back to article No Mo'zilla for about 100 techies today: Firefox maker lays off staff as boss talks of 'difficult choices' and funding

On Wednesday Mozilla Corporation, maker of the Firefox browser and would-be internet privacy protector, said it plans to lay off an undisclosed number of employees. "Creating the new products we need to change the future requires us to do things differently, including allocating resources for this purpose," said Mozilla …

  1. Gene Cash Silver badge

    dwindling pool

    It's a dwindling pool of users because Firefox has a dwindling list of useful features.

    I'm not going to quote the ever-expanding list of removed features, because at this point it's just flogging a dead horse.

    Not shedding a tear, mates.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: dwindling pool

      Personally, I think it's got better by focussing on being a better browser rather than trying to do everything. It's noticeably faster and more reliable since they switched to the new engine. This doesn't mean I agree with the dumbing down of the UI, but, on balance, I think they've got most things right.

      Vivaldi is probably still the only browser that's trying to cram more and more features into the browser but, because they messed up a few things and have consistently failed to deliver the promised mail cient, I jumped ship to Firefox and MailMate, which I even pay for. I used to pay for Opera and would consider paying for Firefox if it meant that I could get real support.

      1. stiine Silver badge

        Re: dwindling pool

        No.

        They got rid of people in QA? Why didn't they get rid of the Pocket integration team? Or the Stories developers? Or the Snippets team? Or all three.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: dwindling pool

          How do you know they're not on the way already? Disabled them myself and don't know anyone who uses them. Will be glad to see them go, which I expect they will if Firefox decides that focussing on privacy is what they want to do.

    2. Captain Scarlet
      Alien

      Re: dwindling pool

      All I want is a Fast Tabbed Browser with shortcuts on a top bar, for me thats Firefox (Was Edge because for me it was faster until Firefox's started using more than 1 thread, was Opera with the Presto Engine before that).

    3. quxinot

      Re: dwindling pool

      Dwindling? Really?

      Screw that. It gets worse every release because they keep adding idiotic stuff that just bloats it. Pocket, for example.

      Mozilla needs to focus on making the base product fast as blazes and then stop shackling corpses to it. The whole idea with plugins is that users can pick out the bits they want, rather than having to disable the crap they don't want.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Meh

        Re: dwindling pool

        "they keep adding idiotic stuff that just bloats it. Pocket, for example"

        And, the "developers" who do this are RETAINED...

        If I ever get around to forking Firefox (I'd like to call it "Rebellion", with a 3D skeuomorphic appearance, no 'hamburger', no overt touch-friendliness, and *NO* *POCKET*) it would look more like it did prior to Australis, NOT have idiotic "features" like 'pocket', and do ONE THING WELL: browse the web.

        1. Carpet Deal 'em

          Re: dwindling pool

          That sounds a lot like Pale Moon. I liked it, but I stopped using it when the developer blocked NoScript(the official reason was that it caused instability, but it's pretty transparent it was just the dev not liking it).

    4. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

      Re: dwindling pool

      Can you let us know which browser you choose to use then so we can similarly rip holes in your argument for choosing it. Thanks.

      I'm a proud FF user. It's the only one that really allows me to pick, test and choose from a vast number of privacy based add-ins and options to help stop my browsing and data being raped by all in-sundry such as MS, Google and Opera. I'm also a fan of the numerous forks such as Waterfox.

      1. Snake Silver badge

        Re: dwindling pool

        "I'm a proud FF user. It's the only one that really allows me to pick, test and choose from a vast number of privacy based add-ins and options to help stop my browsing and data being raped by all in-sundry such as MS, Google and Opera. I'm also a fan of the numerous forks such as Waterfox."

        This. I stick with Firefox personally, even though I've had to install Chrome for the [other] users in my office that I manage, is strictly due to privacy: NoScript, Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin. Meanwhile, I just discovered this very day that one of my Chrome users picked up a trojan (which his system, converted to Win10 just this week, found and quarantined) but, if I tell said user (the boss) this is why *I* use Firefox, he'll still believe he knows more than I, I'll have to listen to him blather off, and I get nowhere.

        So, I shut up and put up with his righteousness.

        Firefox could be great. In the meanwhile, we users put up with "pretty good", because they've been both too arrogant and too stubborn to listen to users and do what we want out of them, not what they think is best for us.

    5. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: dwindling pool

      it's my general opinion that the SINGLE THING that did the MOST HARM to firefox is AUSTRALIS.

      That, and everything ELSE that comes with it.

      Mozilla has finally learned that FEATURE CREEP (and removal) isn't "an upgrade".

      So what they need to do, now that they've reduced their "head count", is focus on the basics. That is:

      a) backward compatibility (something that FF 57 _REMOVED_, remember?)

      b) reliability and stability (on FreeBSD and Linux this isn't bad)

      c) *SPEED*

      d) *PRIVACY* - give us a reason to *NOT* use chrome, because Firefox does NOT track [or at least lets you bit-fiddle manage what's happening]

      More anti-tracking pro-privacy features: good

      Hijacking DNS so _YOU_ can track us: bad

      Just sayin' Mozilla, it's *OBVIOUS* to some of us...

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: dwindling pool

      That’s why if I need a non-Chromium/Blink browser for some reason, I use SeaMonkey. It still has all of the features I’ve gotten used to over the years.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't be Evil

    Evil is the Route to All Money

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't be Evil

      Speaking of which, did you notice how the article just couldn't resist putting in a Google Chrome plug at the end for something happening _SIX_MONTHS_AWAY_?

      You don't need to wonder why Google Chrome grows and all others die off. Google's "Do No Evil" blindfold was clearly very effective, even "journalists" still where it proudly... apparently.

      1. Carl D

        Re: Don't be Evil

        I don't have to wonder why Google Chrome grows. It's been included (and ticked to install by default) on just about every bit of software for years. Even motherboard driver install discs. And, we know how most people just click OK... OK... OK... through software installation screens without reading.

        I've had a few family and friends who have asked me "what's this Google Chrome and how did it get on my PC?"

        If Mozilla had the money to be able to do what Google's done with Chrome I'm sure they would be the #1 browser today by a huge margin.

        If Google compared the number of Chrome installs (which is obviously the figure they use) to the number of people that actually use it I bet there would be a huge difference in numbers.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not to worry,

    … selling high ranks in recommended add-ons will make up for any shortfall. Plus, the next version will integrate a dating service, currently codenamed FireF*cks, until you install the NoFoxGiven feature blocker add-on.

  4. Scott Pedigo
    Unhappy

    I still use it, but...

    they annoyed me greatly when they stopped allowing me to install my own plugins, that I wrote myself, in my own Firefox installation, in the name of increased security.

    Yes, I know why they did it (to stop naive people from installing possibly infected plugin files they downloaded from who knows where). Yes, I could still do that in a developer version, and yes I know that somehow, by some arcane process, I could submit my plugins for official approval. But I was never able to figure out the latter, and couldn't be bothered to do the former, and my plugins weren't anything that the general public would have been interested in, just some helpful menu items for some browser-based game I was playing. But it definitely killed my enthusiasm for learning Javascript and how to tinker with web pages.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: I still use it, but...

      *ahem* modify the source, create a patch for it, and re-apply the patch whenever you bother "up"grading.

    2. ilovecookiez

      Re: I still use it, but...

      If you're just injecting JavaScript into a webpage all you gotta do is make it a user.js and run it through Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey/Violetmonkey.

  5. AMBxx Silver badge

    Still my number 1 (only just though)

    Still my main browser, but I tend to use different browsers for different things. The latest update has screwed up any site that uses Recaptcha, so having to use Chrome a bit more often.

    Personally, I find it hard to think of any must have addition to any browser in over 10 years. Once we had tabs, adblockers and synchronised bookmarks, I was happy. The rest is just fiddling around the edges.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

      has screwed up any site that uses Recaptcha

      Haven't you got that backwards? Recaptcha screws every user who comes across it and forces them to train Google's AI services. It's long-known to be useless against bots and a terrible user experience.

      1. veti Silver badge

        Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

        Ob. XKCD.

    2. Nick

      Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

      "Once we had tabs, adblockers and synchronised bookmarks, I was happy. The rest is just fiddling around the edges"

      Exactly, because the vast majority of browser interaction is with what's in the window, not around it. It's pretty difficult to distinguish your product in such a case.

      I'd be interested to see just how may people actually would go back to Opera were they to release the much maligned integrated mail client. I'd bet not that many after all.

      It seems that this is symptomatic of the whole personal tech industry now, where phones, PCs, tablets etc. reached 100% functionality some years ago and the "new" features are increasingly peripheral to the fundamental purpose of the device.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

        I'd be interested to see just how may people actually would go back to Opera were they to release the much maligned integrated mail client. I'd bet not that many after all.

        Probably not many, though I think Opera Mail (which itself borrowed many ideas from BeOS) was great. E-mail, for those of us still using it, is moving towards things like Spike, which follow a similar view not folder-based approach with some ML thrown in supposedly to make our lives easier.

        1. Irongut Silver badge

          Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

          > E-mail, for those of us still using it, is moving towards things like Spike, which follow a similar view not folder-based approach with some ML thrown

          God no. I'm being forced to use GMail at work atm and the lack of folders is driving me nuts.

      2. veti Silver badge

        Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

        "Phones", in their basic design, reached "100% functionality" in the 1980s, when cordless handsets and programmable dialling became mainstream. Everything since then has been adding new features - such as the ability to take pictures, read books, browse the web, download apps...

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

      If you want the least amount of hassle while being forced to use Google Recaptcha, you have to use Google Chrome.

      Odd, that.

      Almost as odd as their YouTube CSS which is designed to slow non-Chrome browsers to a crawl.

      But remember, they don't do evil.

    4. Snake Silver badge

      Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

      "The latest update has screwed up any site that uses Recaptcha, so having to use Chrome a bit more often."

      That's odd: Firefox certainly screws up many things, but my ReCaptcha works fine. Profile or plug-in problem?

    5. zuckzuckgo

      Re: Still my number 1 (only just though)

      Clearly all the others are just a bunch of number twos.

  6. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Step up the game

    How about this: Sell a premium browser. Get paying customers and, in return, serve them with the product they want. It's never going to work asking customers to donate towards an average browser that's always a few major bugs away from working correctly.

    I know it's open source. The payment is to provide regular builds from a carefully curated source fork and support for getting bugs fixed. If Firefox can't be reliable enough to sell then what's the point of having Mozilla?

    1. msage

      Re: Step up the game

      That's what netscape did when it launched a free version. They never recovered and I am sure things are far worse now. Netscape had a product it sold, MS came along with IE for free and Netscape switch to a freemium model. I just don't think there are enough people who would pay for a browser... If you're a big corp who needs to customise it to your needs you've probably got enough money to take the opensource chromium and roll your own and I can't think of any home/SMB/prosumers who would pay for a browser. Not to say I think it's a bad idea, I just don't know who would cough

      1. AMBxx Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: Step up the game

        The other issue for Netscape was that IE4 was a much better product. Switching from IE to Netscape felt like stepping back in time. Amazing how badly MS screwed up after that - had all the market share and became complacent.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: Step up the game

          Actually, Netscape made the mistake of going down the Suite route and XML all the way down. This made "Communicator" a bit of a hog in comparison to Microsoft's crappy IE – IE 6 was the one that really got traction.

      2. cb7

        Re: Step up the game

        "I can't think of any home/SMB/prosumers who would pay for a browser."

        Many moons ago, I used to pay for iBrowse on AmigaOS. I'm pretty sure iBrowse was the first browser to introduce tabs. AFAIK, it's still for sale, though I seriously doubt anyone's paid for it recently. I gave up on it after waiting a few years in vain for it to support CSS/DOM. 15 years later and it's still missing. But I digress.

        It would indeed be sad if FF disappeared. It is my main browser again right now. I think I'll start preloading it on all customer builds/re-builds.

      3. Carpet Deal 'em

        Re: Step up the game

        Netscape's big product was their webserver software, whose market was destroyed by Microsoft including IIS free in all server versions of Windows.

  7. tiggity Silver badge

    Too late

    Rot started with making it a chrome clone

    Bringing back some of the useful features that were either removed or you need to mess about in config to achieve.

    A lot of things I n ow do via plugins when they used to be in the browser itself.

    .. and don't get me stated on the switch to chrome plugins which meant a raft of plugins I used a lot no longer work (in the name of security & performance of course)

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Too late

      "Rot started with making it a chrome clone"

      Exactly!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    we’ve also had to make some difficult choices which led to the elimination of roles

    translation:

    had to make = don't blame us, it was God's (markets') will

    difficult choices = WE suffer so, so much, why don't you feel a little sympathy at all this pain we feel right now.

    elimination of roles = well, you know... people will go without money AND their lives will turn upside down, never mind)

    p.s. good news for those fired is that, most if not will find another job (if only because they HAVE TO), and looking back, most of them will realize it helped them in their careers, as generally happens when your role gets "eliminated".

    1. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

      Re: we’ve also had to make some difficult choices which led to the elimination of roles

      By chance are you that bloke that gets paid to "let people go" from that documentary movie Up in the air?

  9. fnusnu

    Still no text zoom and reflow on Android

    This is the one reason I use Opera on Android, and am happy to recommend it to others, especially friends whose eyesight cannot cope with small text.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    a dwindling pool of ad-averse Firefox users

    "FREE for ads" is a concept that's essentially, race to the bottom, and once your users take "free" for "I know me rights!", no other solution becomes acceptable. Or, arguably, it was the typical short-term strategy: reap profits NOW, never mind what happens when anti-ad technology catches up, we will think of SOMETHING, i.e. the arms race continues, and so does the race to the bottom, who outfucks whom :(

  11. ForthIsNotDead
    Facepalm

    I like firefox

    I'd happily pay a pound a month or something like - £12 a year - it's not much is it, but if enough of paid £1 a month, all their troubles would be over.

    Having said that, I have to wonder they are employing >1000 staff? What the hell are they all doing? Seriously.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

      That was my first thought too. Given that they only have $40m in real revenue. The rest is basically an anti-trust payoff from Google.

      Having run dev teams for products about same order of magnitude complexity as Firefox I really cannot see needing more than 5 dev groupes max within the total dev team. Plus QA. Each dev group being maybe 4 or 5 programmers. Being generous, 30 to 35 max. With the usual ratio of R&D to sale/marketing/ general operations in single product market niche software companies that would get you to maybe 100/120 people max. Which is about ballpark for a $40m/$50m revenue company trying to make the standard 15% net margin of genuine software businesses.

      So what are the other 900 plus doing? Empire building for upper management? Until they jump ship?

      All sounds very dot.com..

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

        Exactly as per title.

        Have a look at the mozilla.org website and you'll sadly see an organisation that has somewhat lost track of its core focus and has got involved in a whole lot of side projects that seem to rather overlap with the spaces that EFF, noyb, etc, already occupy.

        Not that these are bad things, but should Mozilla really be spaffing loads of cash on them? It seems to be a similar case to Wikipedia, where it now has rather more money than it knows what to properly do things with, with regard to its core purpose.

        If Moz is feeling the pinch a bit, then that's arguably a good thing (although possibly also a warning sign for the longer term future of their funding model). But why then are they cutting back on important/essential things such as QA, and not the less mission-critical side garnishes?

        I will send Firefox a donation, they do deserve it in principle, but only if they will spend it on the genuinely important things and don't waste it on fripperies. I did already donate to Thunderbird a while ago, who, having been pushed out from the nest, perhaps rather more need the money. Both programs are important parts of an internet that shouldn't rely on spyware to continue to exist, and if Mozilla can also develop further new services or programs that can provide an income stream, that's not a bad thing, but they do need to stay focused.

        1. Carpet Deal 'em

          Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

          But why then are they cutting back on important/essential things such as QA, and not the less mission-critical side garnishes?

          Pet projects and administration are almost always the very last things that organizations in a bind cut. The peons who keep the place running have little cachet, so cutting them is easy.

          1. iGNgnorr

            Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

            "Pet projects and administration are almost always the very last things that organizations in a bind cut. The peons who keep the place running have little cachet, so cutting them is easy."

            The rationale for this is simple: QA and support do not create revenue. Pet projects, in someone's mind, might one day, possibly, maybe, create revenue. Administration is where the decisions are made about who goes, so administration is clearly essential in order to determine who else to get rid of.

      2. chroot

        Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

        I think you don't realise how complex the render software is. Have you ever looked at the specs of grid or flex, for example. Having two teams of five people working on that, won't cut it.

      3. P.B. Lecavalier

        Re: I like firefox..those 1000+ what are they doing?

        Hey I did not realize that. This simple arithmetic is just stunning. This has a scent of Wikipedia, a.k.a. the beggars with millions in bank. But WORST. At least Wikipedia is not known to s**t the bed all the time.

        Take Gentoo and Debian Linux. Those projects are well and alive. I don't know if either has paid staffers (if so, unlikely to be more than a handful). My point? ~99% of the work is done "magically" by the community and it does not cost millions a year. These are examples of relatively well run free software projects.

        Firefox? It seems that ~99% of the work is done by staffers. That's a prime example of nominal open source software. You can get the code, sure, but... I don't see anybody touching it!

    2. PeKo

      Re: I like firefox

      Not only >1000 employees, but expense of ~450.000 per employee per year?

    3. TVU

      Re: I like firefox

      "Having said that, I have to wonder they are employing >1000 staff? What the hell are they all doing? Seriously".

      They do appear to be paying unduly large amounts to those who make the 'unhiring' decisions. The last publicly available records for 2017 indicated that CEO Mitchell Baker received $2,346,026 which is £1,790,370 / €2,121,828.

  12. steviebuk Silver badge

    I hated chrome...

    ...but was forced, somewhat, to use it for new job. Got used to it and now I struggle to cope without the official plugin from google that allows you to right click text from a website and then save to Google keep. Google keep is one of the only things in google i like and is really useful for note taking. I still use firefox at home but miss this feature a lot.

    1. Zolko Silver badge

      Re: I hated chrome...

      "I hated chrome....but was forced, somewhat, to use it"

      so I use Falcon. Chromium based, Qt, works with all things Google (well, the strict minimum without a Google account).

  13. Valeyard
    Mushroom

    good moneysaving plan guys

    sack all the QA leads and move the testers somewhere else

    I don't see how that could possibly come back to bite you later

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: good moneysaving plan guys

      Hey, it works for Microsoft.

  14. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Perhaps they shouldn't have kept Thunderbird onboard. There was some talk a while back of the possibility of it going into the Document Foundation as part of LibreOffice. That would have reduced the costs a bit. With Tbird, or even better, Seamonkey, Lirghtning and Lightbird all incorporated, maybe as optional extras, it would have beefed LibreOffice up into a fuller package.

    1. Dave559

      Thunderbird

      Thunderbird isn't really part of Mozilla any more. It gets some limited organisational legal structure support from the Mozilla Foundation, but it is essentially its own project now.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Thunderbird

        AFAIK it was a volunteer project before those discussions with support from the foundation. I'm not sure the existing arrangement has altered much.

        1. sean.fr

          Re: Thunderbird

          I like thunderbird. It is the second thing I put on a new machine - after anti-virus. There was a handy tool to migrate accounts from an old machines to a new machines -Mozbackup. Mozbackup does not work now. It took a snapshot of all the emails + account details on the old machine, then a simple import. Easy. No need to find the email account details. Also a good backup in case the hardware crashes. Christsmas, we bought a faster PC and I had to do this manually - painful.

          If you moved ISP years ago, but are still using the email account on the old ISP - you may have big problems if you cannot find the account password.

          Without Mozbackup - next PC change, I will probably abandon Thunderbird.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Thunderbird

            I am an average computer user. I can't tell POP3 from thing-a-ma-jig. Thunderbird was so complicated to setup on a windows computer, that I could not make it work. The people at Mozilla back then were very much less than helpful. The old attitude of "I am so full of computer knowledge, that I refuse to help you" is part of the problem. By comparison, why could I set up hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail, or proton mail

            without a hitch? Thunderbird refused to be helpful, and that's why they languish in the market. They act like a tax accountant who mocks clients for not knowing "depreciation, amortization & generally accepted

            accounting principles". That's just not what you should do to build a client (I mean human client) relationship.

            Apart from that, Mozilla could make money by building a system that gets rid of annoying paywalls, whereby numerous web publishing magazines (from Computing, Fishing, Cigar Aficionado, to Wall Street Journal, Herald, Washington Post, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Stern, whatever) that would work by having people sign up for a plan that lets people read whatever they want for 5 cents, 5 pennies, per article, and to be workable, the system would let people build up e.g. $5 or Euro 5 worth of charges, before it it charges this to the customer's actual credit card. And, being automated, it could put each 5 penny item into the various buckets for each publication, and pay it out to them once that bucket hits e.g. $100, 100E, minus a $2 or so fee each time. That way, people won't get asked to subscribe to the whole magazine, when they just wanted to read ONE (1) ARTICLE. That way, a publication might get $12,500 or so, if 250,000 people read that particular article. Would they say no to that? And of course, any publication that gets too greedy and demands $1 per article won't get as many clicks as those who are happy with 5 pennies each.

            That might work as a sort of "Internet Publishers Clearinghouse", with or without the offers to win

            a million bucks, pounds, euros. At least, if I were CEO of Mozilla, this is something I would do.

            To quote Mark Knopfler, it's "money for nothing, chicks for free". I think he meant actual chickens, in order to not be offensive.

  15. NerryTutkins

    Microsoft didn't help

    IE/Edge was long overdue for being taken outside and shot. But when they decided to dump it and use an open source engine, they could have picked firefox.

    It probably still wouldn't have stopped Edge's decline. But it might just have saved Mozilla, given MS an opportunity to innovate and avoided the web becoming a monoculture.

    Sadly, I don't expect Mozilla to last long now, there is simply too much money and effort on the chrome side now. Pretty soon, there is simply going to be no alternative to chrome, and we'll be back in the bad old days when web standards don't matter, and any vulnerability will lay waste to masses of users, with no practical alternative to switch to.

    1. P.B. Lecavalier

      Re: Microsoft didn't help

      I recall hearing some time ago that the visual output/layout of Gecko engine was superior to that of Chromium's engine, but the non-existent documentation of Gecko made it utterly unusable for anything outside of Firefox.

  16. P.B. Lecavalier
    Unhappy

    How Sad

    They adopted the crazy version scheme of Chrome, just to "keep up" (some people clearly have nothing useful to do in that organization). Then eventually they ditched its look to make it look like Chrome, which was heavily decried from the user base (apparently they have people to "think" about version scheme but none to think about users), enough to spur forks. Clearly, arrogant idiots have way too much power over there.

    I still use it and have been over the last 15 years, but it's quite sad to see so many stupid decisions were taken by Mozilla. Just a few more I can think of:

    * Get rid of their very qualified CEO Brendan Eich for something that had absolutely nothing to do with technology, only due to a totalitarian leftist/emotional/brainless subculture that plagues much of IT (cowards and low-life become brave when hidden behind a monitor).

    * Kill development of Thunderbird (which is a thing, had and still has users), in favor of the ridiculous FirefoxOS, something that nobody asked for, never took off and is now dead and buried. One top reason why the Linux desktop is not taking off in enterprise setting is due to the lack of something impeccable to replace Outlook. We are still waiting.

    * They had hundred of meeellions from Google in advertising in the past. That was so heavily squandered that it makes me unable to donate to Mozilla, even though I would very much like to support Firefox.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: How Sad

      "some people clearly have nothing useful to do in that organization"

      And I bet that EVERY! ONE! OF! THEM! is STILL EMPLOYED THERE...

    2. AJ MacLeod

      Re: How Sad

      There have been many, many more stupid decisions from Mozilla over the past few years but they all come down to this: paying zero attention to their primary role, and zero interest (outright hostility actually) in/to their actual user base and real supporters.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: How Sad

      "due to a totalitarian leftist/emotional/brainless subculture"

      Whatever you may otherwise think of RMS introducing a distinct political tone into software development opened a door through which too many have crowded who had more interest in the political rather than the S/W aspects. Ironically, he eventually fell foul of them.

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: How Sad

      Then eventually they ditched its look to make it look like Chrome

      Australis was designed first, they just took so long to execute that Chrome got there before them.

      Get rid of their very qualified CEO Brendan Eich for something that had absolutely nothing to do with technology, only due to a totalitarian leftist/emotional/brainless subculture

      Oh FFS.

      It seems he wasn't a very good CEO before the gay marriage thing blew up, that was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

      in favor of the ridiculous FirefoxOS, something that nobody asked for, never took off and is now dead and buried.

      It still lives on in the form of KaiOS for mobiles, Panasonic's TVs, and custom ROMs.

      1. P.B. Lecavalier

        Re: How Sad

        It seems he wasn't a very good CEO before the gay marriage thing blew up

        Maybe so. It would not be a surprise that an über-geek does not make a good geek-in-chief. Peter's Principle. Even so, it doesn't seem his successors were much of an improvement.

        It [FirefoxOS] still lives on in the form of KaiOS for mobiles, Panasonic's TVs, and custom ROMs.

        Yeah, I thought I heard that some necromancers were tinkering with its remains. But upon the initial launch of that thing, it was well known that this space was very crowded, unlike, ahem, email clients. "We are going to succeed where Microsoft and Blackberry failed!!" Yeah sure.

  17. pg4003

    same old corporate greed.

    mozilla wants donations while their execs are paid millions. f that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: same old corporate greed.

      "mozilla wants donations while their execs are paid millions"

      Citation needed.

      If true, I'd be just as angry as you, but is that actually the case?

  18. chroot

    Removed features

    So what are those features that were removed and so important?

    I had to say goodbye to Morning Coffee when Firefox made the extensions more secure. Do I miss it? Not at all.

    I like the steps that Mozilla is taking with Firefox the last years. Hey, even Pocket plays nicely with my Kobo e-reader. Should it have been a core function? Well, Mozilla bought it, so I don't blame them. If you don't like it, hide the button. Does anyone complain about their car having an ash tray? Didn't think so. And you can't even hide it.

    1. Carpet Deal 'em
      WTF?

      Re: Removed features

      I had to say goodbye to Morning Coffee when Firefox made the extensions more secure. Do I miss it? Not at all.

      Congrats! You're one data point. Plenty of people lost functionality they had been using - sometimes for years - when Mozilla "made the extensions more secure" and more than a few were less than appreciative of those changes.

    2. DropBear

      Re: Removed features

      The value that using a browser offers me comes wholly and entirely from its extensions and UI, not it its engine and mostly-useless "features". Mozilla chose to ditch those, I chose not to upgrade, ever. Still looking for an adequate replacement (being which Waterfox fails at amazingly hard, lacking support for much the exact same stuff), puttering along with Palemoon (and vanilla Chromium whenever the former inevitably fails to render) until I can figure something else out. As for Mozilla, they are welcome to cry me a river, for I have zero goodwill left for them; quite the opposite, in fact.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF are they doing with burning $1/2 billion per year??

  20. simpfeld

    Switched back to Firefox for privacy reasons

    As Firefox allowed me to host my own sync servers (bookmarks, history, passwords, open tabs on each device) which is impossible with Chrome or Chromium based browsers. Actually someone opened a bug about this on Chromium (hosting your own sync server) and they pretty much closed in straight away (the Google mothership would never allow that!).

    The new engine is pretty fast but I doubt many other people care about their privacy! In the same way they don't mind connecting an microphone in their house to the Internet!

  21. Unlimited

    Brave Browser

    Installed it when a FF update broke NoScript.

    Never went back.

  22. Jbeteta

    Google pays 300 million dollars anually to Mozilla for integrating its search engine in Firefox... 300 million dollars... and Mozilla was forced to laid off 70 workers because...? Maybe I'm missing something and I understand that loosing a job is part of life, but somebody at Mozilla is eating all the cake.

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