I think the entire point is that Mozilla has depended on people "like you" to stay relevant for years and knows that's not a great long-term growth strategy compared to appealing to the general populace who cares about things like customizable themes.

Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works.

Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come from societies that actively despise this kind of stuff, it might actually backfire.

Lucky for them I guess most people outside of HN probably never even read that marketing material, so I think it's more of a circle jerk for the marketing dpt.

> Chrome isn't the most common browser on the planet because of its identity politics. It's actually addressing real needs(i.e. a default browser on common computing device - used to be reason for antitrust but w/e), rather than a loud vocal subsection of a handful of societies, so I don't think that that growth strategy works.

I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the planet because Google abused its market position in search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's throats, helped along by bundling it with other installers. Everything else was secondary.

Mozilla could have gone to OEMs like Dell and said "We'll pay you to pre-install Firefox" but they didn't, Google did. I wonder if that would have cost more or less than the yearly bonuses the CEO takes?

Has any non-ad driven piece of software ever used this inorganic growth hack? Admittedly, it has been a long long time since I've suffered using an OS burdened with this kind of malady, but it was definitely where I learned about how apps are not as "free" as one might be led to believe. It was these types of apps and the damn browser toolbar installs that were dark-UI/hidden installed when installing a completely different app.

I don't know who has or has not used that approach, but if you're going to say "Chrome is popular because it did these things" I'm going to wonder why Mozilla didn't do those things. I remember the first time I downloaded Chrome was because I got some item in Runescape for doing that. Why didn't Mozilla do that?

Mozilla has hundreds of millions of dollars at minimum, very likely billions. It's absurd that they're failing so miserably, and it's obscene that their CEO has taken increasingly large 8 figure bonuses while the company has floundered under her leadership.

>I'm going to wonder why Mozilla didn't do those things.

Self respect?

Is that Mozilla's mission? Self respect? I thought it was a more open web.

As if those are mutually exclusive

I don't think my statement implies that they are, if anything yours does.

> Google abused its market position in search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's throats,

That may have helped but chrome really was a great browser.

I don't use chrome and haven't done so outside of work for over a decade.

So alienating their last supporters and promoters will get them back in the mainstream? How will that work?

And Firefox has always had themes. Real themes. Colorways is just some coloring and it's not even staying around for these supposed mainstream users to enjoy

> I have watched people just get sucked into the rabbit hole of browsing for themes for the their browser while accomplishing exactly nothing after being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the choices

When done in the physical world this is called decorating, I guess theming is just a digital version of hanging a print from Ikea on the wall. When I do this sort of thing, I usually do accomplish something, because I like looking at pretty things, doing so makes me happier, making my things prettier helps me feel a bit happier when I look at them. Whether that has value depends on perspective, though I feel if it doesn't then that perspective is a pretty dismal one. It's also a way to make an abstract and alien thing feel a bit more familiar and "one's own", and computers are plenty alien and intimidating for a lot of people.

The moronic thing about these new "colorways" is that the company still refuses the sane default: Mostly grayish or very, very lightly tinted UI with a decently dark, contrasting tab bar. All these new themes have a lot of color outside the tab bar, but credit to Mozilla that the "soft" ones still manage more experienced contrast than their white-on-white abomination of a light theme.

White on white is what chrome uses so they think that's fashionable.

They don't understand people love Firefox because it's not Chrome. Not because it's not Chrome enough.

Chrome uses a very light gray with a medium-light gray for the tab bar. It's noticeably more contrast than Firefox's light theme.