[aquova]

I see this sentiment a lot, but I never agree with it. Sure, some of their projects seem very odd for them to lead, but given that they are completely reliant on their competitor for cash -- a revenue source that has been threatened several times by anti-trust cases against Google -- they should be looking to branch out. Firefox alone won't pay the bills, so they need to try and find some other revenue source. Plus, Chrome has essentially won. Not necessarily for any engineering reason, at least not these days, but from continued momentum of being the market leader. Sitting around quietly isn't going to get people to switch, they do need to find some way to distinguish themselves apart from Chrome, which again leads to these misc features being thrown out there.

The AI inclusion seems like the same reason everyone else is adding AI, they don't want to be left behind if or when it's viewed as an essential feature.

[probably_wrong]

> Chrome has essentially won. Not necessarily for any engineering reason, at least not these days, but from continued momentum of being the market leader.

Ah, how the young forget... Mozilla became popular precisely due to their willingness to challenge the market leader at the time [1], namely, Internet Explorer. Going against the market leader should be in their DNA. The fight is not lost just because there's a market leader. If anything, Mozilla is currently losing the battle because the leadership doesn't believe they can do it again.

I'm fine with Mozilla diversifying their income, but I'm not fine with Mozilla sacrificing their browser (the part we desperately need the most) in the name of a "Digital Rights Foundation" that, at this rate, will lose their seat at the negotiating table.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...

[tempest_]

They were losing because MS bundled IE with every device. Eventually they MS lost an anti trust case against it and it opened up the market, which is before that graph begins.

Well 30 years later we are back where we started.

Chrome is where it is because it is preloaded on most phones on the planet (the other ecosystem has a different preloaded browser). The other thing is that it was advertised on the most visited page on the internet for 20 years.

Most internet users don't even use desktop/laptops, they use mobile devices and likely have no idea there is any other option than chrome.

[glenstein]

Exactly, this is just about the most lucid explanation of the market share graph I've seen on HN. It's baffling to me that the rise of Chrome, distributed via Google, on phones and on Chromebooks, somehow doesn't enter people's explanations of market share change when talking about Mozilla. It probably the biggest single driver of market share change by an order of magnitude.

[pessimizer]

> They were losing because MS bundled IE with every device.

They weren't losing, they had 10x the market share they have now. MS lost an antitrust case, they weren't forced to do anything even after they lost, and big tech learned (correctly) that there was not ever going to be any serious antitrust enforcement on platforms.

Chrome came out with a heavily marketed browser that some people liked (but was far more marketed than loved.) Firefox then intentionally destroyed its own browser to make it a wonky clone of Chrome, even down to trivial cosmetic features and version numbering. Firefox's strength was its extensions ecosystem, so it took special relish in destroying that, and joy in painting the users that were bothered by this as stochastic terrorists. They claimed that the perpetual complainers just didn't understand the "normal users" of the market while Firefox shrunk from 30% of it to 2.5% of it. Meanwhile, they took to forcing bizarre, unhideable features that should have been extensions, and doing bizarre marketing experiments.

> Most internet users don't even use desktop/laptops, they use mobile devices and likely have no idea there is any other option than chrome.

Firefox gets all of its margin from Google, and is 2.5% of the market. There isn't really another option, no matter what Mehta says. Firefox gets more than all of its margin from Google - Google cash allows it to blow money on goofy money-losing projects that look good on resumes. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has 100x what it needs to run in the bank, entirely from donations, still keeps dishonestly begging, and still keeps collecting.

But Firefox claims that's impossible. It has to be fully dependent on Google because reasons, and those reasons are that it chooses its direction based on Google's desires.

edit: the craziest part of this common argument about Google bundling is that Google doesn't have anything like the monopoly that Microsoft had, Microsoft bound its browser to everything it could figure out how to, and Microsoft was still losing a huge section of the market to Firefox. The idea that Google is some special impossible challenge when Microsoft owned every computer is insane. It's impossible to beat Google when they pay your salary.

[hbn]

It's worth noting that Chrome was just legitimately a good product in a space where the competition wasn't blowing any minds. The people that switched over saw how much better a browser can be and spread the word.

[torben-friis]

Allowing the user to pull tabs into its own windows and merge them back was magic back then, as was including search and url in a minimalistic bar, when other browsers had 3-row bars at times. Such a simple and elegant product.

How the mighty have fallen.

[tempest_]

For sure.

For a couple years Chrome was noticeably faster than IE/FF which is what caused tech oriented people to switch.

FF and even IE closed the gap for a little bit but once Chromes dominance took old I imagine the fact that no one tests things on FF any more has probably caused it to slip performance wise.

[renewiltord]

It wasn’t challenging the market leader that made them successful. It’s because Firefox was precisely a better browser at the time, and their marketing/activism around open web standards was great. There were lots of “challenging” going back then.

But simply challenging isn’t enough. People like to tell this tale where just being an underdog gets you some benefit. But it doesn’t. Firefox was way leaner, opened faster, had extensions, so on.

[rollcat]

> Mozilla is currently losing the battle because the leadership doesn't believe they can do it again.

I do not believe that this is the case. Their #1 revenue source is Google. The moment they start regaining any foothold?

Imagine just collecting that amount from Google as tax, and funding Mozilla publicly.

[abdullahkhalids]

There is no possible way to compete against a competent trillion dollar organization that knows how to build a good browser, and exploits its global monopoly position in search to advertise their browser.

It doesn't matter if Firefox became better. There is simply not enough differentiation potential in the core browser product to win by being better. Its all marketing.

I just wish Mozilla sold some stickers/themes as proxy donations and became largely independent.

[gr4vityWall]

> they should be looking to branch out. Firefox alone won't pay the bills, so they need to try and find some other revenue source

They probably would've achieved enough to sustain Firefox development in perpetuity if they invested most of Google's money in a fund.

[glenstein]

They do exactly that! Their endowment is now $1.2 billion and its year to year growth is one of their strongest non-Google revenue streams.

[pfortuny]

> Plus, Chrome has essentially won. Not necessarily for any engineering reason, at least not these days, but from continued momentum of being the market leader.

s/Chrome/Internet Explorer/g

Nobody has won until the match is over, and history has a very long tail.

[Seattle3503]

> Chrome has essentially won. ... Sitting around quietly isn't going to get people to switch

You hit the nail on the head with this one

[CamouflagedKiwi]

I see the point, but them following the leader on this does not seem like a recipe for success. They aren't going to be as good at AI as OpenAI's browser, and their users are going to be less bought into it. I would have hoped they'd have learned their lesson from things like FirefoxOS but I guess not...

[BearOso]

The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program.

People in the organization are trying to use what's left of the name recognition and all that money to benefit their own initiatives.

[pseudalopex]

> The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program.

You under estimated the work to develop a web browser. Vivaldi are 60 people.[1] They produce an unstable Chromium fork and email program. They couldn't commit to keep uBlock Origin working.

[1] https://vivaldi.com/team/

[BearOso]

That's a good example. I'm probably significantly underestimating the amount of people needed. $500M can hire a lot of $250k salaried engineers, though.

[pseudalopex]

> $500M can hire a lot of $250k salaried engineers, though.

$250,000 is conservative for the total cost to employ a software engineer in the US. And their expenses are not limited to software engineer salaries of course.

A fair question would be what Google or Apple spend to produce their web browsers. The answers are secrets. $1 billion is a common Chrome development cost estimate in my experience.

[glenstein]

What would you say is the most costly initiative that's siphoning money away from core browser development right now?

[BearOso]

Good question. Looking at their expenses, though, it seems to be just a plethora of piddly donations. $1M here and there, and it adds up. That does fit with the lack of focus narrative.