I am tired of Firefox shitty takes.
It really is a shitty take. Mozilla are essentially saying they depend on Google remaining a monopoly; and that we shouldn’t fight the bad guys because the bad guys might hurt us if we try.
The Mozilla blog post was all about the DOJ asking to end search-bar payments, and how this might hurt independent browser. But I saw no mention of the DOJ saying that Google must sell Chrome; which I think is very relevant to the discussion about browser dominance.
More and more I believe that Mozilla’s current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.
Maybe making a browser doesn’t need to be so damn expensive. Let the web standards freeze so we aren’t constantly chasing shiny things. The browser is in a really good spot today. What else does it need to be?
A non-exhaustive list:
- creating a webpage has gotten too complicated and time-consuming
- accessibility, light/dark, should be a browser-feature, not something each.single.webpage has to implement
- monetization is an ongoing issue
- browsers need to do too much, are too complex and monolitic
- lots of duplication of software/system tasks in the browser, like process/memeory-management. But on webpage-side too, like video player, see point 1 and 2. Called inner-platform effect
There’s a ton of stuff I still want to be supported, especially web assembly.
But for most things, yeah, we could probably slow down a bit.
Hardly surprising, looking at how many former google and Facebook employees are in Mozilla’s management.
Libre Wolf isn’t bad.
Having been a firefox user for a few years now, Screw Mozilla. What a mismanaged shit-show they’ve become.
I get that browser development costs a ton, and that they’re in a shitty position. But to make this ode to stockholm syndrome blog post… what on EARTH?
Best case, Chrome gets split off into a separate organization free of meddling and they can fund themselves with reasonable donations / investments. In reality, I’m sure Google and other advertising companies will try to get into it and buy the behavior they want, like special-interest groups in US politics.
But if Chrome ended up under any organization with reasonable management who wasn’t completely beholden to advertisers, I’d switch back to Chrome pretty quickly (assuming the whole Manifest V2/V3 thing got un-fucked).
Mozilla is such a disorganized company. Why wouldn’t they find another search engine deal besides Google? It’s possible that they could find another deal somewhere, but it seems to me that they don’t care — more like they’re a controlled competitor. I’m not surprised considering they scrapped their wording regarding privacy, which leads to a lot of ambiguities.
Google overpays quite a bit so they have a viable competitor to point to for chrome. If the payment tracked FF’s usage numbers it would be way lower now. It makes no financial sense for any other search engine to pay that much.
That’s assuming they could even afford it. Most can’t
Not to mention a lot of companies are seeing search as a dead end product…
The problem with Mozilla is that their route back to greatness would require consolidation that cannot and will not happen due to lack of trust and diverging goals.
Mozilla + Proton + maybe a third party like Kagi for search (though it is api based) as separate but federated organizations is the only rational option for them ever reclaiming what Firefox used to be.
It feels like the world is too far gone for this to ever happen. Cynicism, pervasive internet and surveillance culture, and apathy just don’t make the world feel like it could go any direction people want anymore. Feels like we know the track for this and any new corporation in tech and the uber etc were the last of the unicorns where we actually bought into tech improving our lives.
/rant
The problem with Mozilla is that their route back to greatness would require consolidation that cannot and will not happen due to lack of trust and diverging goals.
I completely disagree; any capital available to Mozilla would be funneled into all the wrong places. Proton would go bankrupt for the sake of Mozilla’s AI and CEO bonuses.
Firefox should split from Mozilla like Thunderbird did, and only then consider partnering with another project. Actually, a partnership between Firefox and Thunderbird would be great.
Based on nothing, I too am going to assume they haven’t tried.
I mean, I see their point, but it’s still a bad take. At the end of the day, this monopoly needs to be broken up. Also, have they tried not hiring a bunch of new executives and capping CEO pay at 300 000?
I’m pretty sure that the main reason Google funds Mozilla is to be able to avoid claims of monopoly on browsers. I don’t think we can have it both ways.
Pathetic.
Why the hell would anyone defend Firefox/Mozilla anymore? Why, because they aren’t google? That’s a weaker argument the more times Mozilla finds ways to distrust their userbase.
Because they’re the only real competition right now.
If anyone else was confused by the typo, difficult > default.
I’m not sure what to think. On one hand, yes, Google is of course slimy. But if Mozilla loses it’s big source of funding (and crumbles as a result), that may put things in a worse place?
Then again, it’s a shame that the only major competing browser engine is funded by the dominant browser’s company. Maybe Mozilla can be fine without it?
The one good thing I could think of is that Firefox could come under new management. But then again, how that management will be funded I don’t know. Likely they will run in to the same problem as Mozilla.
How is chrome going to be funded if it’s broken off?
Oh no.
Very said it is time for Firefox to go its own way.
It is Mozilla the non-profit I want gone, along with their wholly owned for profit company that controls firefox.
100%. Firefox would be better off, I suspect, by focusing on the browser, solely, and with a distributed global team that didn’t need a fancy SF office and fancy SF comp packages.
I wish there was a better way to do it but sadly right now this is it. If you want independent browsers to continue they need funding from somewhere.
They can take the salary of the CEO to fund the browser, they can ask for donations that go directly to the browser, they can make subscriptions with useful services. So many ideas that they didn’t try in the past 10 years. But it’s easier to get free money from Google and do nothing.
I’d love to live in whatever fantasy land selfless compassionate CEO’s come from, sadly it’s just a fantasy.
I don’t think it matters whether the person is compassionate or selfless. It should be a position with a low fixed salary and a bug bounty. That way if the CEO wants to get paid, they have to directly contribute to the browser. Create the job and the compensation around your ideal candidates.
I think most people would be happy if the Mozilla CEOs “only” got a few hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The current pay is literally millions.
honestly I don’t see the thing here. unless its about edge being a respin of chrome. all macs come with safari, all windows edge, ironically its a few linux distros that come with chrome while others use a default foss browser. I feel like their biggest monopoly is windows giving up and using their core rather than making their own.
