[M1573RMU74710N]

I don't know if that's entirely true.

I do a lot of Firefox extension development. Many companies or users have a need for highly specialized functionality built into a browser, and Firefox provides an very rich platform for that. You can easily build powerful applications that integrate tightly with Firefox.

Chrome's extension capability is much lighter and more restricted; Chrome extensions are just light little packets of functionality that add to the browser. There's many things that you can't do that you could do in Firefox.

I think that area is definitely where Firefox wins, and will probably continue winning in the future.

Does everyone need that, and is it enough to keep a large market share? I don't know...but it is something that Firefox does better.

[blasdel]

Unfortunately Mozilla is intent on squandering every last advantage they still had by copying what Chrome does.

They abandoned XULRunner and Gecko as independent platforms. They're committing to breaking every traditional extension every 6 weeks with the new release cycle (and told institutional users to go fuck themselves). The new stable extension APIs will be limited just like Chrome.

Companies will just switch to modern IE, Iceweasel, or Safari to get a maintained shelf-stable browser. Everyone else will use Chrome.

[M1573RMU74710N]

It's definitely a difficult transition time for Mozilla/Firefox, and I think they're struggling to find their footing. I'm not sure if all the decisions they are making are correct, but as time goes on I think their plans are coming together more. i Plugin incompatibility is a problem at the moment, but they have systems in place to help mitigate it. If they can manage to keep it temporary, I think they can survive.

I don't have much experience with the new extension SDK, so I can't comment on it authoritatively. The old system is not without problems, and I'm actually glad that they are moving over to something closer to Chrome in terms of certain things...