So the other day I was testing a new browser called waterfox. What stuck me as odd was how a small company seemed to have made Firefox so much more usable everyone. I normally use librewolf for privacy and security reasons but waterfox actually temped me to switch. (I ended up not switching for privacy and security reasons)
After I used waterfox for a bit I started thinking more and more about Mozilla the company. What are they even doing these days? It seems like they have stopped with the innovation. They could of setup a competitor to google with a custom nextcloud but they haven’t made any competitive products other than a VPN.
I also saw a Nord VPN commercial and it was full of lies are usual (seriously, malware protection?). However a lot of there arguments could apply to Firefox. Why doesn’t Mozilla do any sort of advertising? Admittedly Firefox isn’t great in the UI department for the average user so it may be worthless
What makes waterfox more useable?
I had never heard of Waterfox before seeing this post. I went and checked it out. Basically, their “thing” seems to be that they have Firefox’s privacy settings automatically defaulted to stronger settings, yet still mild enough for normal web browsing (it won’t break as many websites as when you have Firefox fired up on all privacy cylinders, I guess?).
They also have incognito tabs instead of just incognito windows.
Other than that, I don’t see any differences in the GUI for ease of use.
Oh wow I have played around with waterfox but never realized that you could mix private/incognito tabs together. That’s kinda cool, but not really a game changer.
It not for non tech savy users. That’s the problem
What do you mean?
Its UI is clunky and unintuitive
Mozilla can’t compete against Google. Any attempts of growing their marketshare by advertising is going to fail. Google will just outspend them. Then Mozilla will either go bankrupt or have to recoup their investment by jumping on the data collection train. I much prefer they stay sensible with their business modell and focus on being sustainable. Firefox will naturally grow as people start caring more and more about their online-privacy.
Same with any kind of new innovations or projects. I don’t want to outright discourage them but I much prefer their current pace of doing things slow and safely. Because if we lose Firefox due to Mozilla taking some kind of gamble the alternative browsers remaing don’t really seem appealing.
I like the idea of Mozilla providing, even thou it can just be rebranding, some privacy concious services. Like reselling real private VPN, email, storage… with their brand.
On Windows, Firefox has been my main browser for a long time. On Android, it has been my main for about 2 years. 1 of things I like re Firefox is its strict tracking protection. I read that Chrome would block by default 3rd-party trackers for 1% of the Chrome users this month. What about Google trackers? Anyway, it’s absurd to expect privacy features from a firm that has advertising as 1 of its profit generators.
I want Firefox to grow at its own pace. I hope more folks will talk re Firefox. I think 1 of the factors why Firefox isn’t so famous is –
In the phone and tablet boom in the last 10 years, some tended to use the default browser. For example, Safari on iPhone and iPad. Samsung, the top phone brand, has its own browser.
Firefox is losing market share. People who care about privacy are choosing brave
Firefox loss in market share is more complicated. It’s mostly due to growth in areas Firefox never had a foothold. Mainly the mobile browser and the Asian market (which mostly is mobile on top of it). On the desktop front in US and especially Europe the situation isn’t nearly as dire as the global stats imply.
Firefox Android recently implemented extension support, so perhaps we will see some increased use there. But the majority of mobile users simply don’t care and considering how interlocked Google and Android is, there is little hope for a third party browser gaining a foothold.
Brave had a lot of controversies and that’s because their aggressive marketing strategy is so expensive. That’s why they did shady stuff like hijacking links and insering their own affiliate codes. Something I don’t want Mozilla doing with Firefox. Also Brave uses Chromium and the future of Chromium seems bleek. If it actually starts disabling support for adblock extensions then Brave has no future at all.
People who care about privacy are choosing brave
[citation needed]
The VPN is just resold mullvad vpn (which is a great vpn), but its just mozilla branding. They didn’t actually do anything
Mozilla ain’t perfect, but I think you’re wanting them to run more like a startup business when even the taxable side of them is ran closer in style to a non-profit.
+1 For having the insight to marking your post as a rant.
And while i cant agree with you, i hope you’re feeling better now.
What do you like about Waterfox? From skimming their page I’m not really sure what it’s doing aside from a pre-applied profile with some settings tweaked.
Its fast and has a clean UI
After I used waterfox for a bit I started thinking more and more about Mozilla the company. What are they even doing these days? It seems like they have stopped with the innovation. They could of setup a competitor to google with a custom nextcloud but they haven’t made any competitive products other than a VPN.
Honestly, much of the problem is us, not them. At some point they did Firefox Send, but people misused it for sending malware and stuff, resulting in Mozilla having to shelve the project for legal reasons, for example. (Now, if it was me, I’d just have said “just base Send’s operations on Sealand or someplace without DMCA”, but that’s a call they did not make). They now created a VPN but the problem is, AFAIK, it’s not their own product it’s just Mullvad with extra steps, so people just use that instead. And when they do stuff for web freedom / digital sovereignty awareness, such as campaigns against DRM or a study on the car IoT market, people (aka: we) complain that they are “doing useless stuff”. Just about the newest good thing they’ve done is Relay, and I’m pretty sure there’s hefty complaining about that.
And then there’s the idiots who moan than “peOpLe wHO wANt prIVacY uSE BraVE”, so there’s that too.
With our attitude like that, there’s no way for them to win.
Somebody else necroed this thread. So I apologizing for responding to your comments so late. But here we are
I think the Mozilla foundation has alienated a lot of people by making it impossible to directly support the web browser. People who want to support the web browser, have no mechanism to do so through Mozilla. They can support the foundation and its initiatives… So removing that small degree of direct support, that people can get behind for the thing they love, makes the rest of the organizations actions all net negatives. The zero some game with the donations, each one of these things is removing potential attention from the browser. Now I know that’s not entirely true, but we’re talking about people’s perspectives. If they only care about the browser there’s no way to support it, and the Zilla foundation is using its massive wealth on a bunch of things not related to the browser, or making the browser better, etc etc people are fairly saying hey they’ve lost their focus. They’re doing lots of things that aren’t related to the thing I care about.
If we recreated the Mozilla foundation today, without the browser. Spin it off in a totally separate organization not related to Mozilla. I don’t think a lot of people would care what they do, one way or the other. They wouldn’t get hate. They probably get a fair few donations for their social causes. But it wouldn’t have conflated digital freedom of the browser with a specific agenda, and a specific implementation
Mozilla needs to get fired and forks for both mobile and desktop need to take over.
Or they need to get new management
