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by Crosseye_Jack 547 days ago
> Weird returning to Firefox, but I did and there is nothing in chrome I miss.

I fear that Firefox’s days are probably numbered at this point, as it’s (imo) too late to turn the ship.

Firefox/Mozilla gets something in the region of 80% of its revenue from a single source, Google, for the default search engine placement. But with the court finding Google being a Monopoly those payments will probably come to an end.

Apple will be able to tank the loss, sure it will sting, but it’s not like those payments from Google where its main revenue stream.

Firefox/Mozilla on the other hand… It’s one of the reasons they have been other paid for offerings. But once the Google money goes away, who is going to step in to replace it? Bing probably, but without having to compete with Google, you can be sure Bings offer won’t be anywhere near that of Googles.

And that’s even before going into any of the other “happenings” going on.

(I say this as a long term Firefox user, I just fear that its days are numbered at this point, so while I’ll welcome you aboard, and we are not sinking yet, I have worries about that large looking iceberg we seem to be heading for.)

2 comments

I think losing the Google money will be the only thing that could save Firefox... although it'll be a tough year or two while all the execs flee and side projects get axed.
I recently made Safari my default browser for this reason. If Firefox’s days are numbered, I figured I’d get ahead of it than be forced. Ublock origin isn’t available for safari, but I was able to use the same content blocker that I use on iOS and it seems to be doing the job.
Why not just use firefox and ublock origin while it works instead of a sub par experience just because you decided to impose it on yourself?
IMO We have at least a year of runway with FF. The decision from the judge on what Google will have to do is not expected until mid-2025, and surely Google will appeal the judgement. So I don't want to give the impression that FF is right on the brink of death, just that as a user of FF, I am pretty worried about the road ahead for FF/Moz.

Which is why personally I'll probably stick with FF until the bitter end.

I just hope that Moz/FF can pull a rabbit out of the hat, because (imo) atm things ain't looking good for the long term future.

I find I am enjoying the syncing features of Safari (and iOS), and it's much less resource intensive on my 2019 MacBook Pro. Also, Safari seems to be the most fiddly when it comes to websites (either because it's stricter in some cases or has strange bugs in others), so I find I am catching more issues for web dev by using it.
Right on with safari not being used by webdevs. Safari is still my browser of choice when I want to hand someone my laptop for some purpose (like ordering food) and not have them complain about my tree style tabs. Some websites they clearly don’t test at all with safari. Big client websites too like tacobell.com, no safari testing at all. Menu images rendered with extra inch wide margins for some reason along with the usual broken fonts.
Weird, next week will complete 21 years of my exclusively using Safari on the desktop, and I’ve yet to notice anything like this. Admittedly I’m not ordering from Taco Bell, but sites being unusably broken is simply a non-issue for me.