Pretty interesting analysis from TechAltar about Mozilla usage and revenue trends, which aren’t as dire as they’re often made out to be, but how the search placement deal with Google is indeed endangered, which may be pushing them to their recent embrace of adtech as a new revenue source
… or, hear me out, that one is crazy … or … they could focus on the browser alone and make a good product, instead of running a giant for-profit corporation sinking money into AI bullshit and other non-browser crap projects no-one really wants or needs.
- ???
- Profit, somehow?
That’s why Firefox should be relinquished to a non-profit which is not associated with a for-profit company in any way.
Think about it logically. A non-trivial proportion of Firefox users are power users. We’re talking about millions of well paid IT professionals, programmers, academics, etc who trend older and wealthier. I don’t know about you, but if Firefox was truly non-profit and focused development on user-voted features, instead of for-profit SaaS services, I’d be willing to donate $100+ a year for the rest of my life out of principle. We’re not talking about some hidden open source library here. We’re talking about the only viable browser alternative to big tech. We’re talking about a product equivalent to Wikipedia or the internet archive in importance (both of which I donate to annually, and will likely continue to forever).
I do not donate to Firefox because of the Mozilla corporation and their for-profit influence over Firefox, and I never will as long as they are involved.
What incentives does the for-profit (that’s owned by the non-profit) have that a non-profit without a for-profit subsidiary wouldn’t have? Both aren’t able to maximise revenue for shareholders, and both will always have the option to pay their leaders extravagantly.
And as a well-paid programmer, I haven’t been known to donate $100 a year to software projects. As a conservative estimate, let’s say Mozilla could run Firefox at one-fifth the current budget, that would still mean we’d need a million people like you that would continue to do so even if, say, the most-often-voted-for feature request is misinterpreted, or changing a “view all tabs” icon suddenly pisses off a significant portion of them enough to stop their donations.
And even if that happened, it’s not clear that that would necessarily lead to gaining market share on default browsers or ones that get heavily promoted through search engine homepages or shadily bundled with installers. Which would still mean more and more websites would start to ignore it, which would mean web compatibility would continue to get worse and worse.
Just make a self-sustaining good product.
Ah, that’s the secret? Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?! All this slaving away at my day job, when I could just have built a self-sustaining good product - it’s that easy!
You’re not getting it, but that’s okay.
I think I’m getting it, I’m just trying to say that I think you’re underestimating how hard it is to fund web browser development.
Mozilla lost the Internet because mobile became the most common way to go online, and Mozilla (at least on Android) had been an absolute dumpster fire for years. I tried it a few times, but it would just randomly freeze for a few seconds for no reason. But I could switch to another browser and keep going at the same moment when Firefox froze so it wasn’t a phone issue.
This is weird to hear… I’ve never had these issues on my android phones.
Huh, I’ve not noticed this and love Firefox on mobile.
Firefox for Android has always worked great for me. I prefer it because I can install the same privacy plugins as for desktop. And they also have Firefox Focus is also great.
Yeah and the UI is pretty bad and lacks some features. There is not even a tablet layout yet (in the works)
Tablet UI is available in Nightly. It’s actually pretty good!
I know but it took them way too long
Yes, it’s indefensible and bizarre. I was the one who first put forward the idea on their Connect forum. I don’t understand their thinking on a lot of development priorities, and they don’t seem to care too much about helping us understand.
One of the few supporrting extensions on mobile and also you can move the toolbar to bottom to reach it with your thumb like a normal human and do not have to lift your hand to reach it like in Chrome mobile?
Are you on a lower specced device? I notice it can have high resource usage at times
I’ve had this issue on several Pixel devices - I most recently had this exact issue on my Pixel 6 Pro, but I think recent-ish Firefox updates resolved some of the issues.
In my case, Firefox would lockup, but I could easily switch to another app without an issue. I would have to kill the Firefox app to get it responsive again.
Been a few years since I bothered. But, no never was. It was used on a Nexus S, Nexus 5, Nexus 10, and a Samsung Tab S3. All when they were new devices.
The Tab S3 was the last attempt years ago, but after so many attempts and fails, I just moved on.
And if it had been a low spec device issue, the system would freeze, not the app only.
Firefox-based browsers on Android lack Site Isolation. Who protects you against a malicious site performing a Spectre-like attack to gain access to the memory of another website you have open. That’s the biggest reason I don’t use Firefox mobile.
As someone who is severely allergic to ads, I really don’t like this transition, but I understand why they’re doing it.
Mozilla seems to be facing a tough problem. How do you make money when your core audience isn’t enough to support the company, but you can’t realistically pivot to a new audience without kicking out all of the old users. Would it be better if Mozilla just faded into irrelevancy and focussed on developing Thunderbird instead? The FOSS community would have to continue to support Firefox, which would slow down development to such an extent that it probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest of the web.
I found it very odd how little they emphasize donations. Wikipedia, for example, has been quite successful with their pledge drive model, and like Wikipedia, Firefox has a natural platform to ask people to donate. I guess they are afraid of people switching to a browser that doesn’t ask them to donate, where with Wikipedia, there is no real alternative
Oh, that’s a very good point. Makes me wonder why Mozilla doesn’t talk about donations very much. Must be a strategic decision or something.
I think it would be best for Firefox to be given greater autonomy, like Thunderbird has been. Thunderbird asks for donations and I’m happy to provide! I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Thunderbird started to thrive after being greater independence. Major new initiatives in user interface, mobile client after years of stagnation. Something at Mozilla central is deeply rotten.
This is very well-informed, nice job on the research.
