There is a very loud part of HN that strongly dislikes mozilla/firefox. It's disproportionate imo, I don't understand why they're singled out so often.
People are mad at Mozilla and Firefox because they're squandering resources on PR and "optics", shoveling in ads and AI crap instead of focusing development efforts on making Firefox actually competitive.
People are mad because Mozilla wants us to think they're a good company who will bring back a fair and open web, but their actions say they're just a profit motivated company who is content to put in the minimum viable resources into Firefox without investing in a real competitor to Chrome. Mozilla is just gobbling up google money and is content to let google and chrome continue operating a near monopoly with a browser and internet that are actively bad for and hostile towards users.
It sucks. I absolutely don't want Google to have total control over the web and still want Firefox to succeed, but at this point it's clear they have failed. I still use Firefox, but much less than I used to and I stopped recommending it to non-techies a while back when they broke a bunch of functionality on mobile.
This may be a canard but I was under the impression that Google maintains Mozilla through default search payment in order to have a bare minimum competitor to head off regulation. By that interpretation, dysfunction at Mozilla is preferred if not explicitly part of the plan.
It sucks that I can't even attempt to convince someone to use it beyond "it's not Google", and data privacy. The vast majority of users won't ever give a damn about either of those by themselves.
But the sad part is all the hassle I go through gets it to about 80% of where it was a dozen years ago. A lot less crashy, though, I'll have to give them that - although everything is less crashy now. But they haven't destroyed the browser.
That's in a way even sadder: they decide every day to wake up and be bad, when any day they could decide to be better. Instead they've entered the modern massive predatory nonprofit space. Which usually is a vehicle for insiders to get rich off government grants, but Firefox have chosen the even eviller alternative of running interference for google as a product.
Any day they could choose to center the user and the health of the internet again. Every day they choose not to. They're just a valve that keeps paranoid and aware techies from going berserk and seriously competing against chrome, and that keeps antitrust away from google (not that there's anything for big business to to fear with horrible Obama judges like Amit Mehta on the bench.) It's their only serious source of income.
I find this confusing. Why is Firefox so much effort? Install it + badger + adnauseum. Done. Why so hard for you? I am not a power user, is that why I don't see the effort?
The new UI sucks (titlebar highjacking, tiny scrollbar), phones to Google by default (safe browsing), a lot of bad defaults.
> Install it + badger + adnauseum
So you need to install other stuff to make it usable. /s
The only reason Google gives money to Mozilla is because they don't want to get sued for monopoly.
Firefox ad block use: 17.81%
Remaining addressable Firefox market share: 1.78%
So essentially peanuts.
Especially since most of said users would have used Google anyway.
If there ever was a comunity I'd expect to have strong opinions on Mozilla/Firefox, it's HackerNews
I think lot of the HN browsers strong opinions more akin to "Why do historians have strong opinions on geopolitical intrigue X" or "Why do doctors have strong opinions on the effectiveness of pharmaceutical Y". Strong opinions, because they are experts who care for important objective reasons.
Fire 80% of the C-level employees (make them justify their positions, DOGE-style); investigate and publicize the internal decision-making processes that lead to Mozilla becoming a de facto subsidiary of Google; do a full auditing of the financials and determine how much money the organization really needs to fund browser development (Servo and Ladybird seem to be getting shit done with a lot less money than Mozilla. How is that possible?); do an auditing of all non-browser related initiatives (stuff like MDN is worthwhile, but what other BS is sucking up money and time?); talk to the existing development staff about what's working and what's not and what opportunities exist that an outsider wouldn't know about. I would listen to the developers. Developers are often an underutilized business resource.
This would give me a basis to start thinking about revenue. Once it's clear what fat can be cut (and I think the cuts would be huge), then it'd be clearer exactly what revenue model might work.
At this point, it's worth going for broke. Mozilla is effectively dead, so there's nothing to lose. If it fails, that's still better than the status quo.
Monetization definitely isn't easy. It'd be a mix of donations, fundraising, and corporate deals that align with the mission. With a very lean team it should be sustainable, though. The goal is to become an objectively better experience than any other browser, and there's still a lot of jank to work on to achieve that.
Also, the reason HN has so many people ready to gripe about Firefox is because HN still has a large number of people using Firefox. I never complain about technical or policy decisions from Chrome or Safari because I don't use those browsers! The only reason I have complaints about Mozilla is because I actually use Firefox.
At least when Rider asked me about it, I say "no" once and that's the end of it.Cool, no hard feelings. You're $15 a month is earned.
Mozilla has had 13 years to do that post Eich and they just don't. Every step forward has an asterisk to it if you dig a little.