lunar fox

I am routinely worried Mozilla is gonna surpass Google regarding bad decisions, then swap back, forever, as things just get worse and worse. At some point someone much smarter than me is gonna say enough and make a new html rendering engine.

mozilla is actively killing itself. one of the best resources online for web development is mozilla developer network, a very useful reference for html, javascript and css. mozilla has been shoving openai garbage into it despite very vocal opposition and clear and repeated examples of the openai-generated shit being patently wrong and making their documentation worse as a result.

the ux for firefox seems like it gets worse with every single update (i was going to give examples but it just keeps turning into a long fucking screed because i have so many grievances with firefox), yet they keep acquiring or partnering with other companies and then merging functionality into firefox. the firefox vpn thing is literally just mullvad vpn being resold with more conventional ways of handling billing and a different client package.

"please improve the only competitor google chrome fucking has" no, but would you like a weird version of Facebook Second Life because we have that (when i was writing this i erroneously gave mozilla credit for not using the term 'mtaverse' but i went to their 'innovation' page and they have it listed as their 'mtaverse / XR' thing).
not kidding about that either, they have a clone of facebook's shitty second life clone. it even doesn't have legs, and apparently is not notable enough to even be mentioned on the "list of mozilla products" page on wikipedia.

there are other non-chrome browsers. there are other rendering engines (serenityos' libweb/ladybird, webkit is still real, servo keeps threatening to exist but so far doesn't really). there are basically no other competitors to chrome though, and mozilla seems dead set on not actually competing.

To understand why Mozilla seems to do everything but improve the browser, simply look at the table above from the Mozilla Wikipedia page. Note the "Proportion derived from Google" column. Mozilla has never, since at least 2005, been less than 80% funded by it's main competitor (Chrome released in 2008).

Contrary to popular belief, this number doesn't mean that Mozilla does Google's bidding secretly—I am personally confident, having spent the better part of a decade there, that any bad decision that people assumed was because Google forced us to was our own folly.

Instead, what it means is that since before I even joined in 2011, Mozilla has been increasingly worried about what happens to Firefox if Google pulls the plug on the search deal. All these extra projects are explicitly attempts to make Firefox able to withstand losing that funding. That's also why Mozilla has over a billion dollars in the bank—to cover expenses during and after the extensive trimming down that will happen the moment the deal fails to renew.

Now, the LLM/Metaverse/MDN subscription plan stuff are terrible tactics to deal with this problem; Mitchell Baker/Mark Surman are making constant unforced errors in what they choose to focus on. But I keep making posts like this¹ to make it really clear that the "they aren't improving the browser" complaint is not Mozilla failing to compete with Google and risking losing to Chrome—it is the consequence of already having lost to Chrome. They have to compete in this sideways fashion just to be able to survive with the funds necessary to maintain a modern browser engine.

Firefox is not going to out-browser Chrome for at least 5 years up to a decade, if ever. No one is going to make a usable new browser engine in that time either, because browser engines are on par with operating systems in their complexity. Someone with the chops to maintain a fork might actually fork Firefox—that would be the most interesting probable development IMO.

Last note, Firefox is constantly improving things, but many of them aren't clearly visible to end-users. A sample from recent release notes within the past 4 months:

• Uses Wayland now instead of XWayland when available, meaning touch gestures, swipe-to-nav, etc. on Linux.
• Added :has() selector for CSS.
• Lazy-loading iframes.
• Context menu entry to copy URLs without site-tracking parameters.
• Canvas fingerprinting protection in strict mode / private browsing.
• Progress towards disabling third-party cookies entirely.
• WebAssembly garbage collection.
• PDF editing (adding images + alt text)
• Local-only automatic webpage translation that doesn't use an external API.
• The <search> element

1. Apologies to folks who keep having to hear me remake this post but I will never shut up about it, I have a primal urge for people to be mad at companies for the correct reasons.

First: all of this. Obviously @Osmose knows more than me since I've haven't been a Mozilla employee but any web developer worth their salt will tell you that maintaining a browser engine is a lot of thankless work¹.

I keep hoping that the impending Manifest V3 roll-out on Chromium browsers² and Mozilla's refusal to implement it in a way that will impede ad-blockers might be another "oh fuck, let's switch to Firefox" akin to the tabs/pop up blockers of yesteryear but maybe that's being too hopeful. I've seen people simping for Brave and fucking Opera GX so maybe people don't care anymore and Mozilla knows this and is playing the pragmatic card of "we might as well take Google's money to get by". Especially since I suspect this buys Google's conscience and some goodwill in the public so they can go all "but see, we fund our competitors, so we're not a Bad Monopoly on the browser space!"

1. Not that making a browser re-using an existing engine is easy either but that removes soooooooo much work from your plate already.

2. That keeps being pushed out and i wouldn't be surprised if it either never happens in the shape Google wants it to or gets regulated on antitrust grounds or something.