Orgs can do multiple things at the same time.
That’s not the criticism I’m making.
> Orgs can do multiple things at the same time.
Of course they can. But they should also prioritise—allocating money and resources appropriately—and Mozilla has for far too long not prioritised Firefox itself. That’s the issue. If people felt Mozilla were a good steward of Firefox, they wouldn’t mind most of the tangential stuff they do. The issue is that Mozilla has a history of getting distracted with irrelevant side projects that go nowhere and are summarily abandoned (meaning they were a waste) while Firefox doesn’t get as much attention as it could and should.
One sentiment I often see on HN is “I would like to donate to Firefox but Mozilla only lets you donate to the organisation as a whole, and I don’t like the other things they’re doing”. Unlike every other major browser, Firefox is the main product of its parent company. It should be the best at what it’s for, yet far too often I see people saying they use Firefox not because they prefer it but because it’s not from Microsoft/Google/Apple.
In principle this is true. In the concrete case of Firefox, they have proven they focus more on side quests than on making a quality browser.
I lost any hope they'll go for technical excellence instead of virtue signaling and branding after the Brendan Eich disaster. They feel now like a Microsoft, Google, Apple, or any other big corp.
I used Firefox since it was called Firebird and finally gave up and switched to another (non big corp) browser and couldn't be happier.
And at the same time, the dev already paid by Mozilla that could have been fixing the product, was busy updating the source code to update the mascot...
Personally, I do want them to increase their installed user base. I'd rather the Mozilla org spend money on marketing Firefox instead of political activism. If this works even a little bit, then great.
- Total revenue: $653 million
- Revenue from Google 85% ($555 million)
- Total expenses $496 million (Software Development Expenses $260 million)
But even after spending 1/2 Billion annually I'm not expecting them to regain relevance. They'll likely keep the existing board until the money runs dry, axe more technical talent and promising projects.And even that is optimistic, since it probably includes all the side quests not related to the browser core engine that has bugs and performance issues that are not fixed for years.
AI era is ripe for disruption, and Firefox with it's openness can aim to kill the browser mono-cultures, but it's vision-less ATM.
[1]: https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage#top-browsers...
> Media resource https://assets.mozilla.net/video/kit/pop-up-800.webm could not be decoded, error: Error Code: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005)
> Details: auto mozilla::MediaChangeMonitor::CreateDecoderAndInit(MediaRawData *)::(anonymous class)::operator()(const MediaResult &) const: Unable to create decoder
Unfortunate.
(firefox-nightly, Linux.)
> The Firefox brand is getting a refresh and you get the first look. Kit’s our new mascot and your new companion through an internet that’s private, open and actually yours.
Your new companion...