Firefox was successful when it was the alternative, better, option to the dominant Internet Explorer. Now the dominant browser is Chrom(e|ium). The two scenarios are very different.
Precisely. Firefox is never going to defeat Chrome in the "being Chrome" category. If it wants to exist as more than a tool for Google to avoid antitrust lawsuits, it can't keep playing that game. It has to differentiate. Privacy is not differentiation because it's invisible and HN commentators are 90% of the people who care about it. I want the sense of power back. I want the feeling that Firefox gave me a decade ago that my browser behaved exactly the way I wanted it to and nothing about it ticked me off because if I didn't like it I could just change it.
Nowadays using Firefox feels more like holding a political demonstration in an empty room than using the finely-tuned instrument I once had.
> Nowadays using Firefox feels more like holding a political demonstration in an empty room than using the finely-tuned instrument I once had.
I can't think of better words to describe my feeling as a Firefox holdout. It's still my default browser, and the one I use for 97% of my work. Mozilla is breaking my heart with their floundering. Like a fantasy author who keeps getting mired in side quests and can never get back to the main plot.
Stop with the goofy marketing tie ins, the hostile telemetry choices, the side products like Pocket and VPN, and just make a fucking browser that doesn't attempt to hide complexity from the user. Focus on that, do yearly fundraising like Wikipedia does, and be content.
Indeed.. For me the only reason I still really use it is because the other options are even worse. I definitely won't use Chrome. And Microsoft is pushing edge so hard it annoys me (both at work politically, and by pushing it everywhere in Windows)
Also, Firefox is the only browser I know that has end to end encrypted sync. Google and Microsoft enjoy snooping around in your bookmarks (great to determine marketing interests) too much to ever offer this. You can even self host it.
Also it still has a few power user features left over like container tabs. Though they've relegated it to a plug-in now.
Hah, yeah, I've seen that page before. It's not ideal. I'd still take it over their current funding strategy of "don't piss off Google."
Or maybe I should find a better example. But one thing about Wikipedia is that it appears to be much the same as it was 10 years ago and more. Wikipedia hasn't started introducing Wiki VPN, nor has it partnered with Mr. Robot to temporarily insert marketing stuff into articles.
To the extent that Wikimedia has graft and vanity projects, they're not ruining the core "product".
So... I guess yeah, just like Wikipedia, as in "Look, even with donations you can spend a crapton of money. Maybe not $500mm a year, but still enough to support development of an open source software product."
It can't be worse for growth than their current strategy of burning the house down, which for some reason does not prevent them from justifying millions a year in C-level salaries.
I too want my power back. I want my user agent back. I especially want total inalienable power over the websites I'm browsing. The kind of power I'd have if I were to write a custom client for each website: the power to freely script, copy, save, edit, block and delete, whether the site's owner wants it or not.
> Privacy is not differentiation because it's invisible
Privacy could be a differentiation if Mozilla did not show again and again that they don't actually care about your privacy. It might not be enough, but currently they don't even have that.
