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So... Here's an idea: stop wasting time and money on things like that, listen to the community, hire engineers, and make a browser that can be at the same level

So... Here's an idea: stop wasting time and money on things like that, listen to the community, hire engineers, and make a browser that can be at the same level as Chrome. We already told you what we want and need, no need to keep asking. Mozilla and the story on "How to waste money and resources" is getting tiresome at this point.

const_cast 1y ago
Mozilla develops a better browser than Chrome in a lot of ways, and they do it with a tiny fraction of their budget. I would not describe that as "money wasting".
- uncircle 1y ago
  To be fair, most of Chrome’s budget is spent on developing ever more complex web standards to stay ahead of the competition, and to make sure no one will ever catch up to them.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    And advertising, if I had to guess. The Chrome ads were very pervasive for a few years there.
- NackerHughes 1y ago
  So just think how much greater the browser could be if Mozilla put more of the money they get into improving Firefox instead of into pointless UI redesigns that only slow things down, or breaking existing functionality - not to mention all the other frivolous nonsense they seem preoccupied with instead of being a credible competitor to Google. With how they've been in recent years it's almost as if they're trying to be inept competition, as if they're being paid by Google to suck - in fact, that is all but established by now.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    One man's "useless UI redesigns" is another man's feature. Every person I talk to has a completely different idea of what Mozilla should be doing. Keep pocket, or pocket is stupid, or pocket is the second coming of Christ, or the VPN is stupid, or the VPN is a revenue stream not dependent on Google, or whatever fucking bullshit. Firefox does not "suck" - this is a legitimate psyop. It has all the features of Chrome minus the horrendous privacy violations. It has all the performance of Chrome, too. I mean, what are we missing? Web USB? Give me a fucking break. If you really, really need Web USB then fine - use Google Chrome. You win. 99.99% of people I've ever talked to don't even know what Web USB is, let alone do they rely on it.
- idoubtit 1y ago
  Just two personal experiences of why the quality of Firefox is far from Chromium's: downloads, and creating an extension. A few years ago, they changed their interface for downloading. This introduced more than a dozen of bugs. Some were cosmetic, e.g. hover was the same color as foreground. Some were rare but caused a file loss. Some were performance related, e.g. deleting the history of downloads could take a minute with no visible change until the end. Most of these regressions are now fixed, but that made me lose confidence in the quality of Firefox. This year, I had to develop a cross-platform extension for Chrome and Firefox. I started using Mozilla Documentation Network, but many pages seemed unmaintained. The relationship with extensionworkshop.com is unclear. The status of manifest v3 is poorly documented (most pages are for v2 only). The page about the compatibility with Chrome is incomplete. After a few struggles, I switched to Google's documentation. Then I lost time and energy on a severe bug with the Firefox tool that publishes web-extensions: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/webexterror-unsupported-filetype-when-trying-to-sign-a-locally-built-extension/143055 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/webexterror-unsupported-file...
- captainepoch 1y ago
  The only thing Mozilla has right now better than Chrome is that the APIs needed for uBlock Origin to work as intented exist.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    chrome doesn't have container and having to manage tens or hundreds of profiles would be impossible.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    .. and about a thousand less privacy violations. Plus significantly less ties to Google. Even chromium-based web browsers are tightly coupled to Google. They rely on them for 99.99% of their source code. Mozilla just uses Google as the default search engine. If I had to estimate, the developer time required for Mozilla to change the default search engine is ~.5 hours. In order for, say, Brave to not be dependent on Google, they'd have to spend ~100,000 dev hours. Because, you know, they'd have to completely develop a new web browser.
lblume 1y ago
> stop wasting time and money on things like that What do you mean? The AMA? > listen to the community Huh? Isn't that exactly what they are doing with this?
- skywal_l 1y ago
  I think your parent poster has a point. What is needed from firefox is fairly clear to any person of good faith: Better web compatibility and speed, be more lean (higher dev to admin ratio) and no more shenanigans / distractions. To keep asking the question when you know the answer is at best incompetence according to Hanlon.
- Lio 1y ago
  > > stop wasting time and money on things like that > What do you mean? The AMA? I’m not the parent but it’s not the AMA, it’s paying multi-million dollar salaries to CEOs that layoff engineers and divert money to political campaigning. We could have had a Servo based Firefox by now if the team hadn't been canned in 2020 instead of Mitchell Baker giving herself a $3 million pay increase every year. It's shameful to then come cap in hand for donations after that. I had an email from Mozilla last week on how to prepare my phone for participation in violent political demonstrations. I have to ask myself, what does this have to do with web browsers?
- captainepoch 1y ago
  Read the comments from Lio and skywal_l, both replies to your comment <- that's what I mean.
- thesuitonym 1y ago
  Asking the same questions, and getting the same answers over and over again doesn't really seem like listening to me.
KurSix 1y ago
It's wild how often Mozilla asks for feedback, gets clear answers (less bloat, better performance, fix regressions), and then drops something like another random experiment no one asked for
- novaRom 1y ago
  Maybe because as from another comment: "Firefox is an antitrust litigation sponge". They also absorb some useful users feedback. But do they have a real intention to increase market share (which could be done easily)? They are well paid - see in other comments how much its CEO is earning. So, "antitrust litigation sponge" sounds plausible?
- supertrope 1y ago
  The market often rewards bloat (more features) not technical excellence. I think a big marketing push or pre-install partnership would help them a lot. Their marketshare is now so low that web developers unironically state “Best viewed in Google Chrome” like it’s 2003 when IE6 had 95% marketshare.
  - account42 1y ago
    The "market" doesn't care about Firefox at all. It has already chosen Chrome and making a second Chrome won't change that.
    - sabjut 1y ago
      "The market has already chosen Internet Explorer and making a second Internet Explorer won't change that." - This was probably said by someone in a meeting at Google in 2006
      - thesuitonym 1y ago
        Sure, but Google didn't make a second Internet Explorer, they made a new thing.
      - 1y ago

const_cast 1y ago

Mozilla develops a better browser than Chrome in a lot of ways, and they do it with a tiny fraction of their budget. I would not describe that as "money wasting".

uncircle 1y ago
To be fair, most of Chrome’s budget is spent on developing ever more complex web standards to stay ahead of the competition, and to make sure no one will ever catch up to them.
- const_cast 1y ago
  And advertising, if I had to guess. The Chrome ads were very pervasive for a few years there.
NackerHughes 1y ago
So just think how much greater the browser could be if Mozilla put more of the money they get into improving Firefox instead of into pointless UI redesigns that only slow things down, or breaking existing functionality - not to mention all the other frivolous nonsense they seem preoccupied with instead of being a credible competitor to Google. With how they've been in recent years it's almost as if they're trying to be inept competition, as if they're being paid by Google to suck - in fact, that is all but established by now.
- const_cast 1y ago
  One man's "useless UI redesigns" is another man's feature. Every person I talk to has a completely different idea of what Mozilla should be doing. Keep pocket, or pocket is stupid, or pocket is the second coming of Christ, or the VPN is stupid, or the VPN is a revenue stream not dependent on Google, or whatever fucking bullshit. Firefox does not "suck" - this is a legitimate psyop. It has all the features of Chrome minus the horrendous privacy violations. It has all the performance of Chrome, too. I mean, what are we missing? Web USB? Give me a fucking break. If you really, really need Web USB then fine - use Google Chrome. You win. 99.99% of people I've ever talked to don't even know what Web USB is, let alone do they rely on it.
idoubtit 1y ago
Just two personal experiences of why the quality of Firefox is far from Chromium's: downloads, and creating an extension. A few years ago, they changed their interface for downloading. This introduced more than a dozen of bugs. Some were cosmetic, e.g. hover was the same color as foreground. Some were rare but caused a file loss. Some were performance related, e.g. deleting the history of downloads could take a minute with no visible change until the end. Most of these regressions are now fixed, but that made me lose confidence in the quality of Firefox. This year, I had to develop a cross-platform extension for Chrome and Firefox. I started using Mozilla Documentation Network, but many pages seemed unmaintained. The relationship with extensionworkshop.com is unclear. The status of manifest v3 is poorly documented (most pages are for v2 only). The page about the compatibility with Chrome is incomplete. After a few struggles, I switched to Google's documentation. Then I lost time and energy on a severe bug with the Firefox tool that publishes web-extensions: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/webexterror-unsupported-filetype-when-trying-to-sign-a-locally-built-extension/143055 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/webexterror-unsupported-file...
captainepoch 1y ago
The only thing Mozilla has right now better than Chrome is that the APIs needed for uBlock Origin to work as intented exist.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- prmoustache 1y ago
  chrome doesn't have container and having to manage tens or hundreds of profiles would be impossible.
- const_cast 1y ago
  .. and about a thousand less privacy violations. Plus significantly less ties to Google. Even chromium-based web browsers are tightly coupled to Google. They rely on them for 99.99% of their source code. Mozilla just uses Google as the default search engine. If I had to estimate, the developer time required for Mozilla to change the default search engine is ~.5 hours. In order for, say, Brave to not be dependent on Google, they'd have to spend ~100,000 dev hours. Because, you know, they'd have to completely develop a new web browser.

lblume 1y ago

> stop wasting time and money on things like that What do you mean? The AMA? > listen to the community Huh? Isn't that exactly what they are doing with this?

skywal_l 1y ago
I think your parent poster has a point. What is needed from firefox is fairly clear to any person of good faith: Better web compatibility and speed, be more lean (higher dev to admin ratio) and no more shenanigans / distractions. To keep asking the question when you know the answer is at best incompetence according to Hanlon.
Lio 1y ago
> > stop wasting time and money on things like that > What do you mean? The AMA? I’m not the parent but it’s not the AMA, it’s paying multi-million dollar salaries to CEOs that layoff engineers and divert money to political campaigning. We could have had a Servo based Firefox by now if the team hadn't been canned in 2020 instead of Mitchell Baker giving herself a $3 million pay increase every year. It's shameful to then come cap in hand for donations after that. I had an email from Mozilla last week on how to prepare my phone for participation in violent political demonstrations. I have to ask myself, what does this have to do with web browsers?
captainepoch 1y ago
Read the comments from Lio and skywal_l, both replies to your comment <- that's what I mean.
thesuitonym 1y ago
Asking the same questions, and getting the same answers over and over again doesn't really seem like listening to me.

KurSix 1y ago

It's wild how often Mozilla asks for feedback, gets clear answers (less bloat, better performance, fix regressions), and then drops something like another random experiment no one asked for

novaRom 1y ago
Maybe because as from another comment: "Firefox is an antitrust litigation sponge". They also absorb some useful users feedback. But do they have a real intention to increase market share (which could be done easily)? They are well paid - see in other comments how much its CEO is earning. So, "antitrust litigation sponge" sounds plausible?
supertrope 1y ago
The market often rewards bloat (more features) not technical excellence. I think a big marketing push or pre-install partnership would help them a lot. Their marketshare is now so low that web developers unironically state “Best viewed in Google Chrome” like it’s 2003 when IE6 had 95% marketshare.
- account42 1y ago
  The "market" doesn't care about Firefox at all. It has already chosen Chrome and making a second Chrome won't change that.
  - sabjut 1y ago
    "The market has already chosen Internet Explorer and making a second Internet Explorer won't change that." - This was probably said by someone in a meeting at Google in 2006
    - thesuitonym 1y ago
      Sure, but Google didn't make a second Internet Explorer, they made a new thing.
    - 1y ago