[Jenk]

Many people would pay for firefox. I don't know if it's enough people to offset what advertisers are willing to pay, nor if adding that would dissuade too many users but it'd be nice to have the option to pay so we can support the development of the browser directly, and avoid adverts.

Donating to the foundation feels a bit like donating to the WWF because I want to help a specific Panda I met at the zoo.

[0des]

If there were an option to pay 1-2 bucks a month and not have Pocket or anything third party, I'd pay that. I am curious why they seem hesitant to approach this model. It isn't like most of us never purchased Netscape before.

[MonkeyClub]

I would rather donate to avoid having random pandas appear at my window and wave manically. But I would much rather not be forced to donate by such unsolicited panda attacks.

It seems it's time to find a Firefox alternative now, privacy-minded and ad-free.

Pity the web is mostly unusable with w3m. Would any HNers recommend DDG's browser as a viable alternative?

[dgb23]

Using DDG since years and am happy with it. There was a time where I used !g more often but that isn't the case anymore. And when I still do, I'm typically disappointed.

[Jenk]

You might like qutebrowser. It's GUI but with keyboard navigation its primary driver.

[dageshi]

Many people would pay for firefox so long as it supports their pet features and they all have their own pet features. And it would still be less than they'd get from advertising.

[Jenk]

Invariably this is true, but I think had a payment model been adopted when Firefox itself was gaining traction, they wouldn't need to stray from that winning product model - privacy focused, user control, advertisement free, web standard honoring.

As it stands now, they are obviously wanting to monetise their product but for whatever reason don't want to open up to the option of a retail/consumer grade price. Probably it is because they'll make more from feeding ad companies.

[dageshi]

I think back when firefox was gaining popularity there wasn't really a public awareness for the need for a privacy focused browser. In other words, even fewer people than right now would've been interested in buying it because they didn't really think they needed it.

Once someone gives away a roughly equivalent good enough product for free charging for a competitor becomes incredibly difficult and that ship sailed when MS bundled IE with windows.

[danielheath]

It’s multiple orders of magnitude less, judging by how opera went.

[Jenk]

I used Opera for many years. It had/has many more problems than just its payment model.

Notably was the notion that it came with a kitchen sink when most just wanted a web browser.