Technology

It really is a shitty take. Mozilla are essentially saying they depend on Google remaining a monopoly; and that we shouldn't fight the bad guys because the bad guys might hurt us if we try.

The Mozilla blog post was all about the DOJ asking to end search-bar payments, and how this might hurt independent browser. But I saw no mention of the DOJ saying that Google must sell Chrome; which I think is very relevant to the discussion about browser dominance.

More and more I believe that Mozilla's current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.

Maybe making a browser doesn't need to be so damn expensive. Let the web standards freeze so we aren't constantly chasing shiny things. The browser is in a really good spot today. What else does it need to be?

Hardly surprising, looking at how many former google and Facebook employees are in Mozilla’s management.

Libre Wolf isn’t bad.

Having been a firefox user for a few years now, Screw Mozilla. What a mismanaged shit-show they've become.

I get that browser development costs a ton, and that they're in a shitty position. But to make this ode to stockholm syndrome blog post... what on EARTH?

Best case, Chrome gets split off into a separate organization free of meddling and they can fund themselves with reasonable donations / investments. In reality, I'm sure Google and other advertising companies will try to get into it and buy the behavior they want, like special-interest groups in US politics.

But if Chrome ended up under any organization with reasonable management who wasn't completely beholden to advertisers, I'd switch back to Chrome pretty quickly (assuming the whole Manifest V2/V3 thing got un-fucked).

Does anybody expect them to say anything else? Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we're talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it's virtually impossible to fund unless you're a giant like Google or being funded by someone with very deep pockets, like... er... Google.

Even MS bailed and ceded power to Google, because it simply didn't make financial sense. Apple does it but they're pretty meh in terms of implementing standards and such... there's a reason 3rd party WebKit browsers are rare. They comparatively run it on a shoestring budget, and they're Apple FFS - their wealth is practically limitless!

People aren't going to start paying to use Firefox, and that money needs to come from somewhere. The community rejects giants paying Mozilla (understable sentiment), rejects paying for Firefox (also understandable), and rejects Mozilla selling data (definitely understandable). Some say donations, but be real, that won't make hundreds of millions per year.

What is the solution here? I'm not trying to be contrarian I just don't know what they can actually do. You'd hope that the Linux Foundation or something would chip in, but nope, they help Chromium instead. I worry for the future of web browsers.

That said, I'm also deeply uncomfortable with Google being able to pay to be default search on so many products. It gives them a huge advantage. I don't want them to have that advantage. It's anticompetitive and scummy as fuck.

Mozilla are definitely between a rock and a hard place here. I don't like some of the decisions they make, but damn, I'm not sure I have the smarts to come up with better ones, given the position and market they're in.

I mean, I see their point, but it's still a bad take. At the end of the day, this monopoly needs to be broken up. Also, have they tried not hiring a bunch of new executives and capping CEO pay at 300 000?

Mozilla is such a disorganized company. Why wouldn't they find another search engine deal besides Google? It's possible that they could find another deal somewhere, but it seems to me that they don't care — more like they're a controlled competitor. I'm not surprised considering they scrapped their wording regarding privacy, which leads to a lot of ambiguities.

I'm pretty sure that the main reason Google funds Mozilla is to be able to avoid claims of monopoly on browsers. I don't think we can have it both ways.

If anyone else was confused by the typo, difficult > default.

I'm not sure what to think. On one hand, yes, Google is of course slimy. But if Mozilla loses it's big source of funding (and crumbles as a result), that may put things in a worse place?

Then again, it's a shame that the only major competing browser engine is funded by the dominant browser's company. Maybe Mozilla can be fine without it?

Pathetic.