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TechRepublic: Mozilla 'Is Desperately Needed to Save the Web' (techrepublic.com)
"I can't remember the last time I cared about Mozilla," writes Matt Asay at TechRepublic. "I also can't remember a time when we needed it more."
An anonymous reader quotes TechRepublic:
Mozilla's Firefox is almost a rounding error in desktop market share, and nonexistent in mobile browser market share. It offers a few other services, like Pocket, but largely gets ignored... This is a mistake. Our world is increasingly mediated by the internet, and that internet has just a few gatekeepers, collecting tolls as we browse. As Python guru Matt Harrison put it, "Vendors control the default browser which 99.9% of people use." Those vendors are happy to sell us access to information. Nothing about it is free. You are most definitely the product.
On mobile, where the majority of the world's content is now consumed, Google and Facebook own eight of the top 10 apps, with apps devouring 87% of our time spent on smartphones and tablets, according to new comScore data. For that remaining 13% of time spent on the mobile web, Google and Apple offer the two dominant browsers... the majority of our time online is now mediated by just a few megacorporations, and for the most part their top incentive is to borrow our privacy just long enough to target an ad at us. Then there's Mozilla, an organization whose mantra is "Internet for people, not profit." That feels like a necessary voice to add to today's internet oligopoly, but it's not one we're hearing... We clearly need an organization standing up for web freedom, as expecting Google to do that is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Google does many great things, but its clear incentive is to sell ads. We are Google's product, as the saying goes.
The article applauds the Mozilla-sponsored Rust programming language as promising, "but not to save the web from the all-consuming embrace of Facebook and Google, especially as they wall off the experience in apps... "If I sound like I don't know what to propose Mozilla should do, it's because I don't. I simply feel strongly that the role Mozilla played in the early browser wars needs to be resurrected to save the web today."
On mobile, where the majority of the world's content is now consumed, Google and Facebook own eight of the top 10 apps, with apps devouring 87% of our time spent on smartphones and tablets, according to new comScore data. For that remaining 13% of time spent on the mobile web, Google and Apple offer the two dominant browsers... the majority of our time online is now mediated by just a few megacorporations, and for the most part their top incentive is to borrow our privacy just long enough to target an ad at us. Then there's Mozilla, an organization whose mantra is "Internet for people, not profit." That feels like a necessary voice to add to today's internet oligopoly, but it's not one we're hearing... We clearly need an organization standing up for web freedom, as expecting Google to do that is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Google does many great things, but its clear incentive is to sell ads. We are Google's product, as the saying goes.
The article applauds the Mozilla-sponsored Rust programming language as promising, "but not to save the web from the all-consuming embrace of Facebook and Google, especially as they wall off the experience in apps... "If I sound like I don't know what to propose Mozilla should do, it's because I don't. I simply feel strongly that the role Mozilla played in the early browser wars needs to be resurrected to save the web today."
... except Mozilla.
Every release they make the browser worse. Their mantra is "just like Chrome, except slower and with more bugs." No wonder people switch to Chrome.
Firefox is supposed to be the browser that people use because they care - they want to customize, they want features, they want control. But with every release this slips a little farther away. Things constantly stop working, and it gets harder and harder for the extension makers to keep up.
Oddly, Android is the one place where Firefox is still actually better than Chrome - because it's got a real ad blocker. Sure, it's slow and crashes all the time, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
But at least there's Pocket! Oh yay.
Mozilla is too busy trying to be an inferior version of Google as evidenced in their attempts to convert Firefox into an inferior version of Chrome.
Mozilla lost its philosophy and soul during that period when it was subsidized by Google, and that's when everything started turning to shit for the company.
As far as wasting money on diversity programs and social justice instead of improving its products, well the latest financial report that emphasizes ruin talks for itself.
Forget about Mozilla, it's time to give some of the Firefox forks some support and attention. Mozilla has been corrupted by Google and its philosophy.
... As long as you don't think any incorrect thoughts. Then you can't work there any more.
We absolutely need projects like Mozilla's to fight once again against monopolistic powers. But their focus must be on technology and OSS. Not prosecuting unrelated thought crimes.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Firefox at one time had nearly half of all browser usage, but then they dumbed it down and moved things around just to follow fashions and trends, or just for the hell of it. And when users complained, they told them to shove it, more or less, which made their users go to chrome, safari, Opera, and even edge (lol).
Firefox dug their own grave. As noble as their intentions may be to open up the Web, maybe they should first start by respecting their own customers.
...specifically since January 8, 2008, working to be as irrelevant, feckless, and misguided as they are now. The only positive and notable thing they've done for the web in that time is Let's Encrypt.
Two versions of Firefox from now, they will jettison what made their browser great: the extensions. Mozilla needs a radical change in direction to save itself.
Microsoft was punished because of the way it abused it's position and power in the market place. Linux is *chosen* by companies because of it's qualities (technical and otherwise), Linus doesn't go around twisting companies' arms.
I really don't see who you would punish and how.
Mozilla's Code of Conduct is driving contributors away.
They should cherish their contributors who are voluntary spending their time trying to help.
Instead when you use a word like "guys", you get blocked. I'm just stupified by the bullying behavior of Mozilla's employees: https://mzl.la/2gu5521