Imagine if Firefox OS would have gone somewhere. We would have an entirely open mobile OS right now, breaking up the duopoly of Google/Apple. I don't blame them for trying.

I do. Imagine if Mozilla, instead of trying to make another mobile OS to challenge the Apple/Google duopoly, had focused on making Firefox a top-tier browser, both on desktop and mobile? We might be in a situation today where, certainly on Android, there would be more than one option for a mobile browser.

We are rapidly regressing towards where the web was in 2002, only with Google Chrome taking the place of Internet Explorer. Could Mozilla have prevented this by focusing on Firefox? I don't know. What I do know is that they didn't even try.

What makes you say that Firefox isn't a top tier browser ? Including on Android ? (Where the cards are stacked against it, better dump Android at this point anyway.)

This goes double for when Firefox OS was around : 7-9 years ago.

If Firefox were a top tier browser it wouldn't have bugs that were old enough to legally purchase alcohol in the United States [1]. Or have bugs that are old enough to have a drivers' license [2]. It wouldn't have decade-old bugs that break AJAX forms [3]. It would correctly support prefetching links [4].

And those are just the outstanding bugs. In terms of performance, Firefox is still slower than Chrome. It still has more UI jank, even on Linux. The new plugin API still doesn't give extensions the same level of functionality that they had with the old API, despite years of promising otherwise. Its responses to interaction media queries are inconsistent, necessitating the creation of a test page [5] to determine what its actual responses are (W3C specifications? what are those?).

No, Firefox is not a top-tier browser. It's more privacy-preserving than Chrome, which is why I use it, but I will never claim that Firefox is a better browser.

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10212

[2]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317081

[3]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=654072

[4]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1527334

[5]: https://demos.obormot.net/interaction-media-query-test

EDIT:

    better dump Android at this point anyway

Dump Android for what, exactly? An even more user-hostile platform, like iOS?

Being worse than Chrome doesn't mean it's not top tier. Agreed about the old loss of functionality. At least performance is better now.

No, most people should be using a dumbphone these days, at least until we hackers get our shit together enough that alternatives Librem/Pinephone are good enough.

I don't think Firefox is in the place where it is today because of technological reasons. It's there because of Google's marketing power (i.e. putting Chrome ads on the front page and Gmail, and bundling it with Android) and bad marketing by Mozilla. If Firefox OS would have succeeded, it would have propped up Firefox along the way.

Good point about the layoffs, but, like startups, most side projects never go anywhere, why would you expect them to ?

Last I checked, the average failure rate of software projects was 90 % (which is a good thing, other kinds of projects, like bridges, can't afford to, and have to be "over"engineered).