Can Firefox survive in a Google world?

[nir]

With Microsoft's decision to switch to Chromium for its Edge browser, Mozilla's Firefox remains the only major browser developer that still maintains its own alternative engine. In a world dominated by Google, can Firefox remain competitive?

 

Last week, Microsoft announced it was throwing in the towel on its EdgeHTML development effort and switching to the open-source Chromium engine. That's a big win for Google, which maintains that codebase and uses it as the core of Google Chrome. It's arguably a big win for Microsoft's enterprise customers, too, who can now count on having a standards-compliant browser that works with all their modern web-based apps.

 

You know who was not among the winners? Mozilla, makers of the Firefox browser.

 

In a doom-and-gloom-soaked post on the Mozilla Blog, CEO Chris Beard criticized Microsoft's decision even as he acknowledged that it "may well make sense" in business terms even as it poses an existential threat to the non-profit Mozilla:

 

We compete with Google not because it's a good business opportunity. We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice. They depend on consumers being able to decide we want something better and to take action.

[...]

If one product like Chromium has enough market share, then it becomes easier for web developers and businesses to decide not to worry if their services and sites work with anything other than Chromium. That's what happened when Microsoft had a monopoly on browsers in the early 2000s before Firefox was released. And it could happen again.

 

Unfortunately, Mozilla's relationship with Google is... Well, let's just say it's complicated. Yes, Firefox competes with Google in the browser market, but Google also literally pays to keep the lights on at Mozilla.

 

Two weeks ago, Mozilla released its annual report, including audited financial statements for 2017. In that report, it acknowledged that "[t]oday, the majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, including the deal negotiated with Google in 2017 following Mozilla's termination of its search agreement with Yahoo/Oath...."

 

In fact, more than 89 percent of Mozilla Corporation's $562 Million in income in 2017 came from search engine royalties, and almost all that appears to have come from Google. (Yandex is the default Firefox search engine in Russia and Baidu is the default in China. Google is the default in the United States and other developed markets.)

 

That fact is, tellingly, listed under the "Concentration of risk" heading in the Mozilla 2017 financial statement (PDF).

 

Source

 

[RejZoR]

Why couldn't it? Google has such huge market share because dumb people think everything that comes from Google is the best shit ever, not because it's actually good. Chrome included. Or they are just lazy and they go with whatever corporations throw in front of their face. Reality is, it's one of worst browsers. It's fat and slow (only thing where it's fast is raw JS) while not actually offering any kind of actual functionality and you need like billion extensions to do most basic shit which makes it even slower and fat. If you want Chromium based browser, just use Opera. It's like billion times better and it's just baffling why it has such small user base.

 

Firefox on the other hand, while it has its problems like ultimately broken Add-ons syncing which I don't understand why they can't get in order and how Android Firefox refuses to work with any password manager like LastPass or Bitwarden which horribly cripples its functionality (and I sure as hell don't want to use its own password manager because it's totally insecure liek all browser password managers), it's the only browser in the world that can sync fucking search engines through bookmarks (using keywords) so you don't have to manually add keywords to every browser you ever use. It's also the only browser that can be portable and still update like you're using a full blown install (which is great for corporate environments where you can use it fully without any admin rights as well as just being fully functional from USB drive). It's also the only one fully open source. What saddens me is how they copy all the retarded decisions and designs from Chrome. Like how blatantly they copied Chrome's skin. That ugly ass curved interface. Yuck. Thankfulyl they've gone back to having some unique feel with their own one again. And closing of entire browser when you close the last tab. Who thought that shit was a good idea? Thankfully Opera didn't follow with that shit and closing last tab just clears it and leaves browser open. At least Scandinavians have some fucking common sense.

 

I'm currently on Opera, but when they manage to fix Addons syncing and add support for password managers on Android, I'll be coming back. Firefox is a very good browser with at least for me 2 fatal flaws. Google Chrome is one big fatal flaw...

[DKT27]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

 

 

Good assessment.

 

I'm surprised you do not find Android version slow though - just guessing as you did not have a something to say on it. I waited a long time for them to fix the Android version's speed but they are getting slower and slower, at least on phones with limited speed and RAM.

 

As for not closing the browser when closing the last tab, see this. Even I do not like the default option for it.

[RejZoR]

Dunno, I'm using Xiaomi Mi5 which has a rather speedy Kryo quad core and 3GB RAM so speed really isn't an issue even though Snapdragon 820 is a very former flagship now. The times I was using Firefox for Android it work pretty well. I just didn't like absolute lack of Autofill/Accessibility support for password managers which is really crappy.

 

I'm now using Opera on Windows anyway which doesn't have the retarded last tab closing thing by default. For Firefox I know there is a switch, but it's annoying fiddling with it every time I install it. Which is often since I format my system often. For Chrome you need an extension which then eats 100MB just to fix this last closing tab idiocy. Which is even more idiotic and doesn't even work all that well because it's all bunch of hacks with dual tabs in the end and I absolutely hated that.

[DKT27]

On 12/19/2018 at 8:19 PM, RejZoR said:

Dunno, I'm using Xiaomi Mi5 which has a rather speedy Kryo quad core and 3GB RAM so speed really isn't an issue even though Snapdragon 820 is a very former flagship now. The times I was using Firefox for Android it work pretty well. I just didn't like absolute lack of Autofill/Accessibility support for password managers which is really crappy.

 

I see. If you want to take my word for it, Firefox android, the main one, on outdated 2GB RAM phones, is one of the most slowest, battery hogging, RAM consuming app out there.

 

From what I understand, they have not even switched to the latest Firefox engine in it and are making a completely new Firefox android version I think.