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Re:Browser-Wars History: MD5-Hashed Posts Declassified by toyg on Sunday January 07, 2018 @03:35PM (#16092542)
Please read my comment, before trying to read my mind. I'm telling you what it looked like from the outside. Nobody ever cared for the internal politics of Mozilla; what we saw was a wobbly org that looked anxious to build anything that wasn't their own browser. I didn't say the OS was responsible, nobody cares if FxOS ended up making choices that the browser should have made or whatnot. The problem was not FxOS; FxOS was a symptom of an institution that had lost its way before the OS was even in the picture.

> they are still playing catch up on the desktop market

It's not the sort of wave you turn in a month. 57 is a big release, give it time. It had a massive surge of good press, which is a good sign. If they can come up with developer tools that can beat Chrome at something, they will see numbers go up.

> totally irrelevant on mobile.

They are making inroads on Android, which is the only market they will ever play into. iOS will only be cracked open by legal coercion. Anything else is wishful thinking.

> But they have enough money to last years

Mozilla is not just a company, it's basically a public institution. Their role is to champion a view of the web as an open utility, not to be the most popular widget maker. They don't need bazillions of money to do that.

Re:Browser-Wars History: MD5-Hashed Posts Declassified by roca on Sunday January 07, 2018 @04:02PM (#16092684)
> Their role is to champion a view of the web as an open utility, not to be the most popular widget maker. They don't need bazillions of money to do that.

To maintain Firefox as a viable product they do need a lot of money, and significant market share too.

Without Firefox as a viable product Mozilla would be a very different and much less useful organisation.

Re:Browser-Wars History: MD5-Hashed Posts Declassified by moz23 on Monday January 08, 2018 @11:55AM (#16098016)
Inroads on Android? Got data on that? As much as I love Focus, it's irrelevant in terms of marketshare (and it's also just webkit/chrome under the hood). And Firefox for Android marketshare was going down ever since Mozilla shelved developing it. And Firefox for iOS is neutered thanks to Apple's policies.
Re:Browser-Wars History: MD5-Hashed Posts Declassified by fabrice_d on Sunday January 07, 2018 @04:02PM (#16092690)
I agree about their role, but they need a strong, successful product to defend this ideal of the web as a open/public utility. That is what they are struggling with, and giving up on owning a platform was a mistake imho - they have less options than their competitors.