn't help with that goal.. I don't care so much about mozilla's past or how terrible an "ai browser" will be, as much as having viable alternatives and not having a monopoly for browser standards. a fork and alternative browsers will do nothing to help with that. Either there is an alternative to Mozilla or there isn't.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#806

Post by dTal »

glenstein wrote: post #539
OvervCW wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the desktop where Firefox has a 4% market share right now. Once you consider all traffic it drops down to 2%. Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

I think you're right, but it's important to emphasize many of these attempts to tell the story of market share get major facts catastrophically wrong. The decline in Firefox market share from like 33% to below 10% is mostly because the world pivoted to mobile, and Firefox "dominance" was in a world of desktop browsers. It was defaults and distribution lock-in as the world pivoted to mobile that led to the change in m…

No, the decline of Firefox market share happened in the early 2010s, on desktop, when everyone switched to Chrome because it felt way faster. I say "everyone" - this is the subset of "everyone" who were switched on enough to use a non-default browser in the first place. The rest used IE or Safari, dependent on platform.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#807

Post by zrn900 »

vintermann wrote: post #192

Sorry to get on one of my political hobby horses but... We actually need to consider the possibility that yes, it is. More precisely, that the new CEO is trying to do that. It doesn't take a grand conspiracy to join an organisation on false premises. It's totally easy. You can, today, go join a political party without agreeing with them at all, with the intent to sabotage them. Or another organization, including a wo…

> Maybe for a sense of control, maybe because they think they'll get rewarded.

Maybe they are rewarded. Industrial sabotage by competitors is not new.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#808

Post by throw10920 »

ryandrake wrote: post #469
mrtksn wrote: 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…

> People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions. Yes, No, Yes? I don't demand constant updates. I don't want constant updates. Usually when a company updates software it becomes worse. I am happy with the initial version of 90% of the software I use, and all I want is bug fixes and security updates.

> I don't want constant updates.

> all I want is bug fixes and security updates.

GP wasn't differentiating between different types of updates in their argument, because it doesn't make sense - they're discussing the economics of it, which doesn't care if you're fixing bugs or not.

>> How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#809

Post by littlestymaar »

danaris wrote: post #803
littlestymaar wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way you can possibly view Safari as "the modern day IE" is if you consider the authoritative source for What Features Should Be Supported to be Chrome. No. Safari is the modern IE in the sense that it's the default browser on a widely used OS, and it's update cycle is tied to the update of the OS itself by the user, and it drags the web behind by many years because you cannot not support its captive user-b…

> drags the web behind by many years But this can only be by comparison to something. And Apple is very good at keeping Safari up to date on the actual standards. You know—the thing that IE was absolutely not doing , that made it a scourge of the web. So if it's not Chrome, what is your basis for comparison??

> But this can only be by comparison to something.

The something being the other browsers. Chrome and Firefox. Safari was even behind the latest IE before the switch to Chromium by the way.

> the thing that IE was absolutely not doing, that made it a scourge of the web.

You're misremembering, IE also kept improving its support for modern standards. The two main problems were that it was always behind (like Safari) and that it people were still using old versions because it was tied to Windows, like Safari with iOS. When people don't update their iPhone because they know it will become slow as hell as soon as you use the new iOS version on an old iPhone or just because they don't want their UI to change AGAIN, they're stuck on an old version of Safari.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#810

Post by jm4 »

eqvinox wrote: post #566
mancerayder wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Brave so persona-non-grata? I find that it's a 'don't ask don't tell' because of some ancient politics. If Firefox is becoming suspect, WHAT is left? I found Chrome+adblockers NOT good enough. I like (and hate) Brave's shield, as I never figured out how to use wildcards to whitelist a whole domain / subdomain, it seems per-host. But that Brave shield WORKS. Now people are going back to Chrome? Really?

The crypto bullshit Brave was (and somehow still is) pulling is way worse than Firefox's enshittificAItion.

You can disable all that stuff. We used to have email clients, newsgroup clients, HTML editors, etc. built into our browsers. It used to be about creating a suite of tools to meet all your needs on the web. Since then, all that stuff just moved to web apps that you access using the browser so that's mostly all that remains. Vivaldi still has an email client available. A crypto wallet isn't the end of the world. I look at it as sort of a modern throwback to Netscape Communicator, which Brendan Eich helped create.

The BAT stuff is definitely more controversial, but mostly only because Brave blocks others' ads in lieu of their own. It was an interesting idea to present an alternative method for a privacy-respecting ad-supported web. Personally, I wouldn't be as aggressive in blocking ads if they weren't so intrusive and didn't compromise my privacy or security. I look at that whole thing as a swing and miss. I'm not going to beat them up for trying something new when we can all see that the modern web is a cesspool.

You can still turn all that crap off, which is what I do when I use Brave, and you have a pretty solid browser.

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