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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.
The entire browser is going to be hidden under one giant hamburger button. No menus, no URL bar, no scroll bars, hell no rendering window. Just one giant hamburger button that crashes the browser when you click it.
You heard it here first, folks.
...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.
why not aim for a secure browser audience...
Ditch SSL Certificate authorities unless users trusted them and verify the DNS responses (DNSsec) present that information to the user
we need to stage a coup against Mozilla
Seems like a lot of effort.
Wouldn't be simpler to make your own browser? You can show everyone how it should be done and, because your browser is so good, you'll quickly gain the majority of browser market share. You'll rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in search engine deals. All other browser makers will fear you. Also, chicks will dig you.
So why not do that?
but when i do, it's to say that articles like this are very right on.. I couldn't imagine using another browser besides firefox these days, and I feel a sense of dread when I have to use chrom(ium/e).. it's disheartening that I'm the weirdo.
US$0.02++
Why are you asking an AC instead of the developer of Google Earth? Are you some kind of Mozilla shill or defender that can't deal with negativity?
It's that simple. The open standards internet has been taken over by shiny services like a commercial Usenet with a web interface that Facebook is.
We need an entirely new set of services and protocols with finished implementations of working and well designed applications that support them. Firefox used to be the best usable browser. Then chrome came along and had a great fast JavaScript engine, a new platform people could build client side logic on. In many ways Chrome is the new Flash, which makes it so attractive.
We just had this issue a few weeks ago. The internet we all use needs a redo. Hard encryption and signing on the lowest app protocol layer and by default with no option out, independant namecoin DNS, asynch and offline capable base protocols and services, an interactive capable web replacement that does away with the HTML 5/CSS bloat of today and a useful optional binary app format including baked font rendering, 3D, audio and some other gadgets people want. All new email/Usenet/IRC would also build on top of said base protocols. Bye bye spam, bye bye NSA, bye bye Farcebook and WhatsCrap.
Maybe Mozilla should put some effort into that. ... Just saying.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Mozilla reminds me of people who profess a desire for world peace, but then get into petty feuds with their neighbors. They can't seem put what they advocate into practice on a small scale, which tends to undermine confidence in their capacity to advocate and execute their larger mission.
Mozilla has one project that really matters, and they employ a lot of people. Why Firefox isn't hands-down the world's best browser is beyond me.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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
... As long as you don't think any incorrect thoughts. Then you can't work there any more.
You can think whatever you want and nobody will ever know. But when you start doing things, people find out about your actions, by which you shall be judged. Not by god, but by anyone with a brain.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I do wonder about this sometimes. Hypothetically, suppose that Google and, say, Facebook make a Devil's Alliance to propose, on an ongoing basis, backward-incompatible de-facto browser extensions and technical requirements for plugins, etc., all in the name of worthwhile causes such as security, an open web, ease of interoperability, streaming, payment, etc., but at such a breakneck pace with convoluted requirements that it's all but impossible for a company without 10,000+ employees to keep up. If the "web at large" (which, make no mistake, mostly goes along with the diktat of major players like Google and Facebook who literally hold the purse strings of advertisers) demands innovation at a pace where the "open alternative" can't keep up, then the open alternative dies from seemingly-natural causes.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Chrome is winning because Google aggressively pushes its use on all its web services and sites. It's also auto-installed as bundleware in tons of downloaded software and utilities. It also benefits from so many people not understanding what a browser is and how it's different from a website, i.e.people install it because they think they need it to use Google.com. It may be a faster browser, but the vast majority of clients I work with do not notice a difference, they just use it because it was offered and they didn't know how to say no or didn't realize they had a choice. Rather like Windows 10, actually...
We just rewrote our extension in Jetpack months ago.
Jetpack 1.0 was released over 6 years ago. I don't have much sympathy for people who only rewrote to Jetpack a few months ago.
If you require us to now rewrite our Jetpack extension in WebExtensions, we quit.
Firefox's move to WebExtensions was announced over two years ago and you could start using WebExtensions over a year ago. The rate of change has hardly been rapid.
I'm probably going to move to Vivaldi or something, I guess.
Sure. That sounds rational.