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by the_duke 1897 days ago

Mozilla really can't do that much to prevent it.

Firefox only got popular because it was so much better than IE at the time.

Now Chrome and Safari are the preinstalled on most devices or are pushed on you if they are not. They are also good enough or better that users don't have enough incentive to switch, especially with ad blockers working just fine on the competition (for now...). And Google won't allow Chrome to fall behind in a meaningful way.

There is not much market opportunity to compete against the monopolistic distribution channels that Apple and Google can leverage.

1 comments

franklyt 1897 days ago

This would be a decent point if nobody had any interest in chromium alternatives and Firefox was a new upstart brand, neither of which are true.

Usually, when a CEO heads an explicitly sinking ship, the CEO will be removed and someone will be brought in to turn around the company.

No idea why that hasn’t happened.

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dralley 1897 days ago

> This would be a decent point if nobody had any interest in chromium alternatives and Firefox was a new upstart brand, neither of which are true.

What? The dominance of the mobile space by one of their competitors, who pre-installs their own browser, and who advertised said browser for free on the most visited website on the planet (google.com) for years, is absolutely relevant regardless of how old Mozilla is.

And the world isn't like HN, most people don't care that much about their browsers, and don't even know what "chromium" is.

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franklyt 1897 days ago

Firefox has, since incipience, faced that challenge.

Anyhow, the point I’m making is that I don’t agree that it is impossible to compete with trenched competition.

Firefox has some prior momentum themselves, they’re not quite an upstart.

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kbrosnan 1897 days ago

The last 10 years worth of CEOs for Mozilla Corp.

2008-2010 John Lilly

2010-2013 Gary Kovacs

2014 Brendan Eich