Mozilla thinks Apple, Google, Microsoft should play fair
theregister.com
theregister.com
They're in a strategic dead end, the reasons to pick Firefox are very slim. They should have committed harder to being extension-heavy. At least then they'd be interesting and even if niche they'd have a niche to operate in. Now it is just hard to see why they should be relevant. It is helpful to have someone complaining about what everyone else is doing wrong, but they don't need the budget they have to do that. I manage to fill that role on a pro-bono basis.
Especially with the manifest v3 changes, which will basically break adblockers on Chrome-based browsers, I can't imagine ever using something else than Firefox.
This is such a wrong statement and has nothing to back it up. Why is it first.
Firefox has: - much higher customization options (huge) - different features such as multi account containers - a different profit model not based on ads and intrusion. Mozilla is not acting like a monopoly and trying to force people to watch their ads. - A different engine. - a better strategy for Ram - a different UI - and much more.
Some of us, have enjoyed Firefox for aged and will keep doing so. We're power users and not people who act like popularity due to external marketing capabilities and default pushing is reason enough to say "other browsers should not be relevant".
Wtf is your comment, honestly.
Now, if you want to talk about Mozilla missing their money for US culture wars (Rep vs Dem) and issues unrelated to tech, then i agree. But technology wise, Firefox is a very easy case to make.
If it wasn't for the Firefox addons I've come to depend on whose developers have stuck with Mozilla inspite of their bullshit, I would have switched to Chrome ages ago.
I think I'm just too lazy to.
And they are absolutely right to complain about unfair behaviour
No, Epic is a good example, at least if they would have been successful in their objective. Financial motivation of companies or individuals is definitely the best cause for anti trust as it clearly shows someone is really affected rather than anti trust which just sounds good on paper.
It doesn't have a super convenient breakdown, but Chrome Desktop is at 28.9% and Firefox is at 4%. If you remove the mobile shares you arrive at around 10%.
She's overseen a disastrous plummet in marketshare and a deliberate move in strategy away from firefox -- ff was not mentioned in recent strategy updates [1], and they've now decided to play at AI and early-stage venture fund. Skills at which Mozilla has no demonstrable competence.
The only real value they have is a fig-leaf for Google to pretend they don't have a browser monopoly, and at some point I expect that value to expire.
Would new leadership have changed this? I don't know, but keeping your job after overseeing an utter disaster and not at least once trying new leadership is incompetent.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mark-surman-mozilla-25-y...
In the same timeframe from 2016, brave created a browser, which actually protects user privacy by blocking all trackers and ads, developed new privacy enhancing measures like cookie isolation, localhost access permission, and much more.
Then they created an independent search engine, with ai integrated using their own index and hardware, and now they have their own ai service which respects privacy.
In the same time Mozilla falls really short, yes they released Firefox quantum, but nothing major other than that, and of course nothing that actually protects users privacy because they are afraid of google.
And that's how they lost their passionate users, while also not realizing that the average user doesn't care since chrome just works and causes no major problems for them
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/why-the-death-of-the-firefo...
The reality is that you're going to fight with the two richest companies on Earth, on a field where commercial relationships with OEMs (phone manufacturers) matter more than anything else - and OEMs like to talk with big, reliable companies, not scrappy startups. Your competitors have a 15/20-year head-start, in a field where such head-starts are practically unsurmountable. Your OS will be judged on its first few releases, which means you better have it on a beefy flagship phone; except no decent OEM is going to bet their flagship on your unproven OS, so they're going to give you a second- or third-rate model instead, which will make your OS feel slow and glitchy. Oh, and you can't make any real money from the whole effort, because otherwise they will go Android.
China domestic devices use Android without Play, and iOS is now discouraged for government workers.
Is the bar for Firefox OS still quite so high?
Perhaps we are slowly getting there. Historically, phones were never used in this way nor were they expensive or powerful enough for users to demand it.
Gone are the days of BIOS booting and easy bootloader upgrades to GRUB.
On modern Windows, getting out of secure boot is much more difficult, and most will opt for a WSL variant.
Neither Apple nor Google would ever tolerate even that.
Someone should take the "here's why your antispam plan won't work" form, and turn it into "here's why your non-Google/Apple mobile OS will never get traction".
I think a third totally new platform could be established even today, but it’s going to take smart planning and flawless execution to make happen.
How do you solve this problem? Mozilla is too small to do it, and even Microsoft has seemingly given up.
Nowadays Mozilla fumbles and complains. Maybe rightly so. I'm just tired of it.
Then Chrome directed more people into their ad funnel as the default action.
Then Google started buying up more glass and real estate. More people to shove though.
Now websites don't run in Firefox. (One of my lawyer's websites doesn't!)
Now Cookies and web standards are changing so Google is the only arbiter of targeted online ads.
It's time for anti-trust!
It allows first-party cookies to live for over a year which are used for re-targeting and building behavioural profiles. It recklessly incorporates every API under the sun which advertisers use for fingerprinting with 99% accuracy. And despite it being insidious and a major invasion of privacy Google still happily partners with companies who use it.
And now people who are completely ignorant about how their data is being used are jumping up and data for this behaviour to extend to all mobile devices.
What was Firebug is now built in to Firefox: https://getfirebug.com/
What are the compelling advantages of Chrome nowadays?
Chrome is working to limit the capabilities of ad blockers:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/11/chrome-pushes...
Whereas a compelling advantage of Firefox is its support for uBlock Origin. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
Advertising networks have often been vectors for malware. Using an ad blocker is an important security measure. Even the FBI recommends ad blockers:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/malvertising
https://theconversation.com/spyware-can-infect-your-phone-or...
Because allowing advertising-centric browsers like Chrome to read user's Messages data and import Browsing History data would be a nightmare for user's privacy. We already know Google uses browser history for advertising purposes.
Some of us just want our phone to be a phone. Not a computer that we have to constantly secure, manage and triage.
[1] https://www.scmagazine.com/news/google-chrome-will-disable-t...
Who in turn are packaging it alongside other data to track you across the internet.
Which for Apple and me as well is not worth a mild UX inconvenience.
For those who have used it to browse less reputable sites, I have seen hundreds of calendar events set to warn of browser insecurity that were injected by Safari.
The incognito mode in Safari is not prominent, and unused by all except those who know exactly what they are looking for, and why.
In these situations, I close the dozens of tabs, wipe all the Safari history that I can, then I install Firefox Focus and tell the owner to use it unless they specifically want the browser to remember them.
Safari is really not configured to be a safe browser for the general user. Firefox Focus is a far better place to start, even if it is constrained by WebKit.
Defaults are a powerful mechanism of platform dominance.
Google should also not be allowed to dictate how cookies and tracking and web standards work. They're clearly trying to set themselves up as the only company that can do online advertising with measurable results.
It's actually insidious how Google can ride on the bandwagon of "cookies are scary" to get exactly the outcome they want.
Or they can just keep complaining and catering to relatively niche demographics.
They get most of their income from their deal with Google which gets most of its income from Chrome, so why should they jeopardize that by creating an alternative to Chrome?
As such: "Mozilla's concerns are documented" on a M$ platform?
They sure are standing up to monopolization of the net, aren't they...
I only compile and patch FF though so I'm not sure how the actual devs feel.