[ricktdotorg]

i believe jwz is 100% correct with this:

  In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

  1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
  2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
  3. There is no 3.

[clipsy]

> 1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and

A reference implementation web browser would not have had popup blocking back in the Bad Old Days of IE6 dominance, and would probably never have become relevant enough to impact web standards in the 21st century.

> 2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.

They tried (and still do try) to do exactly this, but you need market share for it to matter; even if Mozilla outright controlled the standards committees, Google would simply implement whatever they want and developers would use it due to the browser monoculture.

> 3. There is no 3.

Perhaps in the author's next attempt he could eliminate 1 and 2 as well.

[shadowgovt]

It's a fun fantasy, but the simple fact is that the standards committees are a power game and if Mozilla doesn't operate successfully as a corporation they have no power.

And you don't make money selling a browser.

[ricktdotorg]

but doesn't Mozilla have more than a billion dollars in the bank (and/or investments) for doing precisely that?

they "sold" their browser, just not to end-users. they sold it to google via "royalties" for google to use as a shield against anti-trust.

[Dalewyn]

That was the W3C in an age gone by and all that got them is total irrelevancy today.

[shadowgovt]

Precisely. It turns out web standards are a lot more descriptive than proscriptive; deviate too far from web browser vendors actually want to implement and you just create a fantasy document that never becomes reality.

[jauntywundrkind]

It'd be great if there were someone other than browser companies funding browsers. Maybe w3c or governments or institutions could actually support implementing all the bonkers excellent wicg.io and other ideas that browsers just don't care to implement.