Thank you, Chris

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/08/29/thank-you-chris/

by lasr21 • 7 years ago

240 196 7 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

kurthr• 7 years ago

Nitpick- Should this be, "leaving his role"? How about:

Chris Beard will be leaving his role as Mozilla CEO

xparco• 7 years ago

Leaving has a negative connotation

CydeWeys• 7 years ago

Does it? What alternative accurate wording would you suggest? Everything else I can think of is euphemism. Leaving a job is ... leaving a job. It doesn't say why.

spiderfarmer• 7 years ago

Chris was great from what I have seen, but I think Mozilla needs a CEO that knows how to increase market share.

fooqux• 7 years ago

The hard part will be doing it while not running afoul of the ethical standard that they have set for themselves, and so many of us hold them to.

It's easy to increase market share if you're willing to play dirty and have lots of money to throw around. When you have neither... well, I'd hate to be the new CEO.

RandomBacon2• 7 years ago

They need a killer feature.

Firefox used to be the only better alternative to IE.

Then Chrome came along and it used to be the best at tabs and resources.

Then Brave came along with automatic ad-blocking.

Firefox needs to match the competition and surpass it. What would the next killer feature be?

jcadam• 7 years ago

Can't help but wonder how Brendan Eich would have fared in the job.

_red• 7 years ago

Well, Brave started from nothing and seems to be growing. I use it now on all my devices and really like it as a daily driver.

Had Brendan been able to try these ideas with the firefox userbase it could've advanced the privacy conversation much further...

huhtenberg• 7 years ago

Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it.

At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive. Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. So what Mozilla will end up with is (a) a dip in funding and (b) a dip in the user share. This might be just enough to either make them reconsider their ethics or to kill Mozilla altogether.

So, yeah, a good CEO that can shed the Google dependency is very much required.

ur-whale• 7 years ago

On the flipside, Chrome went from being the best browser on the market to a bloated spying machine, and I'm very glad firefox exists to offer an alternative.

If on top of that, they manage to do it using Google's dough, I say bravo and hope they'll remain smart enough to feed from the vampire for a long time

glhaynes• 7 years ago

I'd guess the intersection of people who will even consider using Firefox, have search engine needs that won't be satisfied by DuckDuckGo, and won't be able to change their search engine is vanishingly small, so I'm not that concerned about the user experience hit. But, yeah, the dip in funding would be brutal in that scenario.

coldpie2• 7 years ago

I'd be happy to support Mozilla financially, but I'm too lazy to go figure out how to do it. Link me to a Patreon, or shove some subscription model more prominently in my face, Mozilla.

saidajigumi3• 7 years ago

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality.

I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.

daveFNbuck2• 7 years ago

I use DDG almost exclusively and I haven't noticed the difference.

If having Google as the default search is so important, couldn't they just make it the default without the deal?

Ididntdothis3• 7 years ago

"Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. "

Sadly I agree. I use DDG almost exclusively but when ever I use "!g" I often get better results there.

TheArcane2• 7 years ago

How about startpage as an alternative? It's literally just Google results

yumraj2• 7 years ago

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives

I've been using DDG, finally, for a little less than 1 year. For most part my DDG searches have been sufficient, in the sense that I generally find what I'm looking for and my need is met.

On few occasions where my need is not met, I do a !g and sometimes Google gives me what I want, but not in all the cases. I have to refine my search query in many, if not most, of those cases.

One area where Google is definitely better than DDG, for obvious reasons, is where Google shows better YouTube videos and I believe also Image results. But for regular searches, DDG has been satisfactory.

eznoonze• 7 years ago

Are you sure the season that G gives you "better" results is not a consequence of them tracking you everywhere and know your preferences and habits?

squarefoot• 7 years ago

"Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality."

I use DDG as main search engine since a while. It usually works, but occasionally (less than 10% of searches however) I have to repeat the search using Google. The point being that even if I had to revert to Google for half of my searches, this would mean for Google 50% less information about my search habits, and exposure to their injected ads/information, which wouldn't be a trivial figure at all.

One doesn't use DDG because it's superior to Google (it's not and won't be for a long while) but rather to send a message to corporations making profits out of user information. I'm convinced Google doesn't give a rat's ass if ten thousands users like me don't use their search engine and services as we're already flagged in their database as users with adblockers, therefore immune to advertising (including ads that manage to defeat the blockers), but they would surely panic in terror should DDG use become somewhat trendy among Joe Users after some media coverage, social media campaign etc. The reason being that "normal", usually non technical, users are the ones providing Google mostly with real numbers because they allow webpages to analyze their habits and don't obfuscate their online behavior. Should a big number of those users make the transition to DDG or alternatives, we would likely hear of flying chairs at Google headquarters.

itronitron• 7 years ago

i have been using DDG exclusively for over a year now with no complaints or need to use Google search

inimino• 7 years ago

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality.

I prefer DDG and I almost never Google, except out of curiosity, but I see this sentiment a lot.

AriaMinaei• 7 years ago

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality

I started using DDG, believing that "it shows me inferior results, but privacy-wise, it is worth it." Yet I've come to learn that DDG's results are often on-par or better than Google, and inferior only a small fraction of the time.

Often when I "!g" a query, I find that I get pretty much the same results with Google too. There are maybe 10% of cases where the results significantly differ.

My perception now is that Google performs better on programming-related queries, and much better on giving me local results (especially results related to my city). But when searching for content that you'd often find on blogs, or looking for reviews of products, DDG almost always beats Google by showing less SEO-heavy, more authentic results.

Edit: typo

boomboomsubban2• 7 years ago

They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive...So what Mozilla will end up with is (a) a dip in funding and

Right, like from 2014 to 2017 when Google wasn't the default search provider for Firefox. It was such a shame to see their income go from 300 million to 500 million.

liability• 7 years ago

Google's search quality has been on the decline for a while now. If that trend continues and DDG merely manages to stay the same, it will probably only be a few more years until they're as good as Google...

jldugger• 7 years ago

At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement.

AFAICT, the situation is not so different from the days where Microsoft was paying Apple to avoid a defacto finding of monopoly.

angrygoat• 7 years ago

When Firefox decimated Internet Explorer in the 2000s, it was just... better. And I think Chrome had some fairly obvious gains over Firefox and IE which led it to gain market share. I was an early adopter of Chrome, but that was in the days before Google seemed so sinister...

I use Firefox now because I care about privacy, and I'd rather use a browser developed by a non-profit that cares about that as well. But I suspect that's a bit too abstract for most people to care about, at least at this point.

Chrome's advantage seems fairly baked in; people aren't going to shift unless there's a decent reason to. I wonder what that reason could be. Can privacy concerns become a sufficient motivator for people to shift browser; or even, thinking a bit bigger, to change the fundamental architecture of the web?

modzu4• 7 years ago

its so obvious that native ad blocking could be that feature. when a non-tech user opens up a browser with ad blocking it blows their mind. they go to youtube and put on a song, and wait! they don't have to reach for the mute first to silence some loud ad? they don't have to wait to click "skip" on the ad? it just works?? the user just wants the content and we can give it to them.

imo this would be the step from chrome, which will never implement it because they depend on it. but the web is not ads. the web can survive without ads.

Vinnl5• 7 years ago

Firefox was a lot better than IE, but decimated is not the right word. I think it had about 25% market share at its peak?

Chrome might be better than Firefox for some use cases, but the difference is definitely not as big as it used to be between Firefox and IE. Yet its market share is way higher.

Which leads me to think it's not (just) about being better. I'd guess lock-in/cross-product marketing is another major factor.

jrochkind14• 7 years ago

Chrome also has a persistent advantage in being able to advertise Chrome on google search results.

Which they do, if you access them using a non-Chrome browser, or at least used to... I confess I'm not sure because I still use Chrome. I agree with you about the advantage of "if you're already using it, something has to be a LOT better to get you to switch".

hutzlibu• 7 years ago

Well, how to increase market share for a browser?

Simple, offer a better browser.

Now the technical core of firefox seems now very solid(if they keep the extensions api stable), with long term decisions like rust and quantum paying off.. But the problem seems to be, that many websites are developed and tested in chrome only, sometimes with chrome-only features.. so it does not help only implementing nonstandard feature after nonstandard feature. They need to get the developers back and that can only work with a massive investment in the firefox dev tools as they are far, far behind chrome devtools. I sympathise with firefox and mozilla a lot, but even for me, it would require a huge improvement to even consider changing back. I am annoyed enough from the occasional firefox debugging. No wonder more and more developers simply skip firefox due to low marketshare and save the effort.

feanaro3• 7 years ago

They need to get the developers back and that can only work with a massive investment in the firefox dev tools as they are far, far behind chrome devtools.

This isn't a universal truth -- I consider them much better in many respects. It's much better to point out concrete deficiencies as these can be acted upon.

Ididntdothis3• 7 years ago

One area where a company like Firefox could do well is embedded browsers. Some years ago I had a need to embed a browser into a windows app and there were really not many good options available. Mozilla had something (XULRunner) that seemed not maintained anymore. Mozilla could build a better competitor to Electron. That would give them developer mindshare and probably also contributions once companies are building products with that framework.

Or they could be innovative with their browser. Sometimes I have trouble telling chrome and Firefox apart. They are so similar.

jcranmer• 7 years ago

In retrospect, it seems that Mozilla's biggest stumble was their decision to ignore embedding. Around 2009-ish, the decision was made to break any compatibility guarantees for embedding, at first temporarily (which was necessary until new APIs that could support multiprocess in the engine), and then the idea was that you wouldn't embed Gecko at all, and instead use XULRunner. Then XULRunner was killed off for Firefox webapps, which itself was killed off for... nothing?

dandellion2• 7 years ago

I hope whoever replaces him will inspire the Firefox team to stop dropping support for features I use. Probably not, but one can dream.

jsty2• 7 years ago

Firefox is an open source project. I'm sure if you pitched in with time and / or money to maintain said features, they'd be much less likely to disappear.

stonogo2• 7 years ago

Assuming this is naivete and not a deliberate attempt to mislead... Firefox is an open source project, but here is no openness in the product management. The decisions regarding features to keep or discard are determined by politics internal to Mozilla.

dandellion2• 7 years ago

I already contribute to other software projects that are more important to me than Firefox. And it would be impossible for me to contribute every feature I want to every open source project I use anyway, so what you propose is not very practical and doesn't really help, does it?

On the other hand, it only takes me a few seconds to complain on the official channels when they add a feature I don't need or remove one that I use so I think I'll keep doing that. Maybe enough users will agree and Mozilla might react to the complaints. Probably not though, they've been pretty deaf to the community lately. A change of CEO might be a chance for that to improve, so that's why I made my comment.

thefrog• 7 years ago

After what happened to BE, I'll never use or support Mozilla again.

tuyguntn• 7 years ago

Using chance to comment, even though I like Firefox a lot and writing this comment from Firefox, I am switching to Chrome in Android.

Every time when I need to pay something web sites redirect me to my bank site, which has good mobile app, Firefox doesn't open necessary app, which forces me to log in again and again from browser, Chrome opens banking app, where I already have all things set up.

This is one example of how Firefox Android is annoying, please fix, or keep losing 90% of your market share, because people on mobile want this simple feature by default.

otachack• 7 years ago

I usually see a button of an Android next to the URL bar on sites that have a compatible app. Take for example watching a YouTube video on FF. If I click on it, FF opens the associated app.

snazz• 7 years ago

Does the little Android icon in the address bar not open the correct app?

nautilus122• 7 years ago

Been using firefox ever since chrome became unusuable from a memory perspective to use without the great suspender a few years back. Been happy with the change ever since. Hope the company continues to thrive.

bdcravens2• 7 years ago

I use Chrome with TGS, and I haven't really seen a disadvantage.

nautilus122• 7 years ago

Well for one I can have many tabs open in firefox without having to suspend the page everytime I leave it and my computer won't catch on fire.

cloudytoday2• 7 years ago

Just downloaded Firefox again for the first time in ages...what's lame is that some G Suite / Apps / Mail features are only available in Chrome forcing me to use Chrome for work..

rosybox• 7 years ago

What Google app features are not available in Firefox? I use Firefox and my work uses Google's products and I never run into any issues with gmail, calendar, docs...

cloudytoday2• 7 years ago

The "send later" feature in Gmail doesn't work outside of chrome and offline mode for drive.

lucb1e5• 7 years ago

You can use Firefox privately though. And for work, if you want to get out of the vendor lock in, you can use a browser just for Google stuff. I do that at work as well because Chromium works better with my GPU for video calling, so I run Wire in kiosk mode. Everything else I do in a nicely configured and customized Firefox.

cpow85• 7 years ago

Hey Chris, You were our only friend. And I know this is belated: We love you back

mirimir• 7 years ago

I mostly use DDG and Startpage. But sometimes Google, when I'm not having much luck. But not via Tor, obviously. And even VPNs can trigger Google's "you look like a bot".

I used to love Metacrawler. And I see that it's back, but just drawing on Google and Yahoo!. Also by InfoSpace, Dogpile, which draws from more sources. But I haven't used either enough to say much.

nvrspyx• 7 years ago

Startpage already uses Google results. I guess Google's "personalized results" must have a significant impact if you've noticed differences.

mjw1007• 7 years ago

Has there been any news from the Mozilla-Yahoo/Oath lawsuit?

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_and_Yahoo_Holdings_Oath_Cou... hasn't been updated since January 2018.

staticassertion• 7 years ago

Oath doesn't even exist anymore, and is now Verizon Media, right? I imagine that may delay things.

swyx2• 7 years ago

just want to give a shoutout to Firefox Focus and whoever is at Mozilla that made it happen. absolutely fantastic no tracking one tab experience that has made a dent in my browser tab management and privacy defaults like nothing else has. thank you!

jpangs88• 7 years ago

Yeah it's a shame they have significantly slowed down updates to it. To me it sort of felt half done since you could sort of have tabs if you opened links. But it's a solid browser hope to see it continue.

Recently I've been using Firefox preview for Android and really enjoying it. Looking forward to it replacing Firefox for Android

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios

dhimes• 7 years ago

I tried, but I can't do it. I need tabs.

tsm• 7 years ago

Firefox Focus has had tabs for a while

JeremyNT• 7 years ago

It's worth noting that Firefox Focus is just another chromium-based browser. If things keep moving in the direction they currently are, this may be the sad fate of Firefox proper :(

gregknicholson5• 7 years ago

Happily, this is no longer true! https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/09/focus-with-geckoview/

_noqo• 7 years ago

I understand why this spark conversations about the current Firefox market share situation.

But I also believe that Firefox's dominant past plays against when it comes to analyzing the product right now.

Firefox is amazing, it works wonderfully, it continues to improve, respects privacy, adopts Mozilla's ethical values.

Yes, not many people use it, but criticizing this point so aggressively I think it is also influenced by the culture aiming at hypergrouth, dominance, monopoly, "Move fast and break things".

I am very happy with what Firefox does for me right now. Imagine a situation in which Firefox does not exist and today the product comes to light, it would be a great celebration, and the market share would be zero.

Thanks Firefox, I love you very much, although there are few of us who use you and maybe that doesn't change.

cbsmith• 7 years ago

Yes, not many people use it

It's a good 300 million people. Might be small in the grand scheme of things, but it's that's bigger than all but a handful of countries.

fabrice_d2• 7 years ago

Major issue is that the trend is going down: see https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

est31• 7 years ago

To be precise, it was 289 million on July 1st 2018, and 248 million on July 9th 2019. It was 239 million on August 24. Yes, the numbers are huge. Any product that has this many users would be considered a major success, but the trend is still troubling.

smitty1e• 7 years ago

Need to figure out a subscription model to ensure that a non-Google browser continues to flourish.

Also, K. Lars Lohn is the man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSfe5M_zG2s

cronix2• 7 years ago

I've seen thousands of Chrome ads in my life. On TV, on FB, on other ads on other websites, etc. I really don't think I've ever seen a FF ad. At least, I really can't recall seeing one. From what I've seen, the public has just not really heard of them. It's mostly just us geeks. It's hard to get market share when your audience doesn't even know you exist. And then you have Android, which comes with Chrome and has a much larger worldwide audience than iOS. I don't know how this is different than windows shipping with IE in the 90s, except Alphabet is allowed to continue while MS was not. Android has about 76% of the world market compared to iOS's ~22%. iOS has been in a slow decline most of this year as well, while Andoid is going up by as much. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

userSumo• 7 years ago

Interesting, i have never seen a browser ad in my life... is that in US or something?

jonny_eh• 7 years ago

Here it is plastered on the San Francisco Bay Area's commuter train (Caltrain): https://twitter.com/gocaltrain/status/697135271280685056

lucb1e5• 7 years ago

Firefox's dominant past plays against

I'm sorry, what? It was either the underdog of MSIE or of Chrome, it never was dominant the way the actual dominant browser at the time was dominant. The peak was 30%, and when Chrome took over from MSIE, it had 21% with MSIE and Chrome at 30% each.

jrochkind14• 7 years ago

What's it got now?

electronstudio• 7 years ago

You have a short memory. Netscape Navigator 3 had a >75% market share. Mozilla, which became Firefox, was a total rewrite, but that rewrite was done by the same people and was released as Netscape 6 - 9.

EastSmith2• 7 years ago

Mozilla needs to fork Chromium, build a super good privacy shield on top of it and thats it.

mathnmusic• 7 years ago

What would be the difference over Brave then?

gkoberger• 7 years ago

Good point... if only Mozilla could have gotten the founder of Brave as their CEO!

bdcravens2• 7 years ago

I think the question most would ask is what does Brave offer? Outside of tech, I don't think most people are willing to experiment with new(ish) software unless there's a very compelling advantage (and for most, I don't think BAT is a feature)

EastSmith2• 7 years ago

It will be handled by a well respected non profit foundation, rather than a for profit company?

macspoofing2• 7 years ago

It wouldn't be created and run by Brendan Eich who was run out of Mozilla for the crime of (privately) voting the wrong way on a ballot initiative. That was and continues to be a bad look for Mozilla.

tinza123• 7 years ago

on a side note, that's a really nice looking font

meerita• 7 years ago

I wish the best for him. I returned to Firefox this year and it felt a good product, one that goes in the right direction after so many years of Chrome dependency.

macspoofing2• 7 years ago

Firefox has been losing market share throughout Chris' entire tenure as CEO. I think this blog post is a bit too congratulatory given that reality.

rescue_dont_buy• 7 years ago

All good things must come to an end.

getlawgdon• 7 years ago

I've used both products for as long as they've existed. Google's search quality has become absolutely terrible and only reflects their ad strategy. DDG has become superior in many important ways.

Thank you, Chris

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