Firefox Gets More Investment in New Features, Prioritizing People (and Privacy) Over Profit (techcrunch.com) 83
On its 20th anniversary, Firefox "is still going strong, and it is a better browser today than it ever was," according to TechCrunch.
In an interview, Mozilla's interim CEO says one of the first things they did when was to "unlock a bunch of money towards Firefox product development... I've been in enough places where people tend to forget about the core business, and they stop investing in it, because they get distracted by shiny things — and then they regret it." "Firefox is incredibly important, and it is our core. We've actually put more investment into it this year and into connecting with our communities, into bringing out and testing features that are positive and creating good experiences for folks. That's been a huge priority for me and for the company this year, and it's showing up in the results."
She acknowledged that Mozilla doesn't have the device distribution that benefits many of Firefox's competitors, especially on mobile, but she did note that the Digital Marks Act (DMA) in Europe — which means Apple, for example, has to provide a browser choice screen on iOS — is working. "With the DMA, even though the implementation hasn't been outstanding, we're seeing a real shift. When people have the choice to choose Firefox, they're choosing Firefox," she said...
To kick-start some of this growth, Mozilla is looking at reaching new, and younger, users. Chambers noted that Mozilla is running a number of marketing campaigns to make people aware of Firefox, especially those who are only now starting to make their first browser choices. With them, she believes, Mozilla's messaging around privacy lands especially well.
In a future where browsers include AI agents that take actions on behalf of users, there might be more confidence in a browser designed for privacy and transparency, the interim CEO points out — as part of their larger mission. "What I love about Firefox is that it really provides users with an alternative choice of a browser that is just genuinely designed for them.
"We have, from its very inception and throughout, really wanted to create a browser that prioritizes people over profit, prioritizes privacy over anything else, and to have that option, the choice."
In an interview, Mozilla's interim CEO says one of the first things they did when was to "unlock a bunch of money towards Firefox product development... I've been in enough places where people tend to forget about the core business, and they stop investing in it, because they get distracted by shiny things — and then they regret it." "Firefox is incredibly important, and it is our core. We've actually put more investment into it this year and into connecting with our communities, into bringing out and testing features that are positive and creating good experiences for folks. That's been a huge priority for me and for the company this year, and it's showing up in the results."
She acknowledged that Mozilla doesn't have the device distribution that benefits many of Firefox's competitors, especially on mobile, but she did note that the Digital Marks Act (DMA) in Europe — which means Apple, for example, has to provide a browser choice screen on iOS — is working. "With the DMA, even though the implementation hasn't been outstanding, we're seeing a real shift. When people have the choice to choose Firefox, they're choosing Firefox," she said...
To kick-start some of this growth, Mozilla is looking at reaching new, and younger, users. Chambers noted that Mozilla is running a number of marketing campaigns to make people aware of Firefox, especially those who are only now starting to make their first browser choices. With them, she believes, Mozilla's messaging around privacy lands especially well.
In a future where browsers include AI agents that take actions on behalf of users, there might be more confidence in a browser designed for privacy and transparency, the interim CEO points out — as part of their larger mission. "What I love about Firefox is that it really provides users with an alternative choice of a browser that is just genuinely designed for them.
"We have, from its very inception and throughout, really wanted to create a browser that prioritizes people over profit, prioritizes privacy over anything else, and to have that option, the choice."
Money money money.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder if their CEO is willing to drop their salary too, seeing as they booted out 30% of their staff.
Who am I kidding, they'll just raise it to 10-15M$/y because of "great performance".
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It's a woman.
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Your point being what? GP never mentioned gender. CEO was referred to as "they".
And ignoring the standards (Score:2)
Mozilla, MS, Google, Apple all have been lax at actually addressing the major flaws and legacy cruft in the W3C, ECMA and web technology stack for at least a decade.
The business as usual has led to a slow slouch towards a worse development environment with each new crop of web developers having more complexity and a less useful development platform. Band-aids, in the form of thousand JS file frameworks, are band-aids and not addressing the underlying issues.
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They did not boot out 30% of the staff. You're referring to this?
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11... [techcrunch.com]
The foundation, about sixty people who do advocacy for the web in general, booted out ~twenty people, 30% of the staff.
The corporation, that develops Firefox, is several hundred (I think just over 200? It doesn't really matter here) people, and last had any layoffs years ago and had nothing to do with this CEO.
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Oh, I forgot, the corporation did layoff some people earlier this year, but I really doubt the person above me has a problem with Mozilla cutting its Mastodon instances and VPN staff to focus on Firefox.
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Right you are, however they did around 100 people in 2024 alone, that's 15% of their workforce.
So not 30% but 15%. However, the point stands that their CEO is making an absurd amount of money from a non-profit (around (7-8M$ per year according to a few quick searches).
It's essentially a money pump at this point.
Mozilla are stinking rich thanks to Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet they forget their reason for existing is the BROWSER without which they would not be on Google welfare.
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Yet they forget their reason for existing is the BROWSER without which they would not be on Google welfare.
Firefox is too tightly tied to Google for my liking. Actually, I ended up switching to Vivaldi. Vivaldi is faster and just generally a better browser.
Re:Mozilla are stinking rich thanks to Google (Score:4, Interesting)
That's great, instead of using an independent browser developed mainly with Google's money, let's use a browser based on Google's browser!
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ADBLOCK. (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that keeps Firefox users to use FF is Adblock.
DON'T MESS WITH THAT !
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Unironically this. There are quite a few messages now on various forums asking how to migrate from chrome in the wake of manifest v2 being removed.
The options are:
1. Brave, Vivaldi, Supermium etc browsers that use Chromium but keep manifest V2. You will have to add ublock origin manually from a file though as chances are that google won't allow it to exist or be installed from chrome web store for much longer due to compatibility issues. And that requires instructions for average users. There's been talk th
Re:ADBLOCK. (Score:4, Informative)
Vivaldi comes with a pretty good integrated ad-blocker. They even frequently update to keep YouTube ads blocked or at least skipped. Overall a pretty good browser.
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It's my preferred Chromium browser for win 10 and win 11 too. But it does have some issues, like slowness of startup due to their less optimized proprietary UI, and the build in blocker has a nasty tendency of blocking wrong things on less popular sites without easy recourse like ublock origin offers. Both likely a function of a fairly small team struggling to handle all the extra features it promises.
Brave is more streamlined, but it's ad policy with built in ad blocker is questionable, but it's overall a
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No idea where you see that slow startup with Vivaldi. Maybe you are referring to the old behavior, were it actually loaded all tabs on start? It does not do that anymore (unless you disable lazy loading for open tabs) and startup is basically instant with only the active tab being loaded. As to overly aggressive blocking, I have not noticed that either so far, except for embedded video. That often requires an additional click, but that is entirely fine with me. Also, adding exceptions is pretty easy. Basica
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If you open Vivaldi on an older machine, you'll notice a gray screen with large "V" logo in the middle. This will stay on for quite a few seconds, depending on machine's speed and how much you customized UI and how many additional features (for which there are UI elements that need to be started) you enabled.
That's the UI loading part.
Iirc it's tab load behavior agnostic. I.e. even if you have it set to load all tabs, it will first finish loading UI, and then proceed to load tabs with UI already visible. It
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For now, due to the fact that upstream chromium is losing the ability to have good adblock they may lose that ability too if they get patch fatigue or missing major security patches.
If you really like Vivaldi and you want to be sure you'll have full powered Ublock origin, check out FLOORP(no this is not a prank, that's the real program name). its a firefox fork made by a Japanese college. and has some of the basic built in vivialdi quality of life upgrades that Firefox is missing
Re: ADBLOCK. (Score:2)
So you upgrade /the whole browser/ just for what a dedi blocker does via some hosts file?
(I AdAway on mobile and on OpenWRT. That is app agnostic, device agnostic. Works for 'everything all at once'.)
Also, the irony of giving intv about 'people over profit' at TechCrunch, probably the most ad-ridden outlet I've ever come across.
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The one thing that keeps Firefox users to use FF is Adblock.
DON'T MESS WITH THAT !
But messing with it may gain the C-suite millions of extra bonus... um... decisions, decisions...
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I would use FireFox all the time, except that Brave has done a better job with AdBlock. I use uBlock Origin, and it's pretty good, but it still lets through things like those popups that want you to log in everywhere. I do like FireFox's ability to disable auto-play videos, but I wish they would make it the default.
Nobody wants more features (Score:5, Insightful)
Just give us a browser that is light, fast, can display any website and block ads.
Mozilla "leadership" resemble /. "editors" (Score:2)
Quality is irrelevant in either case and market share does not matter.
Re:Nobody wants more features (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody wants more features (Score:4, Insightful)
What is their core business and why is your browser not as light and able to render pages as you think it is?
Are you worried about RAM use or download size? They are explained by a combination of modern web standards (your browser needs to act as its own operating system complete with run time compiler for interpreted languages and WebAssembly execution) and security (you can change the word operating system to multiple operating systems running in a per tab isolated virtual machine).
The internet isn't the same as it was in the 2000s so you shouldn't expect your browser to be either. For all they are demanded to do these days modern browsers are actually incredibly light and given the complexity of rendering webpages they do it remarkably well.
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> combination of modern web standards ... WebAssembly ... and security
yes, surely. horrible design + the bloat and cruft which accumulated through failed refactorings and rewritings has absolutely nothing to do with it.
It's all the fault of webassembly and security.
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If what you say was true there would be a modern browser compliant with web standards and modern security practices which isn't "bloated". There's not. Put up or shut up.
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Are you worried about RAM use or download size? They are explained by a combination of modern web standards (your browser needs to act as its own operating system complete with run time compiler for interpreted languages and WebAssembly execution) and security (you can change the word operating system to multiple operating systems running in a per tab isolated virtual machine).
The internet isn't the same as it was in the 2000s so you shouldn't expect your browser to be either.
What a stupid fucking analysis. I don't mean to be a dick, but yeah, I am being a dick here. WTF are you even talking about? I could do the same analysis in reverse and get an opposite answer that is just as useful as the answer you provided.
Firefox is unnecessarily bloated and it is also more user hostile than it needs to be. Still, I am writing this with Firefox because none of the other browsers are any better.
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For Firefox it's RAM, or at least underlying exponential algorithms which lead to excess RAM usage. I'm one of those crazy tabs users who have thousands of tabs. I open a site like Slashdot and skim through all the articles until I reach one I saw the last time I visited. For any articles that look interesting, I open them in new tabs. I then go through those tabs until I run out of time and have to work on something else. I nearly always open more articles than I read through, thus my tab count always
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My browser habits are the same as yours - thousands of tabs of work searches, various projects, discussion and music that I'm surely going to get back to...
My work laptop was recently replaced and went from 32GB to 64GB of RAM. I thought this would finally be ample headroom but Firefox just consumed to the same ceiling and I'm still forced to quit and reload every so often to reset its RAM usage. This is Windows, it rarely crashes. On my home Ubuntu desktop (32GB, less tabs but still over 1k) it definitely
Re: Nobody wants more features (Score:4, Insightful)
This is because we all insist browsers cost $0.00, which forces their makers to get their revenue elsewhere.
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Which cannot be that hard. Vivaldi does it by default search engines, which you can easily change and which stay changed on updates. Also a list of preconfigured bookmarks that you can easily get rid of. An additional 3 minutes to configure is a small price to pay for a free browser and apparently, this still pays nicely for development. Of course, as Vivaldi is chromium, development is easier than FF.
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>"Which cannot be that hard. Vivaldi does it by default search engines"
Vivaldi is Chrom*, it doesn't have to develop or maintain a browser, just a UI on top of Google-controlled Chromium. It is not quite a fair comparison.
Firefox has preloaded search engines set also, which I believe are sponsored (and easily changed).
>"Of course, as Vivaldi is chromium, development is easier than FF."
Exactly.... much, much, much easier and less expensive. And using it furthers Google's control of the web, unfortuna
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Other $0.00 projects live from donations alone and provide user-first software. Most of the packages of your Linux distribution act only in the interest of the user with both most distributions and most upstream-projects living from voluntary donations alone.
Re:Nobody wants more features (Score:5, Insightful)
"Can display any website" implies the heck of a lot of features.
A modern web browser is effectively an operating system in itself. Here's just the WebGPU standard, take a look: https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/ [w3.org]
Just scroll down that page and try to estimate how much programmer time is needed to implement that correctly. And you can use most of the web without that just fine actually, until you come across something that happens to want it. Modern browsers have an alarmingly large amount of such features.
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I always believed that making a new browser is nearly impossible, but the Ladybird developer said in an interview that it is less work than one would think. They acquired some funding in the meantime and may come around with a nice browser (engine). Their approach is to go by website instead of by feature list. Implement the features to make Slashdot, Reddit and Discord work, instead of having to check boxes on the list of standards. And when they should get bored, they can start to implement features like
Re:Nobody wants more features (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I use Pale Moon since years.
It's relatively light compared to the memory bloating Firefox with its seperate process for everything, it never messed with the simple and clear UI, and for the handful of sites I saw that didn't work with it, their non-standard site wasn't interesting enough.
Long live the uBlock and eMatrix extentions for spy-free browsing.
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On Android however I use "Fulguris". I got it off of droid-ify, and barring a little bit of configuration and UI confusion, it seem
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I used to use Pale Moon, but it's cripplingly slow compared to Firefox and Chrome. Being single threaded means it will never catch up.
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Pale Moon uses an outdated engine. The handful of sites will become more and more and not because of Quirks in their coding, but because, for example, CSS got a quite few new (useful) features since Pale Moon forked Firefox.
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Just give us a browser that is light, fast, can display any website and block ads.
Might as well have said you want all three; good, fast, and cheap.
(It’s this one that got you. When websites are built around tracking, it ain’t hard to break them when you don’t want to be.)
Re: Nobody wants more features (Score:2)
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Why don't you just add two shortcuts to launch the profiles? What's the difference between clicking on the Chrome toolbar and clicking on a second launcher? And how often do you restart your browser? Start your two or three instances with different profiles after booting and you're fine. Firefox doesn't have major memleaks anymore, so there is on most computers not reason to switch profiles instead of having two instances open.
AI (Score:1)
AI in Firefox? I'm sure it will be as good as Pocket.
The AI agent should be named enshitAIfication or similar.
game changing feature: picture-in-picture video (Score:2)
Picture-in-picture video is a very bfd. having the video you watch follow you if you go on a different tab? and then follow you if you go to a different program? and still be on top if you maximize the window of the other program? absolutely positively priceless!
If you use a laptop with a 15" monitor picture-in-picture makes a HUGE difference.
https://support.mozilla.org/en... [mozilla.org]
Fix bugs, improve performance (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla ought to aim for fixing bugs, improving performance, increasing memory efficiency, etc.
NOT shiny, new features with additional bugs, introducing additional attack surface, reducing performance, and increasing memory consumption.
They should be looking at the crowd with old computers who need a browser which doesn't have a million features nobody ever uses, but consumes little memory, is fast, stable, and secure. This is a niche nobody appears to be interested in, while providing for these people also stands to help those with more high-end desktop systems.
If I want additional features, I'll install a plug-in or extension and those ought to be facilitated (of course, keeping security and performance in mind).
words are easy (Score:2)
Sorry, but is easy to say nice words in an interview, words don't matter, actions do. I want to see actions and I don't trust Mozilla being lead by someone with a degree in philosophy and a MBA after that. I would like to see Mozilla being lead (again) by an engineer with experience in software development.
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Well, at least there is an admission of a massive management screw-up in the last years.
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>lead (again) by an engineer with experience in software development.
I'm in that group of people. We are terrible leaders
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"In a future where browsers include AI agents that take actions on behalf of users, there might be more confidence in a browser designed for privacy and transparency, the interim CEO points out — as part of their larger mission. "What I love about Firefox is that it really provides users with an alternative choice of a browser that is just genuinely designed for them."
Conspicuous non-denial that FF won't add AI. Spot the weasel.
Fulguris FTW.
I don't mind new features, but fix bugs (Score:3)
For the love of all that is functional, fix your memory leaks in mobile Firefox. I have to restart it several times a day if I use it any significant amount. They seem to be Javascript-related, shock amazement. Closing tabs doesn't fix it, either.
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Are the front end features are just chasing the back end features?
Back end engineer: "we need to add more XYZ"
Other than security fixes, and bug fixes, as you point out, what feature do we need that isn't there just to push you deeper into the brand rabbithole?
I can't think of a feature I wanted or needed since... > 15 years now. I guess ad blocking i
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Philosophically speaking, at this point, aren't we at a point where a browser is a commodity?
Are we? They are not fungible, they are developed with different goals. Except, those goals are converging... which is what we do not want.
Re:I don't mind new features, but fix bugs (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to be naive, but browsers are supposed to be fungible. I'll answer my own question: browsers are supposed to be a commodity.
The only goal I can see that chrome wants is to dictate proprietary extensions, to create full dependency upon it.
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Pretty much. I like to dump on the big browser organizations as much as the next guy, but the fact is most web developers just don't give a damn about graceful degradation and document-centric design.
I once criticized a guy for using Angular and SQL for a single page that looks like it belonged on Geocities from the early 90's. He didn't see what was wrong with using a huge framework to manage what effectively amounted to some blockquotes and links. I would have done that with some flat resource files!
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over reliance and blind trust in any technology, and actually, a complete lack of analysis, is the hallmark of the new generation of college grads. Heaven help us when we die out, and they are left to maintain the airline bookings (a disaster from inception) and the nuclear codes!!
I have a colleague who hates databases, he's a networking guru, and used your argument on me
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My Firefox runs for days (on Linux) without memleaks. Maybe check your extensions?
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Reread my comment. We are not talking about the same thing.
Anti-features (Score:2)
- tabs that are visually disconnected from the page
- narrow auto-hiding scroll bars
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I am not sure about the tabs.
For the scrollbars, edit these settings in about:config:
- widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override = 16 (or whatever you want it to be)
- widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled = false
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But it is optional. Put "user_pref("pdfjs.disabled", true);" in "$PROFILE/user.js" to disable it.
Though that javascript pdf rendering code is probably safer than poppler, mupdf, adobe's or whatever library your standalone pdf reader is using.
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According to whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
We've actually put more investment into it this year and into... bringing out and testing features that are positive and creating good experiences for folks
Who will define "positive" and "good experiences"? Will it be the loyal users whose feedback and requests you've been largely pooh-poohing and downright ignoring for so many years? Or will it continue to be wet-behind-the-ears developers who "just know" what's good and right and are hell-bent on making sure Firefox users adopt their right-thinking 'innovations'?
If Firefox starts to do things like allowing easy, straightforward reversion to sensible scrollbars that are always visible, with usable width and with steppers, then I'll think that maybe you're serious. Unless and until that happens, you're just blowing smoke, and you won't be blowing it up MY ass. Restore the option for some colour and detail differentiation between toolbar icons - instead of the "shades of grey" bullshit that makes me have to think longer about where I need to put my cursor for the desired operation - and maybe I'll be less cynical. Until then, sod off with your self-aggrandizing HR-flavoured PR platitudes.
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>"If Firefox starts to do things like allowing easy, straightforward reversion to sensible scrollbars that are always visible, with usable width and with steppers,"
I have to admit, that really pissed me off. I *HATE* hidden scrollbars with a passion. It is the first thing I reverted. But it wasn't easy (was partially GTK theme crud). And the width, and steppers required some about:config.
better today huh (Score:2)
it is a better browser today than it ever was
Really? So now you can put tabs under the bookmark bar? What, no? Well then I guess it's not better today than it ever was. Wake me up when you can fix that simple thing.
Maybe this new Firefox can also learn how to not drive away all the extension devs.
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>"So now you can put tabs under the bookmark bar?"
Yes, you can. And I use it that way on every machine I touch. But you have to use userChrome to do it. It is annoying that they took away the menu option, then the about:config option. But at least with userChrome, there are tons of customization options (and none of those are available in Chrome/Chromium).
https://www.userchrome.org/ [userchrome.org]
https://github.com/Aris-t2/Cus... [github.com]
Point (Score:2)
Honestly, what's the point of a secure, even VPN-like browser, if the other end of this unassailable tunnel is a web site that sells off all your page visits to big advertisers?
Prioritizing people through layoffs (Score:2)
We're literally a week out from Mozilla announcing that they were laying off 30% of the staff at Mozilla Foundation, and earlier this year they had layoffs at Mozilla Corporation too. Doesn't seem like they're prioritizing people at all.
Sure. (Score:2)
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>"Get back to me when Apple will actually let me install Firefox without it just being a shittily skinned Safari."
1) That is only on iPhones, doesn't affect Apple desktops
2) It is certainly not Mozilla's fault, but Apple's
3) Yeah, it is a pretty crappy thing for Apple to do
Start with removing PPA and Telemetry (Score:2)
Do something to make your claims believable.
The Greatest Digital Hariki of Firefox was (Score:2)
..their UI revamp. The new UI sucks all kinds of balls, big time, to the point of unsufferable. If they want their audience back, they need to restore the old, functional UI first. What good are new improvements and features if the entire product base is simply unusable?
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>"..their UI revamp. The new UI sucks all kinds of balls, big time, to the point of unsufferable. If they want their audience back, they need to restore the old, functional UI first."
1) Yes, the UI revamp sucked to many of us
2) They made it very much like Chrome, which sucks
3) People didn't switch from Firefox to Chrome because of the UI because otherwise they would have the same sucky UI yet worse because there are LESS customizations options in Chrome/Chromium. Most users switched because of a massive
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I'm aware of the customisation but for a common user, making changes via user settings is beyond reach, and even then some things just can't be put right regardless of how much css you add. The UI should be right from the get-go.