And you made it happen by your choices.
Stuff like AMP was mostly brought throughs search alone.
I use it because I like it a little bit more than chrome. And because I don't want google to completely control the browser market. But the more firefox becomes like chrome, the less reason I have to continue using it.
And despite what Mozilla thinks and wants, I don't think most Firefox users care that much about privacy. I suspect most Firefox users use it because their tech saavy friend, relative, or IT administrator installed it for them and/or told them to use it. So losing core users also means using many other users in their sphere of influence.
Except FF market percentage has been decreasing not growing. The technical foundation has gotten better, but it’s like Mozilla execs are completely out of sync with the market share they could have. They want a “shiny” app that in theory people should want, not the app people actually want.
I just hope some group of geeks decides to fork it and change it up.
Execs may have less to do with the decline than a changing market. Google poured resources and new ideas into a mostly greenfield effort, and leveraged its market position to push its browser. Edge and Safari also benefit from their makers' platforms and marketing.
It's a hostile world for an independent browser. And IMO Firefox is still the least worst option.
Sure, bit it would have been a little less hostile if they hadn't brought quite a lot of that on themselves with their long history of hostile-to-tech-savvy-users decisions.
[1]: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1/
Like, no matter what, telemetry is useful to the product, and defaults matter. Like the infamous “the opt-ot organ donor vs opt-in countries have a staggering difference of 90% difference”. Should firefox throw away 90% of its userbase’s useful telemetry, most of who would have no problem with providing it?
I want firefox to be good. I don't even need to have the newest features I just wamt a stable browser I can use. Don't we all? Removing features I actually use and adding things I don't need is counterproductive and I don't know which part of their telemetry helped them make those choices, but many I didn't like.
> Should firefox throw away 90% of its userbase’s useful telemetry, most of who would have no problem with providing it?
Telemetry should always be opt-in. Firefox throws enough messages your way if they would ask (like many other programs) "Help make firefox better" and then offer different level of reporting it would be fine. They ask me to change my theme at the start, but they don't ask me if I want to send them my data?
Well, this is exactly the point. If you disable telemetry, how do you expect them to know that you are using that feature and they shouldn't remove it?
Anyway for the longest time I send detailed information with all my crash reports and similar, but not only could I never find out where they collected the crashes I send in no no error (even the reproducible once) got fixed. The only times my problems got fixed where when I actively filed a bug report myself or fixed the cause of the issue manually.
After a few years I began to wonder if anybody even reads those crash reports and added a request for a quick pingback something like "empty message is fine. I just want to know if anybody is actually reading this". Did this _multiple_ times, never got any response. Either they don't read or they don't care. Anyway I'm over giving my data for aggregations that probably never get used.
If someone from mozilla could tell me that they actually matter maybe I would change my mind, but for now I'll drive my privacy is important for me train, because it really is and if the people that collect my data don't or misuse it I don't see the point in sending it.
Maybe I was expecting too much, but if this is too much of a response then I don't want to contribute anything (at least like this).
Turning off telemetry by default is also not an option, because then they would have no data, and would just be making decisions at random -- I really doubt that would please you either.
And now because Mozilla lacks data from its most coveted “tech” users, it does make decisions based on data that it has, which is usually totally opposite (like in your example) which in turns pisses off these users even more and they jump ship, taking all their friends and family with them (because they are the “tech” person in their circle). That is how you lose users.
You can of course make a zero telemetry browser, relying 100% on your own research and what the users volunteer to tell you directly. And those most passionate about it with tell you the most, a wonderful positive feedback loop. But this would require a change of product development mindset to a completely user centric one.
From the developer point of view, this is incorrect, the developers are using it to decide which features to prioritize. If you are aware that it's happening and you leave it on, then I don't see what the problem is. Resource and bandwidth usage should be very minimal, if it's not then I would urge you to actually measure it and report bugs. It should be possible to compress it so that it doesn't eat up your bandwidth. Remember that it also takes bandwidth and CPU to post on Hacker News, so you will have to compare it to that to have any kind of meaningful data.
My point is, it if lacks the data from those users, it would make sense to start sending them that data. It doesn't make sense to me to complain about them having incorrect data on you when you intentionally don't send them the right data and then threaten to jump ship because of what seems to be your own actions. I personally also disable telemetry but I know full well that I'm opting out of an important system for them so I don't expect to get attention in return for doing that. If you wanted to help, I think they would very much welcome attempts to fix the telemetry and make it more bandwidth-respecting and privacy-respecting, rather than finding ways to just throw it out.
>You can of course make a zero telemetry browser, relying 100% on your own research and what the users volunteer to tell you directly. And those most passionate about it with tell you the most, a wonderful positive feedback loop.
In my experience, this is an unreliable way to make products, the type of user who is passionate and volunteers this information is not the average user. You will end up with a very niche product that way, and the cost would be very high since you would be expecting the same quality of features but for a smaller number of users. If you're interested to do this I would suggest you to fork Firefox and attempt to get funding, and try that out just to see how much work it actually is compared to how little those users are actually willing to pay. Take a look at Waterfox if you want to see an example of how this would be done.
Most people are not aware of telemetry. Most of those that are, disable it. So you end up getting what you call 'votes' from the people who are not aware they are 'voting'. That is not voting (for which a person need to be consciously doing it) but rather extraction of information.
Imagine in an election, the votes of those who didn't explicitly vote get automatically extracted and cast based on a biased algorithm produced by the government. If you do not like the idea of that, you should not like the idea of opt-out telemetry. What you want is opt-in telemetry (aka. voting).
> Resource and bandwidth usage should be very minimal
I fully agree, that is the other reason zero telemetry is a way to go and should be default. You can not beat that.
> In my experience, this is an unreliable way to make products
Not sure what your experience is but I already built one company like that and I am doing another one right now (incidentally a web browser) based on this same principle which is called user-centric product development. Btw. Mozilla practiced that too ~15 years ago (the "golden age" of Firefox, reference here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28493855).
Do you have some numbers to back this up? I would suggest getting that before making any major product decisions. Also if you read the privacy policy, the telemetry is spelled out in detail, or at least it should be, so the people who are voting should be well aware of what is going on. If nobody reads it, then the solution there would then be to make it obvious and easy to read, not to throw it out completely.
>I fully agree, that is the other reason zero telemetry is a way to go and should be default. You can not beat that.
I don't understand. That isn't a meaningful comparison because you're comparing it with nothing, you would need to present an alternate data source. This to me is kind of like saying "not having a stomach beats having a stomach because you won't need to worry about eating anymore" or something like that.
>Imagine in an election, the votes of those who didn't explicitly vote get automatically extracted and cast based on a biased algorithm produced by the government.
I'm sorry but this is exactly what various governments already do in a lot of cases. Not for general elections but for services or programs that they run or for appointed positions. They will do a study with passive data gathering and determine who is actually using what services, and if the results are good they will increase funding to the service, otherwise they will cut funding, fire people, etc. This is generally how any organization functions at scale, so I really don't understand what you're getting at here or what alternative you're proposing. If you want to apply this to product development, it would simply be infeasible for users to vote on every single ticket that a developer handles, so you need to find some other data-driven way to make decisions. That's what telemetry is put in place to do. I think there is a misunderstanding here of how this works, but it's not your fault.
I wish you luck with your company, but I suspect you will have difficulty getting funding on the level of Firefox or Chrome, especially if you have no hard data from some kind of telemetry or similar source. The privacy-conscious user is known to be a fickle market. I also would advise against making misleading and/or unsourced statements about other browsers if you intend to develop a competing product, this makes your company look bad.
This isn't true, Mozilla is making it very clear the first time you are launching Firefox and you have a button just next to the message to disable it easily without having to go to the settings. I don't know how they could be better about it.
If they pivot towards "mainstream appeal", it usually comes to the expense of that user community. Their alternative is to be the best Firefox they can possibly be, and wait for users to join their audience organically.
It feels like Vivaldi has done a better job of sticking to a clear user persona model. They are clearly targeting power users and Opera 12 refugees, and it feels like that still informs what they do. Unfortunately, the one thing they can't do is make a browser that doesn't run like cold treacle.
Do most people use Firefox because it's "privacy focused"? I don't - I think people use it because it does the things they want ... and "privacy" is far down that list.
I know I'm an odd-ball, but I haven't upgrading my FF because I want ftp support in my browser. I upgraded the desktop my kids use, and the tabs went all wonky. The only reason I haven't switched is I trust Google less than I do FF, and I want to stave off a technology monoculture.
Yes, my clear desire for ftp support means I don't want technologically perfect security or privacy.
Concerning "privacy" as the article points out in the section "Invading your privacy at the same time as telling us “we value your privacy”
] Telemetry. Hidden telemetry that isn’t disabled when you click “disable telemetry”. Firstrun pings. Forced signing of add-ons. Auto-updates you can’t switch off, pinging every 10 minutes. “Experiments” which require a separate opt out. Now the latest offence is enforcing app based 2FA to login to a Firefox Add-on account just to make a custom theme, which you wouldn’t need in the first place if not for forced add-on signing.
> either the product stops growing and simply becomes a niche product for those set of users or it dies.
FF has dropped a lot of users, so I assume you mean it's decided to be a niche product in the "privacy" space, and not a generally useful tool?
Its marketing doesn't seem that successful, as my first thoughts are to switch to a tool based on FOSS Chromium.
Also, I must be blind but I didn’t notice any diff with the tabs in that recent update where everyone freaked out because the tabs were slightly different. The tabs are still fine!
Come to think of it I don’t have any complaints about Firefox, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering to contribute my thoughts here.
This is a business model question, right? Nothing prevents someone from making a great privacy focused browser and actually charging for it vs being directly (Brave?) or indirectly (Chrome, Firefox?) ad-monetized.
Also in this context, referring to "customers of privacy focus products" is technically incorrect, they are actually users. Definition of a customer is "someone who pays for goods or services" thus Mozilla's main customer is Google (accounting for close to 90% of its revenue). Maybe looking through this lens, relation of Firefox product direction and what its "customers" want becomes more clear.
edit: simplified for clarity
Except the fact that nobody (relative to even their current userbase) would use it, and maintaining a browser is incredibly difficult and expensive.
It would be the death blow to their market share, which would destroy Gecko as a viable browser engine (not enough users to get websites to care about the bugs, or even necessarily get the bugs reported).
The only way that would work out is if they gave up on Gecko and switched to WebKit or Blink.
Their choice of business model isn't really much of a choice, it's the only viable option that gives them any influence whatsoever.
But the reality is that because of this, browsers are commoditized, and the average user will never pay for a browser if they can get Chrome or Safari for free. That's probably true of the average HN user, too, for that matter.
Assuming 100 people needed for Gecko, and $150k/year annual, world-wide, average developer expense, we come to $15M/year. Mozilla already has about ~$50M/year non-Google revenue from its products (coming from "true" users/customers).
Does Gecko really need more than 100 people?
There are always comments and complaints. One need to evaluate the quality of this complains to understand their worth.
> either the product stops growing and simply becomes a niche product for those set of users or it dies.
Successful products prove this wrong. The most successful ones barely change at all, they usually evolve for a decade or two and then adapt to a new generation. Stability is a viable road to success.
Heck, even chrome didn't really change that much since it's first version. Firefox is really absurdly extraordinary in how unstable it is.
Judging by the HN and Reddit comments with each Firefox/Signal/Matrix releases, it seems most of the customers of privacy focused products want all the other features of competitors; most of the times without paying any money (or they think donations should cover for everything because they once donated, so all hundreds of thousand users would). And they dislike/have negative sentiments towards any UI changes or breaking functionality for new features. So core userbase for these products becomes hostile towards the product growth by definition. In this environment, either the product stops growing and simply becomes a niche product for those set of users or it dies.