The biggest loser in the Google search ruling could be Mozilla and its Firefox | Hacker News Reader

The biggest loser in the Google search ruling could be Mozilla and its Firefox

fortune.com

33 pointsjnord15 comments

Good - Mozilla is only propped up in this position by Google, it's time to kick the crutch away.

I'm tired of hearing people who think Firefox is the alternative to google when they're clearly both happy with the terrible status quo.

Break the chromium team out of google and put some actual damn laws in place for data collection.

> Good - Mozilla is only propped up in this position by Google, it's time to kick the crutch away.

I'd rather see Mozilla reformed rather than sink. It's the only non Chromium browser that still exists, isn't such a memory hog, and has good extensibility.

Safari?

> Safari?

Touche, but it's only available one one platform and aren't the both descended from WebKit?

I don't personally like the browser, but Safari has been on Windows for decades

Discontinued on windows.

https://www.xda-developers.com/safari-for-windows-editorial/

If Mozilla disappeared then I don't think that would imply the death of Firefox, I suspect there is enough motivation in the community to support a "successor" fork to fill the vacuum. I'm sure the transition would be pretty awkward though, and it could have some negative implications on new WC3 standards in the short term.

It ultimately depends on the "how" though, like if Mozilla were to act selfishly, they could get aggressive with the trademark and kill the brand recognition of a fork, possibly even requiring interface changes. Alternatively on the other end of the spectrum, if they simply passed Firefox in it's entirety to the community, it could possibly end up in a Thunderbird situation where it experiences a revival without a fork being necessary.

Absent Googles funding, I think the best case scenario would be it's top leadership leaving as the budget stops being capable of sustaining the salaries critical for "supporting their families" and Mozilla gradually transitions into the non-profit it was always meant to be, soliciting donations exclusively for browser development. All while free from any concerns about pissing of Google and losing their main source of funding.

It is not the only non chromium browser. You have WebKit browsers like safari, epiphany, and WebKit is a fine engine to build a browser around.

Then you've got Servo and Ladybird, which are coming along. Truth is, the reason its so hard to make a browser is because they have to support all this insane cruft, which I believe is by design so as to prevent new entrants to the browser market. The only way to fix the problem is to drop support for all that crap.

Mozilla is entirely captured by Google. They exist to protect google from antitrust law, they collude with google to damage the web, they're not a true alternative. They're complicit in their own downfall because they're paid to comply. Honestly what Mozilla is doing is more off putting to me than what google is doing.

Mozilla has a moment being presented to them right now and I fear they are going to totally blow it. With manifestv3 and inaction on tracking cookies google is obviously acting in their own interests instead of their end users and Mozilla should be pouncing on this in a big and visible way but they just aren't

Firefox, after 10 years, is still the only browser that correctly renders adding mjpeg images to the dom and have them play in response to an event on a websocket. not chrome, not safari, not edge.

Very specific use case. Maybe I'm the only one that uses it. But it's interesting to note that I discovered this back around 2013 and it's not changed in that time.

It's nice for making popup video camera views in javascript.

Interesting to note, it's only not working when it's a websocket initiated dom change. Keyboard input, result of an http call, all fine.

So please don't take firefox away :)

Redistribute the (potential) DOJ judgement to Firefox with no preconditions.

Literally anything else would be preferable. A NIST competition, open source grants, IE6 Remastered edition...

Mozilla exists to hinder the development of other browsers. They're the well financed vote spoiler. IIRC the CEO makes many millions a year while laying off browser developers.

I will second this opinion.

Mozilla has strongly displayed a willingness to be "the other side of the coin" to Google's browser monopoly. They go hand in hand.

IMO poster above is correct - they exist mostly as a scapegoat Google can point to in order to avoid monopoly claims (And Google is paying Mozilla more than 80% of their revenue to prop them up in this act).

Mozilla markets themselves as the "privacy focused alternative" but in reality I find that marketing mostly whitewash.

Please do pretty much anything else instead of giving this money to Mozilla.

> Mozilla exists to hinder the development of other browsers.

????

They’re sure doing a bad job of that… providing us with pretty much the internet’s most extensive and highest quality documentation of html/css/JavaScript & web apis, providing us with a non-WebKit/blink engine (& the only major browser not using those)…

> Redistribute the (potential) DOJ judgement to Firefox with no preconditions.

If the money is distributed to Firefox, the precondition that it be spent on browser development is an absolute must.

It's pretty scandalous that they take donations but spend the money on pretty much everything except funding Firefox development, which is almost certainly the only reason people donated it in the first place. No one really cares about any of the other things they do, especially not compared to the browser itself.

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