I used Mozilla for many years and loved it, despite it being a real hog in the early oughts. It's funny to think back about all the handwringing about XUL performance and whatnot that happened in places like Slashdot.

For many years every time I got a new machine I would make the effort to switch my link hover cursor to the old Netscape/Mozilla one [1][2] just because I liked it. There is a 22 year old Bugzilla issue for this that I had bookmarked [3]. I don't know how to do this now and it would probably look weird on my HDPI display, but it was something I liked to do when I was younger and more motivated to mess with my setup. These days I just accept whatever is given to my by Apple or Ubuntu.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/1YNFW6r.png

[2] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/blob/098bef52b444fde064...

[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112916

I have tremendous respect for Mozilla. Firefox is my primary browser since the beginning.

But I think that the greatest thing that they created is Rust.

Firefox is a Good browser, yet they have lost millions of users per their own data https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity So why are users switching to Chrome and clones? Is this because when you visit Google and MS properties from FF, they promote their browsers heavily? Once, Firefox was downloaded by every Windows user, and it wasn't just for Linux and co. To keep the future of open web open, Firefox must continue to exist. You may not like it, but that is the hard truth. Otherwise, Google will set all standards, which is not suitable for the open web. What do you think?

Firefox market share peaked in 2010 from what I can see here https://www.infoworld.com/article/3675628/mozilla-is-looking....

I think the primary factor was simply that Google switched from promoting Firefox to promoting Chrome after its release in late 2008, so once any inertia in the public mind wore off, they couldn't keep up. The decline in IE continued, but it started going to a different place.

The other dominant thing in that time frame was the rise of mobile. Mozilla didn't control a mobile platform, so they were second place out of the gate on Android in a way they never were on Windows where both Chrome and Firefox had to be downloaded manually. They also didn't have a well-developed account ecosystem, so as syncing between desktop and mobile browsers became a thing, that was another nail.

The trend line seems pretty unchanged since then.

For me, it was that when Chrome came out, it was a good deal faster and more efficient. It took FF a very long time to close that gap all the while watching them chase other dead ends.

Mozilla sacrificed a passionate director for someone who doesn't cause controversy on social networks.

It is possible that if Brendan Eich stayed, some other people (developers passionate for gay rights etc) would leave. But the disastrous plunge in market share that was brought about by the current vanilla leadership is, IMHO, a magnitude worse than what that controversy would be able to bring.

...but we've actually explored that counterfactual: Brendan founded Brave. And while Brave has certainly enjoyed modest success, I don't see anything to suggest that Brendan staying at Mozilla would have staunched or reversed the bleeding.

Isn't starting a brand new product line on an already full market a very different task from managing an existing product with a lot of legacy users and a famous name?

For an analogy: Tim Cook is a great manager for Apple, but I don't believe he would be a great founder of something similarly big on the contemporary smartphone market.

> Mozilla sacrificed a passionate director for someone who doesn't cause controversy on social networks

Mitchell Baker is certainly passionate about things, they're just not the things which push Mozilla forward in competing with the Google-Microsoft-Apple trifecta. She is compassionate about her own remuneration, having increased it manifold [1] over what Eich took while overseeing a decline in market share by 85%. She is compassionate about "social justice", using both Mozilla-the-organisation as well as funds from the Mozilla foundation to push "racial justice" [2], "diversity and inclusion" [3], "environmental and climate justice" [4], "alphabet justice" [5] and more - just do a search for "Mozilla foundation social justice" for more examples.

Baker is not as interested in developing a browser, that is comparatively boring and does not give you any virtue brownie points so it was not that hard a decision to fire 250 people [6] to become a 'more nimble organisation' which coincidentally left more money for those other purposes she wants to pursue. Who needs developers after all when you have an internet full of volunteers?

In short, Baker needs to be fired if Mozilla is to have a chance at rising again like the Fenix or Firebird it once tried to name their browser after but which names got shot down due to trademark conflicts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary...

[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozilla-racia...

[3] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/diversity/2021/what-we-build/

[4] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/intersections-of-digi...

[5] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-supports-lgbt-eq...

[6] https://www.techspot.com/news/86331-mozilla-laying-off-aroun...

> Firefox is a Good browser

But not good enough. Firefox today has not much benefit over chrome&clones. They once had them, but sold them all over the years for whatever nonsical reasons they brought up. And they also lost trust from multiple little stupid actions, driving even more people away.

At the end, I would say they simply lost because of poor management.

> So why are users switching to Chrome and clones?

I still use Firefox as my main browser since the beginning, but for some years now I also use Chromium and sometimes even chrome as a second browser, for cases where compatibility is necessary. And I guess there are many people like that, except that have no real reason to continue using Firefox, or never start in the first place.

> Is this because when you visit Google and MS properties from FF, they promote their browsers heavily

Where is this promotion everyone is talking about?

> To keep the future of open web open, Firefox must continue to exist.

Disputable.

It's time for an open source browser.

Just kidding but none of the major browsers feel like proper open source projects. Mozilla hasn't had a community-driven vibe in a long time, and its Temporary Extension nonsense make it feel less open in a different sense besides the code. Brave is a grift. Safari is nice but closed-source. Chrome is my favorite but is too tied to Google. Edge started off good but Microsoft has added junk to it.

Not nearly as mature as the examples you gave, but you might like Ladybird [0], the SerenityOS community has a really welcoming vibe imo.

[0] https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

Mature how? It seems like it's already more or less what they're going for.

I wasn't thinking of a toy HTML rendering engine to play around with but a browser - an Electron project could pretty quickly exceed what it can do.

Rendering engines are cool though - and it's nice one of has been invited to TC39: hover over linusg on https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/graphs/contributors

I'm pretty interested in Servo and hope its reboot after exiting Mozilla goes well. https://servo.org/blog/2023/01/16/servo-2023/

> Firefox has evolved from a faithful and efficient render of web pages on PCs to a cross-platform agent that acts on behalf of the individual, protecting them from bad actors and surveillance capitalists as they navigate the web.

I mean, ok. It's a browser that has sensible privacy defaults.

> Mozilla has introduced new products, such as Firefox Relay and Mozilla VPN, to keep people’s identity protected and activity private as they use the internet.

The free version is provided by Cloudflare, and the paid version is provided by Mullvad. I assume the clients are custom, though. But these have always felt like rebrandings or partnerships to me.

> Mozilla is contributing to healthy public discourse, with Pocket enabling discovery of amazing content and the mozilla.social Mastodon instance supporting decentralized, community-driven social media.

I'm sure there are faithful lovers of Pocket out there somewhere. But for me, it's the first thing I remove after I install Firefox. The way Mozilla talks about Pocket, there must be some PM at Mozilla who simply cannot let get of this pet project of theirs. You'd think it was a huge differentiator/killer app, the way they talk about it, but it's really just a widget that rudely reappears after major version updates, even if you've dismissed it before.

Never used the mastadon instance, but I'll bet it's very nice.

> As AI emerges as a core building block for the future of computing, we’ll turn our attention in that direction and ask: How can we make products and technologies like machine learning work in the public interest? We’ve already started this work via Mozilla.ai, a new Mozilla organization focusing on a trustworthy, independent, and open-source AI ecosystem. And via the Responsible AI Challenge, where we’re convening (and funding) bright people and ambitious projects building trustworthy AI.

YESS! More of this. This is your chance. There's a new Internet Explorer on the horizon, an new Netscape - a new paradigm shift. Don't let that new paradigm be closed and run for profit! Give the power to the users, give us open choices! Don't just treat this as a lazy branding moment. Provide something truly open and beneficial to users, and they will come to you. You did it once already in 1998, do it again!

>> Mozilla is contributing to healthy public discourse, with Pocket enabling discovery of amazing content

> I'm sure there are faithful lovers of Pocket out there somewhere.

I use Pocket as a glorified bookmark manager. I'm not even really sure what discovery options it has except for the email they send me, which I filter out of my inbox before I ever see it.

Edit: Actually, not even that. I use it as a "Read Later" service.

It used to have great recommendations. For a time, I got yearly emails saying I was in the top [some low %] of readers, which was neat. Then it devolved into generic self-help garbage.

At some point I got an email saying I had to migrate my Pocket account to my Firefox account or I'd lose the former. Never could get it to work or figure out how to contact someone about it. I moved to Instapaper.

> Never used the mastadon instance, but I'll bet it's very nice.

It will probably get sacked eventually, just like Moznet was. The problem is, this isn't core to their business

I remember using Mozilla Suite and submitting and testing bugs to Bugzilla for the pre-1.0 days of Firefox. I've used Thunderbird (and forks like Postbox) at various points and am typing this in Firefox. Even in its darker times, Mozilla's products have always been worth using.

On a related note, I am anxiously awaiting the Thunderbird redesign. I need to replace Spark (v3 was about the worst update possible from an interface/workflow perspective, so I'm still on v2) and I'm hoping Thunderbird will be the client I settle on.

> Firefox has evolved from a faithful and efficient render of web pages on PCs to a cross-platform agent that acts on behalf of the individual, protecting them from bad actors and surveillance capitalists

Then why does it connect at start at e100.net ?

Why does it use google for "malware protection" ?

> Then why does it connect at start at e100.net ?

Because you have not blocked it at the router. Defence in depth saves you from having to trust any single party. Use "trustworthy" software, add blocking at the host level, at the DNS forwarder/resolver level and at the routing level and you're more likely to catch those ugly bottom feeders which tend to slip from the nets.

Here's to the next quarter century of removing features and removing speech.

By another 25 years, Firefox will either be gone or too unfit to browse the modern web.

This project can’t survive without funding from a vital corporation and you all know it.

> too unfit to browse the modern web

Safari largely ignores PWAs and Chrome's new features of the week, but still seems to work OK.

My main use case for Chrome (vs. Safari, Firefox, etc.) is Google services.

Kind of like my favorite use case for Google search - searching Google properties.

As long as Apple excludes other browsers from iOS, Safari is safe and web devs will work with it. They need iPhone users.

There are examples of sites that have already dropped Firefox. To support it is almost a philanthropic effort, the “greater good of free software” or whatever.