Mozilla/FireFox end of Road?

Thought some might be interested in the report:
Firefox

I don’t know, this article seems stupid to me. Firefox is still the second most popular web browser in the entire world. (No, I don’t count in Internet Explorer, which cheated its way up in the statistics.)

I use Firefox since pretty much forever. Couldn’t think of switching to Chrome, entirely. Firefox is THE web browser. And I couldn’t care less which browser idiots on the internet in America use to access US government website. I never visit government websites. So I’m not even in those statistics.

This is pretty much the worst article I have ever seen being published on zdnet.

P.S.:

Quote from the article:

virtual meeting rooms (Zoom, Slack, and Teams)

These are proprietary unsafe shit online meetup software. How does the writer even think it is comparable?

This article is garbage!

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Thanks for that.
That dude constantly saying “Open Source” triggers the hell out of me…
Shitty article with doubtable sources…

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I would not normally disagree with your assessment of the Article. Except Steven is a well respected commentator and follower of open source projects and has many years of experience. I would weight what he has to say with concern not condemnation. But to each his own. Just thought his article might be of help for people who use FF and may in the near future need to look for alternative browsers.
One thing that was brought out by a commentator on another forum, " there are only two really secure browsers at present." FireFox is one of them, if and I’ll admit it’s a big if it goes under that will leave only one real choice. And that is not good.
So my advise is to keep a close eye on the situation. Steven’s comments about zoom and others of that type was not to recommend them he was just saying that FF/Mozilla has a track record of getting distracted from their main effort by trying to
compete with already established technology and wasting Dev. time and money doing so. All food for thought. Like all predictions it subject to change and may not in fact come true?

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It is my default browser and I will stick with it as long as it is around.

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Yes a little look at his work history confirms your comments…

https://practical-tech.com/about/

… yet I can relate to @Akito and @Fast.Edi in that I too think it is a bit of a flaky article - perhaps to influence people to less secure browsers as noted above to please his (ex) employers - NSA and Defense? No mention of TOR and many other secure browsers that are based on FFox Open Source code is a major omission - even my little known Abrowser packaged with Trisquel has the same base.
Suggest to ignore his article for being of no consequence :zzz: at this point in time and continue to use FFox and it’s variants set to your preferences and add-ons.
ps. - the huge amounts of money going to Moz from goolag does raise concern :thinking:

Totally forgot about that one. TOR Browser is entirely based on Firefox. Where is the mention of that in the article? There are tens of thousands of people on earth who rely on the TOR Browser and therefore on Firefox. Saying that Firefox has some sort of “decline” is ignorant at best. Sure, maybe the company has trouble and lays off some employees. That doesn’t mean that Firefox is “bad”. Mozilla does a lot of other stuff, besides Firefox. So you can’t say Firefox is “bad” because Mozilla doesn’t do too well.

That said, as we have seen with companies like Blizzard and Activision, employees may be fired after a successful and very profitable year.

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Another article about mozilla.
Mozilla

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Thanks @kc1di - an interesting read and historical perspective. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
It also confirms my concerns…

“More than 90% of Mozilla’s funds come from a deal with Google” :nauseated_face: “Mozilla earns a yearly payout that exceeds $400 million”
He who pays the piper calls the tune :supervillain:

I also have my concerns with the future of Firefox, and the deal made with Google. I always run two browsers and lately it has been Firefox and Brave. Have three browsers running on W10 and Brave is set as the default, do not really care for the new Edge or IE any longer.

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Well, for someone “living” on Open Source with his comments he should be more respectful. And not only him, but everyone who, like vultures, are making circles around Firefox or Mozilla (I don’t know if one can live without the other) and shouting: “are you dead yet?”
Everyone makes mistakes, and, it’s common knowledge, Mozilla did it’s own too. Big deal!
I use FF every day since ever…
I have GC but I don’t like it.
I also have IE because I have to - it’s the only one working with Java.
I don’t care if it’s going down… I’ll use it until I lose my confidence on it.
I trade speed for security so, I stand by FF.
AND, I really doubt those statistics… better yet: I don’t believe in them!

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I don’t remember the version number, but it was probably 11, like he said in the article - the timing seems about right: I used to love Firefox - it was my favorite for years upon discovering it - but then they changed it, and I agree that it went way downhill - and at the same time that other browsers (particularly Chrome) were actually very much improving. I love that Firefox is open-source and secure, but it’s functionality has declined. It doesn’t matter how secure it is if it’s unusable. Which it’s not (unusable) - I certainly don’t think it’s endangered - but I don’t think the article is completely off-base. I’ve switched to PaleMoon for my primary browser, because it gives me the closest similarity to the old Firefox that I loved. I still keep Firefox on-hand, but the thing sucks up computer resources (memory) like mad, and I never could get it reconfigured the way I liked it before (I never had a ton of extensions, but I used all the ones I had, and of those that don’t work anymore, there are no equivalent substitutes. I’ve done the best I can with what I have to work with, but I simply have never been able to get back the same experience). I know I’m not the only one who feels this way; I don’t think that Firefox has alienated its user base to its own extinction, but I think it’s lost some loyalty: the author of your article states that “. . . it was my favorite web browser. Not because it was open-source, but because it was so much better and more secure than Internet Explorer.” Firefox will keep open-source loyalists, but not necessarily those people like the author. I don’t think it will go extinct, but I think that it needs to be both open-source AND better to maintain or increase its market share, and that “better” - if it actually still even is - is by a much smaller margin than it used to be.

I actually do see the point of the article. Firefox seems to be a major player basically in the German speaking countries but nowhere else and the Mozilla project depends primarily on the popularity of the browser. Given the fact that nowadays most internet usage comes from mobile devices, the preinstalled browsers Chrome and Safari have a huge advantage.

IMO, the article does not say that FF and Mozilla are obsolete, on the contrary, but that they are endangered.

On the contrary to some commentators in this forum, I don’t think that the performance of the (desktop) browser is a major issue: when it comes to rendering quality and performance, the current version is, again IMHO, superior to Chrome and Opera.

Also highly depends on the type of usage and what version you are using. I remember versions that e.g. had a memory leak, leading to huge amount of wasted RAM, if open for too long.

I don’t know about that. To me it seemed, like another one chimed in bashing Firefox, etc. as others did before.

Theoretically, if Firefox is going downhill so much, then maybe they would lose a huge burden, when dropping it. So maybe (assuming this article is absolutely true) it would even help Mozille to drop it.

That is e.g. one point why I find the statistic about what type of browsers visit some American .gov websites so stupid. I never visit .gov sites ever, but I use my Firefox an extreme amount of time, every single day.

Around the year 15 or so, I believe. Based on my personal experience, it’s not been the case for the last couple of years.

Interesting point of view. It’s not what I believe but I shall give it some thought.

Honestly, I also don’t care about American government sites. I judge by the corporate websites I manage myself but probably the only really relevant site is Google.

I guess, if you want the broadest audience around the entire world, this should certainly be true. Though, even then you have to be careful, if you would make a statistic, because Google farts itself into so many platforms as the default browser. So, if you would get a statistic of what browsers are used to access Google services, there will be all the Chromebook and mobile phone people (as you already mentioned) in it, that all have Google Chrome installed by default. So any person that is too lazy or tech-agnostic (as so many people are) to care about adjusting a browser preference, will be put into the statistic as conscious Chrome users, even though that is probably not the whole truth.

Additionally, what about all the derivatives? Most browser alternatives are based on Chromium or FireFox.
Do you count someone who purposefully changed from Google Chrome to a Chromium derivative, as a Chrome user? Maybe they hate Chrome, but changed to a Chromium derivative that seems much better to them.

Therefore, this whole topic isn’t as easy to grasp and analyze. Especially, since I also was never a fan of “if many people use it, it must be good”. There are so many popular products on earth that people use all the time and a good amount of them is pure trash. Yet, these products are popular.

One of many great videos released by a man, who should become the next president:

It shows how a big part of users of a specific brand know they are being ripped off and yet they continue to support the same company that absolutely rips off the hell out of users.

Let’s be honest: Apart from us geeks, there are no conscious browser users.

I know this guy and his videos are great. However, when it comes to choosing presidents, I prefer professionals. I think, the US have given sufficient proof over the last years that amateurs are not the best choice when it’s about heads of government.

Indeed. :smile:

Well, he is a professional in his own domain.

I think this is shown since decades. Too many people seem to forget the supposed “weapons of mass destruction” and the crying actor talking about supposed killed babies, which never happened. These times were truly shit.

However, I think people most capable of serving whatever country as a president are the least likely to become the president. You need to have a huge ego to stem so much responsibility, even though it is not possible for a human to really handle so much correctly, as needed.

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Turns out, you were right, more than you perhaps expected:

In large part, as it turns out, the average consumer doesn’t know how to switch default search engines and prefers Google search so much, that they are actually willing to change browsers for it.

Let’s be honest: when it comes to search engines, in reality there is no real competitor to Google around. Did Yahoo and Bing ever have a significant market share outside the US? I don’t think so.

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