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andreasgal

181 karma · joined January 20, 2017

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andreasgal··on Mozilla lays off 70
Shoot me an email agal at apple. Also feel free to give my email to anyone else affected.
andreasgal··on KaiOS takes on the Apple-Android mobile duopoly
We had a concrete business opportunity with several high volume customers lined up. The big driver was 4G transition. To convert legacy 3G bands to 4G carriers have to move feature phones onto an LTE capable platform. KaiOS managed to capture the same opportunity.

The main reason that Firefox OS was shut down was that management wanted to focus on western markets and desktop, which was and is the only revenue driver. I left since I didn't see any growth or opportunity or interesting problems to solve in that Venn diagram.

andreasgal··on No one should have to travel in fear
I have crossed the US border 100+ times as well. I have never been searched by CBP before.
andreasgal··on No one should have to travel in fear
It's a OCRCL complaint: https://www.dhs.gov/office-civil-rights-and-civil-liberties
andreasgal··on No one should have to travel in fear
They found the card with my passport. They took the card, and a few days later my status was revoked as well.
andreasgal··on Brave – A private, secure and fast browser
I tried my best to get the tracking protection patch shipped after you left. There were no realistic technical concerns with it. The entire engineering team wanted to enable it. The patch was ready for prime time. I was overruled for non-technical reasons. I left not too long after.
andreasgal··on Firefox marketshare revisited
A comment said the same and I added a note to the text. If you have concrete data happy to update charts. Pull request welcome :) All code and data for charts on github.
andreasgal··on Chrome Won
Try Brave. It has built-in ad-blocking and tracking protection on iOS and Android. I use the iOS version.
andreasgal··on Chrome Won
Google definitely not standing still. I hope that doesn't change despite the near-monopoly status.
andreasgal··on Chrome Won
I had the opposite experience. I used Firefox the last 48 hours on Mac and it works really well. I can't find a reason to not use it, but also no reason to use it. Commodity products. I think this is the choice most users face. Add a lot of marketing dollars and defaults on Android and you can explain Chrome's growth curve.
andreasgal··on Chrome Won
Roc has a similar comment in the comment section. I agree and disagree. Desktop PCs will be around, but the vast majority of interaction minutes will be on mobile (and maybe in the future elsewhere). Most of the 6bn people or so who arrived online once the Web took off don't have PCs, and don't need it. Its a geographic/infrastructure issue (lots of LTE in Africa and Asia but no landlines etc), and also a generational one. Kids grow up with smartphones. Why use a PC if the phone works? PC won't go away, but if 90% or 95% or online minutes are mobile, do PCs still matter?
andreasgal··on Chrome Won
"Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the browser fight. But there's many wars left to fight, and I hope Mozilla dives into a new one." Very poetic way of putting it. Couldn't agree more!