Mozilla’s privacy-heavy browser is flatlining. What it does next is crucial for the future of the web.

“Chrome has won the desktop browser war,” says one former Firefox staff member, who worked on browser development at Mozilla but does not want to be named, as they still work in the industry. Their hopes for a Firefox revival are not high.

  • zorkmids_for_nothing
    73·
    3 years ago

    Firefox is failing to innovate. All they do is copy Chrome in hopes of becoming successful again. Firefox keeps deprecating settings and they’re getting rid of the extensions, in favor of Chrome’s shitty web extensions. All in the name of safety and usability, but what good is a “safe” or “usable” browser if nobody’s using it? Firefox was once the techie’s browser until it took over the world. Then came Chrome. Now they’ve turned their back on power users, but it was their only userbase still left.

    They also consistently lie about privacy, but are just as bad, if not worse, than Chrome. In the name of “Safe browsing”, Firefox also sends every request you make to Google, just like Chrome. Then there are the various intrusive “experiments” that you get if you don’t opt out.

    I wanna like Mozilla. I wanna like Firefox. They’re just making it way too difficult for me to do so.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
      8·
      3 years ago

      They don’t really need to innovate in my opinion. What I’d like Mozilla to focus on is making a snappy browser that respects your privacy.

      I think the issue with Mozilla is that it’s now driven by a bunch of business people who keep coming up with zany projects like like VPNs and other kinds of gimmicks to try and bring in revenue. The browser doesn’t seem to be a priority anymore.

      The problem is that Firefox is the last alternative engine to Chromium, and if it dies then the web is going to be whatever Chromium does. We’ll be right back into the dark ages like we were in the days when IE was the only game in town. The web is just too important for Google to become the sole gatekeeper that decides who we access it.

      We need a serious non-profit foundation around Firefox that’s not focused on being a business, and that can be sustainable without needing to engage in commercial activity.

    • Azeri
      3·
      3 years ago

      You can always disable the Safe browsing from about:config with just a few clicks. Others experiments like Pocket (I remember this had controversy) are disabled with actually one click.