It seems as though capitalism has little room for craftsmanship as a virtue. The only value becomes the dollar value, people see no shame in shoddy workmanship so long as it's profitable.
The way I see it, Firefox's reputation for craftsmanship is unearned. The only time it crosses my desk as a site developer is people filing browser-specific bug reports for it. Its engine does not, in general, benchmark as performant as either Chrome's or Safari's on our site. It's certainly not beating them by enough percentage points for me to suggest people switch to it for performance.
Mozilla has had more time to work on this problem space than their competitors, and they don't have the technical advantage to show for it. They may have been the technologically better choice in the Browser Wars era of Internet Explorer, but nowadays? They're falling down on the technical merits, not just the network effects.
It's free and it's widely available. If they were better than the alternatives more people would switch to them but they're not.
Mozilla has had more time to work on this problem space than their competitors, and they don't have the technical advantage to show for it. They may have been the technologically better choice in the Browser Wars era of Internet Explorer, but nowadays? They're falling down on the technical merits, not just the network effects.
It's free and it's widely available. If they were better than the alternatives more people would switch to them but they're not.