I don't understand what is wrong with Firefox. It is open-source, highly configurable and reasonably secure (if you have the time to configure). Yes, it has shortcomings, but what doesn't.

Not every open source software has spyware and ads activated by default, while marketing itself as privacy friendly.

Yes, can all be deactivated, I also use FF, but I do not trust Mozilla anymore.

Ikr. They're up to some questionable decisions since long.

- Acquire companies like Pocket, Anonym in multi-million dollar deals and also the millions in bonuses that the CEO likes to enjoy.

- At the same time, no significant expenditure towards developing its core software. Firefox is still ridden with bugs. They even went as far as firing the people that used to work on Servo, Rust, WASM, etc.

I think it's clear to them that there's not enough money to be made with small tricks like Pocket, VPN, Relay, etc. Firefox is still the only profitable product and contributes ~90% to Mozilla's revenue. Much of it coming from Google which is the one thing that people have been asking them to be less dependent on.

And we shouldn't be surprised if they double down on making more money off of Google and also introduce ads. Acquiring Anonym, an ads company, implies that it might have already started.

"They even went as far as firing the people that used to work on Servo, Rust, WASM, etc."

And at the same time greatly raising compensation for the CEO, despite shrinking numbers.

Servo had so much potential as the flagship Rust project, a fast and memory safe browser engine.

Such a loss to see it jettisoned and abandoned. Myopic decisions like these are filling the cloud of pessimism that now shrouds Mozilla.

FWIW Servo is seeing work as e.g. an Electron replacement. There is hope, even if one wishes the Mozilla Foundation CEO had used some $6M on developer salaries instead of pocketing it.

Full browser feature set is hard, but an app that bundles its own webview can choose to not trigger the edge cases, so that's a realistic path forward.

Also they stopped developing Servo :(

As in Mozilla stopped developing officially? Because I have seen active development on GitHub and monthly updates on their blog.

Mozilla stopped in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865

The project limped along for a bit, then recently Igalia started putting resources into it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39269949

Yes, a while ago. But fortunately people continue. Just not with the billion dollar budget of Mozilla and with seemingly less traction. I have not heard of them in a while.

But I very much endorse both. And yes, in theory energy should be focused, but I rather have 2 smallish projects, but with potential, than one slightly bigger one, with fighting about direction all the time.

Yes, that's correct. It was later adopted by the Linux Foundation with some industry support: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/open-sou...

I see some nice parallels with Wikipedia. Makes me wonder if anyone's yet developed a theory of "foundation capture" where you find some marvellous free thing that is made for and by humanity at large and extract/redirect money from its market share/good will.

I think the pump-and-dump extraction of value from any brand works pretty similarly, whether a non-profit or regular business.

Lots of companies with centuries-long record of manufacturing previously durable goods have in the last decade or two switched to using e.g. inferior quality steel to increase profits. That'll destroy the brand, but in the meanwhile there's great profits to be had!

I guess for that we have to thank Aesop, the original corporate raider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden...

Firefox is open source, it would be far easier for the community to make a stripped down Firefox port with no telemetry, no ads and no upsells for Mozilla services.

With that said, almost all of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google, which might possibly influence what features they implement, their stance on various web standards etc.

As pointed out, these do exist. I've been using several over the decades. And chrome forks too.

They all tend to lag behind over time, until the fork is eventually too old and it's either abandoned, useful changes I was relying on are dropped, or becomes just too old compared to upstream to be fully compatible (and thus just annoying to use).

Just the burden to upkeep the upstream changes, in either firefox or chrome forks, seems to be significant enough that I'm quite pessimistic on the lifespan of these projects.

You might just as well do your own thing, and don't pretend to be a mainstream browser replacement altogether.

Keeping up with an already built browser is too hard so we’ll create an entirely new browser that takes even more work?

The way I see it is "I'll have fun at something that feels interesting"

Yes and those forks exists and are a solution now.

But long term, I would much rather see a truly independent open source browser engine.

> which might possibly influence what features they implement, their stance on various web standards etc.

Unless you’ve got some examples to back this up, it’s FUD. Posting hypotheticals is how rumours start, and this is just stirring the pot.

Conflict of interests is a real thing to worry about. I wouldn't trust scientist working in tobacco company on cigarette harm, even if I have no evidence of wrongdoing.

FYI https://librewolf.net/

Sure, there are forks such as LibreWolf. I understand the reservations regarding Mozilla Foundation, although I generally like what they've been doing. Every org has people with stupid ideas. However, the way I see it, it's unlikely that the community will be able to produce a competitive browser in a broader sense (stability, performance, security, cross-platform...), meaning that the likelihood of Firefox being still around ten years from now is significantly higher than that we build and maintain a comparable browser ourselves. Then come the evolving web standards and lobbying power...

The way things are going at Mozilla currently, I wouldn't be surprised if Firefox is just another Chromium wrapper in 10 years. Technology doesn't seem to count as much as the C-suite filling their pockets at this "new" Mozilla.

This about sums it up. Plus donating to Mozilla means your money goes to all sorts of things, but hardly if at all where you want it to.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by your claims of firefox having “spyware and ads activated by default”?

Install a new version of firefox, have a look in settings under "data" (or whatever they call it in english). There you will see "studies" as activated, which is cryptic talk for ad tracking. And more recently, literal tracking for a advertisement company.

And as a bonus, those were added and activated as features via update, without telling. At least for me.

(and paid ads you have on the home screen)

> And as a bonus, those were added and activated as features via update, without telling. At least for me.

Ouch, they were new to me and also activated.

Yep, stuff like this makes me question many things. I mean in a sane world this should be enough to sue them into oblivion. But the general bar in that regard is so low, that apparently even open source companies can do it as default.

Why don’t you think it’s a sane enough world to “sue them into oblivion”?

Because I do not think one will have success with it. Same with Microsoft, Google and co.

Studies are not ad tracking. It's worse and more like a backdoor for A/B testing of browser features. A few years back an update broke the Metamask extension and it was fixed by pushing via studies. At that point users weren't very aware the feature even existed and it caused some backlash since users realized there was a backdoor to push code into their browsers.

The backlash resulted in studies being opt-in, and I thought it still was but I don't know, I use "policies.json" to setup my browsers.

Am I being a total chud? These don't really seem egregious? I already accept (and expect) that Firefox receives background updates in the background.

https://i.imgur.com/S7d4ZXg.png

https://i.imgur.com/n2euIrQ.png

https://i.imgur.com/BUjukOy.png

I don't mind the feature as opt-in, just like telemetry it can be useful. But depending on the threat model it can be a big problem. I still use Firefox as my main browser.

> Yes, can all be deactivated, I also use FF, but I do not trust Mozilla anymore.

And so I feel much more at home with Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

> I don't understand what is wrong with Firefox.

It's developed by Mozilla, Google's controlled opposition. I submitted a link[0] on ads coming to Firefox but HN shadowed it almost immediately (present on /newest when logged in, nowhere to be found when logged out).

[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-c...

That might be because Jamie Zawinski's website, which that link links to, does something ... special ... when it sees HN in the "Referer" field, so anyone actually following that link from here would (unless they take special measures) get IIRC a famous obscene image rather than the actual post you were hoping to link to.

(JWZ is not a fan of Hacker News and its community.)

Ok, didn't knew that. Still a dick move on HN's part. Shadowing should be restricted to abusers.

Wouldn't the submission get user flagged anyway? Because when people clicked it, they'd see something NSFW and devoid of interesting content.

Flagged for what? In this case user - me - was unaware that submitted content gets replaced when requested with Referer header mentioning HN. There should be a 'you cannot post this' warning instead of hidden post creation. I only noticed shadowban by accident: switched to logged-in browser to submit and went back to logged-out for browsing.

> Flagged for what?

Flagged for being NSFW and devoid of interesting content. The average user, like you, is unaware that the content they are seeing is different from the content you submitted.

All I see is a testicle in an egg-cup. Hardly special.

(Though it might be a good idea to special-case this to ad a non-referral link at submit time.)

Ah, OK. My hazy memory was that it was the goatse.cx image, which is for most people more unpalatable than a testicle in an eggcup, but I didn't check exactly what it was :-).

What now? I love a good JWZ rant.

Introducing Anonym: Raising the bar for privacy-preserving digital advertising https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...

Oh.

How Brave of them.

I think the problem is that chrome and firefox are developed for general usage, and as a result, have to deal with general usage constraints. For example, spectre and process isolation mentioned in another blog post here in the comments. I had a project in the past where I needed a browser with good JS support, but that does not make any http requests to any resources not in address bar or in the page rendered at that address. I did not find single browser based on firefox/chrome that fulfilled that requirement. Even the most privacy-focused projects still made continious requests to some mozilla resources (if i remember correctly, it was something about tls or maybe something else). So seeing someone creating an engine from scratch gives me hope that such browser might exist one day if I ever will need one again.

There's a difference between privacy and stealth. Modern browsers need to do things like captive portal sensing, ocsp checks, etc. If you want to disable all requests, you'll need to spend time cutting legitimate features. Or run it in an external sandbox which removes all networking access?

Even Mozilla doesn’t seem to care about Firefox; why should anybody else?

The primary value in Firefox existing right now is that the web standards process becomes dysfunctional when there are only two major browser rendering engines, but that is fading away with Firefox’s market share. Hopefully Ladybird can gain enough momentum to matter there because it doesn’t seem like Gecko can maintain its relevance.

We're in the current situation because Google could spend enough money on promoting Chrome. That's it. A different, or even better browser won't change that. Google can put a chrome ad everywhere again for a few months.

I feel firefox market share is mostly because they actively enshittificate their browser, and not because of google ads, or chrome being better.

I disagree, IMO the main reason they lost so much marketshare to chrome was because for a long time, chrome just was much faster and much more stable. Performance, stability, and compatibility is all that matters to most users.

Firefox (mostly) caught up with quantum and process isolation on the desktop, but by then I think it was too late. And the android version still has horrible performance, stability, and compatibility compared to Chromium browsers.

Mozilla just doesn't have the same engineering resources to poor into the browser that google does, so I'm not sure there's any way they can really maintain pace with google outside of becoming yet another chromium browser.

Doubt it. Things tech people complain about (like integration of Pocket) are completely irrelevant to the masses.

On the other hand, things like performance improved drastically, and it is now competitive with Chrome. Firefox the product is in the best shape it ever was.

There's barely any enshitification in Firefox. People like to complain there, because any tiny addition looks bad in comparison. But it's not even close to Chrome's default. An average user is unlikely to notice either though.

But while Chrome was growing, the ad campaign was crazy. You could not miss it - Google results, Gmail header, every Adsense anywhere. Everyone was told to install Chrome when they used internet, every day - there was no escape.

Nothing, it’s my default browser for dev work but it’s only alive because Google keeps paying them to exist basically so I’d love an alternative.

How's that alternative funded? Shouldn't Mozilla want to replace their Google payment with that instead? Or, failing that, wouldn't it be much lower budget to fork Firefox code instead?

And then to do it in C++ when other browsers and kernels are flirting with things like Rust. How long will it take for people to trust this new C++ code? I applaud the effort but am worried it'll be in vain. Then again, with how many projects I start not because they make sense but because I enjoy them, perhaps I should see it more in that way

Technically nothing; the problem lies entirely in the Mozilla Foundation which takes about $500B each year from Google. Officially the motivation is to keep Google as preferred search engine, but seriously the Firefox user base is so small that I don't even think Google would be interested for much less if there weren't strings attached that very likely create a huge conflict of interest if Mozilla become dependent on that money for their own survival.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go...

> $500B

I think you may have made a typo. Possibly $500M?

Whoops, apologies, you're right. I completely missed it and now it's too late to correct.

*million not billion

Well to put it bluntly, Firefox is Google's bitch.

If we want the web to be a multi-vendor platform based on open, multi-vendor standards, as it has been for parts of its history, how much does Firefox really buy us? Do we really think that Firefox will take a hard stand against Google if their survival depends on not doing so?

I use Firefox, but I think it's no longer true to its original mission in a lot of ways, Safari's global 18% share goes a lot farther toward making the web a duopolized rather than monopolized platform than Firefox's tiny sliver does. The less -opolized it is the better for society, or need I remind you that Google is presently mired in court for its conduct in its other web-adjacent monopolies such as web search and web advertising?

What are you talking about? Mozilla repeatedly stands up to Google on big ticket items. Flock being probably the biggest in recent history, but you can throw Manifest v2 on the pile as well and about half a dozen others.

> Flock

For the benefit of those not in the know: FLoC https://wicg.github.io/floc/

By coincidence, jwz just blogged on this https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozillas-original-sin/

Around Firefox 4 it became a shitshow of questionable UI redesign every version. And performances where not up to Chrome.

Also Chromium is open-source, and Firefox is mainly funded by Google so it not like Firefox has a real proposition value or independence.

Mozilla. I like and use Firefox but I find it increasingly hard to trust Mozilla and that makes me feel insecure about the future of Firefox.

From my limited experience of Firefox-as-a-project, coming from the side of Thunderbird:

* Firefox is effectively not a community project. It seems to be ruled with an iron fist by the commercial side of the operation.

* Firefox broke its extensibility - which was the whole rationale of the Mozilla project to begin with.

* Lots of telemetry and call-home mechanisms, so much so that it is difficult to opt out even if you want to - in Thunderbird, and I believe also in Firefox; see : https://superuser.com/q/1672309/122798 (but correct me if I'm wrong and it's an app-specific thing).

Not irrational at all. It’s the first new engine in decades, started by a single person in the open with no multibillion dollar company behind. We have every right to be exited.

Safari is 18% of global web traffic, 7x that of Firefox.

(from a hasty scan of caniuse.com)

I challenge those numbers. Global stats aren't important, just the stats for your target audience. My sites see 13% Firefox, 35% Safari. But keep in mind, FF users sometimes spoof the Chrome user agent because some sites break otherwise. Further, I suspect FF users have tracking blockers at a higher rate, so they don't show up.

https://indieweb.social/@robalex/112472853515037460

Could it be that the technical nature of your website creates a biased sample? I'd estimate that the difference between Firefox and Chrome users in spoofing their user-agent and blocking trackers is far less than the bias created by sampling HN for example.

Absolutely, but since that's my target audience, that's the number I personally look at. Statements like "no one uses FF" don't apply. How skewed each target audience is from the global average is meaningful.

> just the stats for your target audience. My sites see 13% Firefox, 35% Safari.

So your stats back up my point that Safari is a popular browser. The post I was challenging completely ignored the existence of Safari and your post backs up mine. Thanks.

How much of this is attributable to the iOS lock-in though?

Who cares? Why are you arguing in favour of monopoly?

What about surf?

https://surf.suckless.org/

Isn’t this based on WebKit so it’s not really a new browser?

Yes, it's based on WebKit.

Why is WebKit, the second most popular web engine worldwide, a "Chrome in a trench coat"? Actually WebKit is the Blink's older brother, whose father was KHTML.