I just saw a post complaining about the Mozilla layoffs.

I wanted to point out that the vast majority of their income (over 85% in 2022) is from having Google as the default search engine - Ironically, the anti monopoly lawsuit against Google will end this.

Expect things to get worse.

Please don’t assume it was just a cruel choice.

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  • filister@lemmy.world
    323·
    9 hours ago

    You are really underestimating the complexity of the task of building a web engine.

    Another problem is that Chrome is already ubiquitous and most of the web sites are simply ignoring the Gecko and only optimise against Chromium.

    Don’t get me wrong, I truly wish we had more completion and I hope those projects take off and with time become a viable alternative of Chromium but I am somehow doubtful.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
      1·
      57 minutes ago

      Honestly I’ve been saying for some time that Mozilla’s resources would be much better spent making Firefox a soft fork of Chromium. Primarily: use the Blink browser engine and V8 JS engine, with only the changes to those that they deem absolutely necessary, and maintain a privacy-forward Chromium-based browser. Maybe try and enlist the help of Brave, Vivaldi, and other browsers that are currently Chromium but which prefer more privacy than Google offers.

      It’s not zero effort, and especially as Google continues to develop Chromium with assumptions like the removal of Manifest V2 it might take some effort to maintain, but it cannot possibly be as much effort as maintaining an entire browser.

    • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
      11·
      8 hours ago

      You’re right about the fact that building an engine is hard, but Socraticly speaking, then why are there so many blink-based browsers and so few gecko-based ones? The answer is because blink is easy to embed in a new project and gecko isn’t.

      If Mozilla really wants to take back the web (and I honestly don’t think they actually do), then what they should really be doing is making gecko as easy to embed in a new browser as blink is. They don’t do this, and I suspect that they have ulterior motives for doing so, but if they did, I think we would be much closer to breaking chrome’s grasp on the web.

      Because let’s face it: Mozilla makes a pretty damn good browser engine. But they don’t really make a compelling browser based off it. Ever noticed how Mozilla has been declining ever since they deprecated XPCOM extensions? It’s because when they provided XPCOM, it enabled users to actually build cool and interesting new features. And now that they’ve taken it away, all innovation in browser development has stagnated (save for the madlads making Vivaldi).

      They need to empower others to build the browser that they can’t. That’s what would really resurrect the glory days of Firefox in my opinion.

      • aktenkundig@discuss.tchncs.de
        7·
        4 hours ago

        Building a free (as in beer) engine for others to build great browsers on, is a pretty thankless task. Individuals may take pride in such a task, but for a company that needs to pay their staff, it’s a fruitless endeavor. I assume it’s much harder to earn money, if people are not using your software itself, but the forks that add all the cool stuff.