This reinforces my view that Mozilla doesn't really see itself as an actual product company. It seems to see itself as some sort of quasi NGO focussed on the internet. Which is sort of fine, but I feel they would influence much more of the web with better more popular products rather than policy discussions.
Firefox is so unpopular these days it seems that I am genuinely surprised when I see someone using it. it's sort of like when Firefox first came out and you'd spot someone else using it, but in reverse.
Nowadays running a browser without an ad blocker is as irresponsible as running a Windows XP machine without antivirus nor firewall a decade ago.
Any browser that doesn't implement countermeasures that have been proven to be effective and are available free of charge under a permissive license should be considered defective or having ulterior motives.
Firefox is merely a cow to be milked to fund the social agenda of the CEO.
That said a browser is such a large undertaking, becoming the modern day operating system. It would be nice if they made clear their commitment to carrying it forward.
She'd either be undercutting her own marketing department, or tying her personal popularity to products/projects. Neither would be a very good idea.
It feels like it's just the top brass getting as much money they can before the ship sinks at this point.
I am actually glad that they came out and put that in black and white. Got me to move to another browser. (I do miss Firefox's multi-container tabs and account containers however but I will survive).
The article is specifically trying to criticize social media without sounding like Mozilla is siding with the Capitol rioters. If you want to argue that it's a bad headline, sure - people's continued misreading of it definitely is evidence of that. If you want to argue that it's Mozilla "showing their true colors" and calling for Facebook and Twitter to take over the government or whatever, then I will disagree with you all damned day.
They're not asking for deplatforming, they're asking for more transparency:
Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.
Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.
Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.
Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.
From the outside it really is hard to not come to that conclusion.
I'm still a Firefox user and I'll continue to be as long as possible, but like others I feel immense frustration when I look at the dynamic between Firefox and Mozilla.
Yeah, like firing your researchers. What good was that Servo thing anyways? Don't need no PhDs when you can write endless self-aggrandizing blog posts while increasing your own pay.
I'm sorry, but to them it was a experimental toy that didn't make them any money and they saw it as a cost center.
Yes. Servo represented a major technological differentiation from Chromium-based browsers while remaining competitive if not superior. A triumph in any real sense, not just for Mozilla but for everyone who cared about the future of the web.
>I'm sorry, but to them it was a experimental toy that didn't make them any money and they saw it as a cost center.
WebRender was part of that experimental toy, and it shipped to production years ago.
Cutting costs via way of sacking R&D is a type of short-term thinking that's so devoid of foresight it boggles the mind.
Anyway, I get the sense that they're focusing on UX related to browser privacy. Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium and provide a compelling application around it (a la Brave and all those browsers) at this point?
Rust and Servo were a kind of "swing for the fences" attempt at meaningful technological innovation in the browser, but these days post layoff I can't see their rendering engine doing anything but falling behind.
The most likely reason that Google continues to pay them for being the default engine, is that Google wants to be able to point at Firefox like "see, we're not a monopoly, there's this other browser as well". If Firefox were just a Chromium frontend, that argument would be weaker, so I could imagine Google tying their payments to Firefox being technologically separate from Chrome.
And what does Mozilla of today have to show for it?
A self aggrandising, navel-gazing, tone deaf, hollow templated puff piece which will cause the unfortunate inevitable sad downfall of Mozilla.
There is almost nothing left of this once innovative company, resorting to present a facade as a cover while ignoring the real issue:
Not focusing on making a revenue generating product for over 10 years.
Also, repeat extremely tone deaf in Mozilla laying off their top engineers on Rust, Servo and Firefox and not a single mention of it in this post.
Looks like all those free years of Google money caught up with them.
Not surprising, given she got a pay raise after sacking much of Mozilla's engineers amid continued declining relevance.
But this is indeed completely empty PR fluff.
Vague rambling about data.
Lot's of justification for how awesome she is.
No mention of of an event that shook the company to it's core - laying off a quarter of employees.
Not even a hint of any vision, prospects for a future direction or how to save Mozilla from impending doom.
Why even write a post like this if you have nothing to say?
I do believe Mozilla will be fine for while. Google will keep paying well as a hedge against further anti trust concerns.
To be fair, Mozilla is in a tough position that can't be easily fixed. But this doesn't inspire confidence that they have the right leadership to get there.
Can’t use chrome or edge as Google and Microsoft showed again and again that they don’t value the end users.
Safari (especially mobile safari) is holding back the web technology adaption.
Firefox (since they incorporated some rust code) is fast and awesome and Mozilla is the least evil of the bunch. The accessibility and privacy features are the best out there …
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755252
If you have other browser recommendations. Happy to hear them. Currently I use Firefox for most of my browsing, sometimes brave, opera in case I need to check social media websites (as a container). Huge fan of qutebrowser and nyxt (keyboardbased).
Thanks to Mozilla folks for keeping up the great work.
As far as fun tech things Flow looks like it could be interesting but they aren't interested in being your day to day browser (yet at least) and it's still early in it's life.
For "chromium browsers that aren't a megacorp" Brave and Vivaldi are oft talked about. I don't really see all the appeal of Brave myself but it does have some decent customization options while still being able to be typical Chromium. Vivaldi is the old Opera spirit of "your browser can be a pane window with a web page in it or modern emacs" but the way it is implemented causes it to become a bit slower than other Chromium browsers. Ungoogled chromium is also a popular thing, basically Chromium minus some stuff.
For another fun tech thing "wexond" is a browser built in... Electron :). It used to have some whacky ideas but these days it's turning into more of a "chrome built out of chrome's guts". It has (and still is) been a work in progress and I'm not sure it has a fully reliable security policy for use day to day but it's still interesting to check out for fun if that's your thing https://github.com/wexond/browser-base/releases/tag/v5.2.0 notably it's the only browser I've seen with a built in single line tabs/url/extensions/menu/window-buttons gui option.
This is what happens when lawyers are in charge of tech.
Unless you’re busy day to day removing people from the company in order to synchronize it’s supposed purpose with reality.
The fault is with management that's afraid to disrupt the cash firehose. Not a mishandled CEO hire 7 years ago or the move from the increasingly untenable XUL.
What could they do by disrupting this cash flow? Or is it just nice to imagine a world where Mozilla found a way to become the next trillion dollar tech company that could spend tens of billions on its browser per year and we need something to blame other than it being hard to do so as the reason it hasn't?
Do we have benchmark on the CEO benefit from the same scale of company?
I'm just thinking whether it's a norm to pay that much to get good talent to lead the corp. (I'm not saying she is good or not)
It's a shame, really - Firefox is still the best alternative to Chrome IMO, Mozilla just has no idea how to grow or maintain themselves. My biggest worry is that they'll either get acquired by some shady company or just fade into irrelevance.
we are now in Mozilla's downfall.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/09/eric-rescorla-wins-...
(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but only ever tangentially on this)
But Firefox stopped caring about that once they threw out their addon ecosystem a few years back. Obviously they've been in decline even before then, but it surely didn't help.
It's a real shame that the browser that once spearheaded the fight against IE's monopoly position has now almost faded into irrelevance.
