Maybe it's also the other way around: if Firefox was legitimate competition, Google wouldn't "fund" them (quotes because really, google is also just buying user traffic with their investment).

Is Google actively sabotaging Mozilla or is Mozilla a genuine competitor that just hasn't figured out how to build a browser that'll actually challenge Chrome (and Chromiumy browsers) beyond ideologist users?

I say it's the latter. Google's money doesn't actually negatively impact Firefox's competitiveness.

I dont see how the competitiveness argument can still stand. I've been using both browsers for the better part of two decades now and chrome/chromium never was the better product. Sure it had slightly better devtools for a while but nowadays it is very difficult to argue either way. Performance was rubbish on both ends for years in a row, right now both seem to do fine. Firefox has sync, a significantly better product than whatever google comes up with every two years. So yeah, I think Mozilla has a good enough product to challenge chrome. What they don't have is comparable traffic to their site.

Oh and of course focus. Mozilla has lacked focus for almost a decade now with all the random products and initiatives they launch.

As someone who almost compulsively changes browsers every so often with the mistaken belief that "there's gotta be something better" and has swung by Firefox on multiple occasions, it has never offered me any compelling reason to stick with it beyond not being Chrome.

Zen came close, but also didn't stick.

Containers seemed nice at first but my personal usage of them devolved into an over abundance of containers to isolate everything from one another (my fault, though).

On the other hand, I've had various small nits here and there that always eventually push me back towards a chromium browser.

But hey, I'm a believer in not holding on to my decisions so long that they become assumptions, so off I go to install Firefox and give it a 4th whirl since 2010.

Try Tree Style Tabs.

That's gotten me married to Firefox. The hierarchical vertical tab management makes research and general web browsing far more efficient and productive. It also helps me know which tabs I can close when I'm done.

I did. TBH, it did not do much for me, but I'm pretty sure the problem is me.

I've tried all kinds of tab management things (they're usually a motivation for trying a new browser that supposedly offers a better way) and nothing ever sticks out for me.

Unfortunely most people have decided it isn't worthwhile to buy software, including those whose job depends on selling software.

Are you saying that, because people don't want to buy browsers, the end result is we only get the ones that can be financed by companies that sell other things (which in this day and age is ads, with only a few exceptions)?

I'd agree. Although I'd also add: people don't want to sell software anymore, they want to sell subscriptions, and I personally do not have much desire to pay $10/month for a browser (and then get pitched more services to buy on top, no doubt).

The subscription thing is key, although maybe a generational thing. I would happily pay a flat $60-100 for each major version upgrade I choose to adopt, but I won't just give them a direct monthly tap into my bank account.

So do you donate that amount every major release?

It's purely a theoretical, since nobody has offered me a choice of that model - either I'm a source of ad revenue whether I want to be or not (Chrome, FireFox, Safari), or I'm in a captive ecosystem where I'm already paying a premium (Safari, Chrome for android)

I think asking people if they're one of a small of handful people donating into the void to a is a straw man.

Last I checked, you can't donate to fund firefox development.

You can donate to Mozilla, who then go on to spend their money on things other than firefox development. Or development in general.

Because unfortunelly subscriptions is the only way to make people pay that would otherwise pirate, it is the modern version of using hardware keys.

> is Mozilla a genuine competitor that just hasn't figured out how to build a browser that'll actually challenge Chrome

Mozilla had a browser that had huge market share and was growing, and actively destroyed it for the sake of Chrome, at the same time as they became a financial dependent of google.

> google is also just buying user traffic with their investment

Google is not buying user traffic from a browser with a 3% share and falling. Google is probably responsible for 2-300% of firefox's profits, because if they stopped paying them off, they'd have to close up shop in 6 months. Everything else they do is a failure, and if it looks like it has a chance of being successful, like Servo and Rust*, they get rid of it.

They're not going to give them money to them with a check with "Bribe to fail continually, and to never give users a feature that they would leave Chrome for ever again" written on it. Money is fungible. If they couldn't bribe them like this, they'd create an "Extensions Interop Consortium," let Mozilla host it, and fund it to the tune of a half-billion dollars. Let Google prove this "partnership" is profitable, this default search engine placement on the 3% browser used exclusively by people who are experts, know how to change their defaults, and hate google. It doesn't pass the stupid test.

But actually, they don't have to prove anything because even though they're officially a monopoly, one of the worst of the many horrible, horrible Obama judges has now affirmed that there will be no remedy, because a remedy might affect their business. He then immediately went on tour, telling audiences how the government is bullying tech companies.

[*] And maybe firefoxOS, I accidentally had one as my daily phone for a year, and it worked fine. I didn't love it and I didn't even like the idea of it, but it certainly worked.

I'm not saying Google's funding of Mozilla isn't entirely self serving. I think it is.

I just don't think Google's funding of Mozilla is what's actually holding Mozilla back.

> Is Google actively sabotaging Mozilla

Oh, Google did sabotage Mozilla: https://archive.is/2019.04.15-165942/https://twitter.com/joh...

You need to look at history. In early 90s why did Microsoft invest in apple when it is its competitors. Investment doesn't mean they are medling into mozilla business. For companies like google (present) or Microsoft in 90's. It is better to have a crippled competitor than no competitor. No competitor attracts government agencies for monopoly which is worse.

In the 1990s Microsoft “invested” in Apple because Steve Jobs allowed them to save face by giving them the option to settle their part of Apple v San Francisco Canyon Co by calling part of it—$150 M—a stock purchase that only lasted a few years. I do not know how much the total cash settlement from Microsoft was, but industry rumors went up to $1B.

The first time yes, the last time, there would be no Apple Silicon to talk about today.

Because it's the only other browser engine that's currently available in the market.

Indeed.

It is important to try to avoid letting perfection be the enemy of good.

Firefox is at least something that is distinct from WebKit or Chromium (which is itself based on a fork of WebKit). That's good.

It's not perfect, in part because deals with Google pay for most of it, but it is still good despite its imperfect status.

Which sucks because it's not exactly fantastic as a competitor. There's still very, very noticeable performance differences and render speed/pattern differences that after you've been using a chromium based browser for a long time give firefox a feeling of being slow (it's not, it is absolutely just a perception thing, but it's enough to put you off using it)

Allow me to rephrase my earlier choice

  Chromium: Entirely dependent on Google, a $3T company who's entire business model relies upon invading your privacy and currently has a >70% global share of browsers
  WebKit: A closed source browser with ~18% of browser share and run by a nearly $4T company who forces all browsers on their mobile devices to be reskinned versions of their browser and probably wants to do the same on their other devices
  Gecko: An open source browser with ~4% of the browser share, run by a non-profit with a mission of to preserve privacy but is struggling to find funding.

All three choices suck. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. But there's only one option on here that isn't trying to royally fuck everyone over and actually cares about the very service we're arguing over.

So what... we're going to let the internet get screwed because a bunch of dudes making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year can't toss some beer money over to the little guy?

You paint this as a hopeless picture, but seriously, have you considered donating? Every time I see these types of threads I see comments like

  > I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.[0]

Seriously, are we all that greedy and myopic? They're a non-profit. You know tons of companies, such as Google and every other big tech company, have some donation matching system. Google pays the Mozilla Foundation about half a billion a year to make Google the default search engine. How is the fact that they are throwing such massive amounts of money not a concerning thing? Yet FF has enough users that we could give them an extra 40% revenue if we tossed them $5 PER YEAR. That's it.

Do you really think your browser provides to you less value than your Netflix (160%/360%/500% more expensive) or Spotify (240% more expensive) account? Seriously? If literally 30% of FF users gave to Mozilla what they are willing to give to Spotify, then the problem is solved. Or 15% of users did it through their company's matching program. If instead of discouraging people, you got more people to convert then the percentage of necessary contributors decreases!

It's even tax fucking deductible so it isn't even that <$5/yr...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45369141

My problem with donating to Mozilla is the donation goes into a pocket of their greedy CEO and only a small fraction to those who do the browser development. And that’s mostly why I donate to Ladybird.

Well said. Though I use Firefox, I have not donated after a Mozilla CEO quadrupled CEO pay after taking the helm.

You can't donate to Firefox. You can donate to Mozilla, but that money doesn't go to Firefox.

I recently purchased Firefox relay because I thought it was a nifty service to start using to prevent spam and preserve my privacy, but also a driving factor in my purchase was giving money to Mozilla. I didn't really look into it beyond that internal thought process. Your comment made me wonder, are things so segmented at Mozilla that supporting something like relay doesn't actually help Firefox in general?

I’m a Mozilla employee who works on Firefox, so I’ll try to answer this to the best of my knowledge but as a disclaimer I can’t guarantee I’m 100% correct

Paying for relay will give money to Mozilla Corporation, the same pot the google money goes into, which will predominantly pay for Firefox development but also other products. The corporation’s profits also fund the non-profit Foundation’s activities.

People often raise this argument regarding donating to the Foundation, as that money will be spent by the foundation, therefore not on Firefox. But a dollar raised by the foundation is a dollar less the corporation has to give the foundation, leaving it with more money to spend on Firefox and other things.

You can also donate directly to “MZLA” which makes thunderbird, and that money will be spent on thunderbird.

The problem many people have with donating to the Mozilla Foundation us them squandering enormous amounts of it. Mostly on things nobody asked for and executive pay.

Personally, I don’t feel like firing Firefox devs and starting controversial and expensive diversity campaigns while raising executive pay when Firefox is losing market share every year is being a great steward.

People have a lot of weird excuses for disliking Mozilla. There are definitely legitimate ones, but the point really is "what's the alternative"? Are the faults of Mozilla really so much worse that we'll turn to Google instead? Honestly, that seems silly to me.

Can we just for once not blindly hate something for not being perfect and consequently strengthening an even worse option?

> so much worse that we'll turn to Google instead

Did you know that ~85% of Mozilla Corp's revenue comes from Google?

  > Did you know that ~85% of Mozilla Corp's revenue comes from Google?

Actually, yes, I did[0] ;)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45369826

So what remains from your argument? It's been shown that Mozilla Corporation is for-profit, donations to the Mozilla Foundation do not go into the pot that pays for Firefox development, and Mozilla Corporation is 85% funded by Google.

So not independent of Google and not a non-profit.

To be clear: I use Firefox, mainly because uBlock origin is blocked on Chrome.

> hate something for not being perfect

Could you, and everybody, stop saying this for any reason about any subject? Go through this thread, pick out all of the people saying that they hate Mozilla for "not being perfect." Argue with them.

> the point really is "what's the alternative"?

Yes, that is the point. If there were an alternative people wouldn't complain, they would just leave. But Google is paying Mozilla (and Apple by the way) massive amounts of money not to compete. Mozilla is just very-ungoogled-chromium. It is not an alternative to google, it is one of the alternatives that google offers. I use it because I don't want to leave the internet altogether. It is a pain in the ass that involves a lot of work to bring it up to 70% of the functionality and UI it had 20 years ago.

Long story short, you made the right choice. You can't purchase anything from a non-profit and you can't donate anything to a corporation.

If you purchase a product from them, it goes to Mozilla Corporation which makes all the products[0], if you donate money to Mozilla, it goes to the foundation.

[0] Minus Thunderbird, Thunderbird is developed by a separate foundation. Both the "Thunderbird foundation" (not actually called that) and Mozilla Corporation are 100% owned by the Mozilla Foundation.

> WebKit: A closed source browser

You seem to be confusing Safari (a closed source Apple product), and WebKit (an open source browser engine used by multiple browsers).

You beat me to this comment. Webkit is not an apple only thing

WebKit has always been open source.

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit

Mozilla is fine taking money from Google, because it keeps "competition" alive otherwise Google would face antitrust lawsuits for running a monopoly.

Isn’t Safari 30% of browser share in the US?

Only due to iOS, which isn't necessarily enough to stave off monopoly complaints across other platforms

What's your point? Even 3 players is too few.