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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Got to buy material for house renovation, several hundreds € of saving if I bought on one website that didn’t work with Firefox. Guess what I did.
Almost everyone choose money and commodity over everything else. Firefox is doomed to fail, and I say that as Firefox user.
You could have said the same for Internet Explorer some years ago, and they got their lunch eaten despite being free AND the default owned by a monopoly
The difference is that Google had the capital and a monopoly itself. Mozilla doesn't have shit.
Except and arguably better product in the browser space?
Both Mozilla and Opera had better browsers.
Mozilla has a regular income from Google.
Yeah, they're pretty much owned by Google, thus not a competitor.
Google paying Firefox explicitly to make Google the default search engine. That doesn’t mean they own Firefox in any way shape or form. Firefox routinely makes anti Google decisions, and acts against googles interest. It’s pretty clear they aren’t googles bitch.
Most of the revenue of Mozilla Corporation comes from Google (81% in 2022). They have influence.
The excuse of search engine funding is a fig leaf for the US and monopoly laws.
Google pays every browser they can to make Google the default search engine. Including direct competitors, and companies that have a direct interest in going against Google. Companies like Apple, who butt heads with Google regularly.
That doesn’t mean they have influence.
Agreed. Those other companies don't rely on Google for 80% of their income. That's where the influence occurs.
Can you point to an example of Mozilla bending the knee, in the slightest, on a subject Google would want them to have a different opinion than normal on?
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/a-dangerous-conflict-of-interest-between-firefox-and-google/
The first explicitly states its conjecture. In reality, it’s much more likely in my mind that Mozilla is not well suited to fast paced changes like the recent YouTube cat and mouse Adblock saga. Imagine if you were waiting not for an extension update, but a browser update.
The second isn’t even about Mozilla. They rely on Google for the anti phishing list. Is there a free and open alternative? I legitimately can’t find one. I can find paid alternatives, but I doubt users would be willing to pay.
I believe these are reasonable examples of slightly bending of Mozillas knee to Google, as requested.
The second one isn’t even Mozilla…
Mozilla chooses to implement Google's phishing list.
The alternative being?
A non Google supplier
Such as?
Like, you’re pretty clear about not using Google. The question is, what service exists that is within their ability to pay (free)?
“They shouldn’t use google” is a fine argument, assuming it’s possible to stop using google without incurring huge fees and/or removing the functionality completely.
Why assume they won't pay?
Even for free they could support something like openphish.com and help it grow and maybe outclass Google.
The point is that we don't know the details of their agreement, nor the unwritten rules to guarantee continued support.
openphish.com would very likely buckle under the load. They’ve had ~2 million urls per day in the past seven days. There are 181 times that many users of Firefox.
Again, I get where you’re coming from. There’s just literally no viable alternative.
Maybe there's no viable alternative because Firefox users are not supplying the demand.
However, rather have the current arrangement than no Firefox. But I suspect that Mozilla are not as free from Google as they would like to be.
However, if Google decided one day to yank 80% of Mozilla's income...
Yeah that would be problematic to an extent. But I doubt that’ll happen, and if it did I’m sure it would continue just in a slower/reduced capacity.
Yes but Internet Explorer had massive issue, nowadays it’s Firefox that has compatibility issue, doesn’t have a platform where its default (Microsoft has windows/edge, android/chrome, iPhone/safari) and no meaningfull advantage on the other.
The cards are stacked against it, if only they could use Google money to get some advantage, like a better design. Right now if I open Firefox there is 3 row of sponsored clickbait articles. The reason I paid money for Mac is because I was fed up of the very same bullshit on windows, make something lean, sleek that works well and people might use it but here it’s a kind of dinosaur software that is even filled with sponsored articles.
But you're forgetting something important: Firefox is open-source, meaning that it is literally impossible for it to fail. Even if the Mozilla org goes down in flames tomorrow.
If Mozilla dies, someone else will become a maintainer for the Firefox open-source project. If they are compromised or bought out, someone will fork the project (again). If 100% of websites make some code change that forces them to only work on a Chromium rendering engine, the developers of one of the Firefox forks (or, more likely, all of them) will implement a fix within days that spoofs whatever signal the lock-in code requires. If some form of online DRM is implemented, it will be cracked and the solution will be made available online. Or the relevant chunk of Chromium will be copied and modified to generate that verification key on Firefox without telemetry.
The browser may never achieve market dominance, but it doesn't have to. It's on the Internet, and on the Internet nothing ever truly goes away.
Sure nothing goes away on the internet but things get deprecated. Keeping up with a browser development must require highly technical engineer, who often don’t work for free. If Mozilla were to disappear or get 80% of its budget removed (Google) one can doubt they would be able to keep up with the evolution of internet.
I mean just look at Linux desktop, people working on it for free is great but it’s slow, innefective and it goes to all direction at the same time. Without million of $ behind it, Firefox would be gone in a year or two whatever the amount of fork happening.
That's just...not true on any level at all. Of course things get deprecated, but engineers work for free on open source projects all the time.
And you understand nothing about Linux development if you think its development is slow; the kernel already has stable support for Intel's Meteor Lake graphics, which were released only 43 days ago at the time of this comment.
The idea that Firefox would be "gone in a year or two" without Google's money ignores the reality that there are thousands of large, successful open-source projects without massive financial endowments, projects that are still continuously updated over years and even decades for no other reason than that the maintainers want to use them.
Misunderstanding, I was speaking of Linux desktop environment. You think I speak of Linux. Linux is backed by dozen of companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta. It sure doesn’t lack any fund. Now compare it to the Linux desktop environment where this is mostly people working for free, shit doesn’t get done in 43 days. For instance, Wayland has been out for several years and many environment still doesn’t work with it or have not even started working on it.
The closest open source project I can think of is libreoffice. Just check it, it lacks tons of functions compared to ms but most important is that it barely improved at all in years. Now doc document aren’t going to change drastically , file from the 90’s are still compatible but the web foundation it improves very fast. When I say 2 years I’m generous, its already half dead (3.14% user !), breaking compatibility would be the nail in the coffin.
Actually, LibreOffice is the perfect example, thank you. After OOo development went in a direction the community didn't agree with, the Document Foundation was formed and the project was immediately forked. 13½ years later, the project is still updated every six months. It has every necessary feature and supports all formats. A browser would be similar; web standards don't change that much. Wayland, by comparison, is currently a niche product for a niche product; it doesn't need the same support, and so it doesn't get it.
Well I admire your optimism, personally I don’t have much faith into open source project because their is often very little or no money for the developer.
The last forty years of FOSS software would beg to differ.