End of support for Firefox on Amazon devices

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/end-support-firefox-amazon-devices

by cozzyd • 5 years ago

185 162 5 years ago

support.mozilla.org

ZoF• 5 years ago

I think this is a terrible choice and wish they would explain why the decision was made.

Was it something that amazon imposed(ostensibly)? If so, please share.

Pfhreak• 5 years ago

It costs them to support it. How many Firefox users on Amazon fire TVs do you think there were?

I would guess it just looks like a bad return on time invested.

cozzyd3• 5 years ago

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-tv/issues enough to file this many issues, but probably not enough to fix them?

simias4• 5 years ago

Maybe it was just too small a market share to warrant supporting? That was my first guess.

CodeGlitch2• 5 years ago

Yes if they were transparent about why I think people would be understanding and less critical of the decision. As it stands, the announcement says nothing like that.

caslon3• 5 years ago

Honestly, there's barely a reason for Firefox to exist anywhere outside of the desktop after they eliminated extensions one more time for every other platform.

The "Firefox anywhere but desktop" package nowadays is "Here's a sub-par, slower, poorly-optimized browser without an ad-blocker; you'll be happy to know we have Pocket and Ads built-in! Why even bother with those icky websites? Just click our links! Addons? I mean, we have four. We no longer allow you to use the rest of the AMO addons."

Firefox on desktop is nice, except for their most recent design update (coming in a month or two, already on Nightly), which makes compact mode massive and normal mode gigantic. But you can get around that by simply going out of your way to write CSS to eliminate tabs entirely, and replace them with an extension.

vesinisa• 5 years ago

I honestly have no idea what are you talking about. I really enjoy uBlock Origin on my phone, and that's the primary reason I use Firefox for Android. On iOS Firefox is just an UI to Apple WebView, but that's a matter for antitrust courts and not a fault of Mozilla.

caslon3• 5 years ago

They recently limited the Android (and derivatives', like FR) build's access to AMO; there are less than fifty there, now. uBO is one, but there's very few other than that. Kind of defeats a major selling-point of WebExtensions.

simias4• 5 years ago

I don't know about the Amazon Devices version, but on Android Firefox works great in my experience. In particular the advantage is that it does support extensions.

caslon3• 5 years ago

dig1• 5 years ago

This is a sad story. From a desire to have a genuinely open-source browser (with proper open development) present almost everywhere, we now have Firefox present on fewer and fewer platforms. I think, in the end, it will be "officially supported" only on Windows and macOS.

I understand that web browser is a complex business, but TBH, I don't want VR, Pocket, and tons of half-baked junk in my browser. Google poured millions of dollars into Mozilla (which is cheaper than battling with anti-trust commission), and yet, most of their projects failed. I think they need to rethink their management and strategy before everything goes to the ground.

otabdeveloper42• 5 years ago

Google poured millions of dollars into Mozilla (...), and yet, most of their projects failed.

Perhaps it's actually working as intended.

lightgreen• 5 years ago

Don’t blame Google for that. It’s Mozilla management failure.

simias4• 5 years ago

I'm generally worried for the future of Firefox, but this particular decision doesn't really sound all that significant to me.

I don't really think it's reasonable for Firefox to officially support every single proprietary platform out there, especially when it must have had a tiny number of users. I'd rather Firefox focused on improving the browser where it matters than supporting some niche proprietary environment.

kbrosnan2• 5 years ago

Firefox on Amazon devices uses the Android Webview. Fire Sticks have specs that are comparable to several year old phones when they were released. This makes them poor targets for general use computing.

orra• 5 years ago

most of their projects failed. I think they need to rethink their management and strategy before everything goes to the ground.

Lots of projects fail. It's the nature of R&D. You should see the number of products Google has shut down.

Besides, the project that Mozilla gets the most flack for? Firefox OS. Turned out to be a great idea? Why? Because Apple and Google anti competitively bundle their own browsers with their own mobile OSes.

Yes, sadly Firefox OS failed. But the future (now, present) of web is mobile: Mozilla had to try.

input_sh2• 5 years ago

Not to mention a fork of Firefox OS is probably the 3rd most used mobile operating system now: https://www.kaiostech.com/

hkt• 5 years ago

Firefox OS didn't fail: it is now known as KaiOS and is present on vast, vast quantities of "smart feature" phones in places like India. I recall Mozilla specifically talking about how to approach the next billion people to come online. It is admittedly a nuanced reading, but I think they succeeded on those terms. Still, the experience is very different to the one on Firefox OS as-was in 2015 or so.

Apologies for no citations, but I recall a talk from 2014 or so at Mozfest in London and not much else. I've also owned a KaiOS phone - the Nokia 8110 and can say aside from a lack of apps it is great.

Causality1• 5 years ago

Firefox is dying because they switched their target audience from people who like Firefox to people who don't like Chrome. They act like they're going to come up with some wiz-bang feature and wake up with a 50% market share while ignoring everything that got them a 25% share. It does not and will never work that way.

qzw• 5 years ago

True to an extent, but don’t forget that for quite a while Chrome was genuinely far ahead in technology, so the number of people who liked Firefox was dropping rather precipitously. They probably felt immense pressure to come up with ways to not just stop the loss of users but to reverse the trend. A pretty tall order for anyone. Microsoft couldn’t do it either.

sigmar• 5 years ago

Lots of doom and gloom comments here, but the post only refers to ending support on amazon echo and fire tv. The experience of using a(ny) browser on those devices was terrible. They probably saw usage numbers on those two devices were so low that support made no sense.

bdcravens2• 5 years ago

The UI is really weird; I only use the browser for videos where no app option exists.

brundolf3• 5 years ago

Isn't the echo voice-only? How does that even work?

popey• 5 years ago

The article says "Echo Show" which is a device with an integral display.

cozzyd3• 5 years ago

I wouldn't browse HN on my FireTV, but it's great for live streams of various events, which seem to exist on a zillion different websites (I just watched a wedding this morning on my FireTV using Firefox)

fencepost• 5 years ago

The most important and easy thing to miss is probably that this is on "DEVICES" not on "Tablets." You can still run it just fine on the color Amazon Android-based handhelds, it's the "IoT" category devices where it's going away.

Honestly I wouldn't have predicted better than a 50% chance that Firefox ran on those anyway.

wpietri• 5 years ago

I'd love to hear the story behind this. Are Amazon devices drifting too far from Android to be easily supported?

I'm fine with Firefox dropping niche platforms and focusing resources on actual users. (Most stats don't even cover the Amazon devices; the only mention I could find of Silk usage was 0.02% of traffic.) But it surprises me that Amazon's devices are now far enough off from regular Android that there's a support burden. Anybody here shipping apps for Fire who can explain?

voxadam• 5 years ago

Fire OS 7 is based on Android 9 with API level 28. So, yeah, it's not exactly cutting edge.

rock_artist2• 5 years ago

But isn't Firefox even supports Android 5 devices?

osmarks• 5 years ago

Two versions behind is actually better than the majority of Android phones in the wild.

sgt2• 5 years ago

It may sound unbelievable, but to most Android users out there, Android 9 is cutting edge!

varispeed3• 5 years ago

Android 9 is when that system ended for me, as Google completely disabled call recording by 3rd party apps. It's a must have feature if you want to have any defence against scamming insurance companies and so on. Probably they were losing too much money when people were able to call their lies and demand refunds, so they must have somehow convinced Google to remove this feature altogether.

Abishek_Muthian• 5 years ago

How are the security updates situation for the Fire OS devices?

ipaddr• 5 years ago

I'm on kitkat 4.4. I hope in 10 years to reach 9.

david_allison2• 5 years ago

API 28 is released in 2018, 2 versions behind the latest.

It's a sad state of software development that we so quickly drop support for older hardware, it contributes massively to e-waste, although Android manufacturers shoulder a lot of the blame for not supporting OS upgrades.

Context: Put out a (hopefully) final release for API 16 last month. It'll mean that 15,000 people can no longer update the app. From analytics, we still have users on Android 1.5 (API 3)

ajfjrbfbf• 5 years ago

I have three libraries supporting API 14, one app API 16 and another API 21. There's rarely a reason not to support at least API 21 for general apps. Almost only very specific and niche APIs were added after that. Not supporting at least API 24 is unreasonable and most likely due to ignorance. Java 8 is only supported since API 24, but everybody switched to Kotlin ages ago.

ianbicking• 5 years ago

My somewhat vague sense is that Firefox only ever supported Amazon devices because of a partnership. The partnership ended and there wasn't any other reason to maintain support.

In turn Amazon only partnered because there wasn't a YouTube app, and via Firefox they could support YouTube. But they reached a deal with YouTube (maybe using Firefox as leverage), so it didn't matter to them any longer.

shawnz2• 5 years ago

Note that the Firefox app for Fire TV is very different and much more limited than the Firefox mobile app.

moron4hire• 5 years ago

That's hilarious, because when independent, unfunded web devs make the same calculation to drop Firefox support, we get screamed at.

m-p-3• 5 years ago

What dissapoints me is that it's not even available on Android TV/Google TV. Sure you can sideload it, but the controls are tailored for the Amazon Fire Stick remote.

jgrowl• 5 years ago

This seems more like a bad omen for the future of firesticks than it is firefox. I say that as someone that uses a firetv and a firestick every day. They become unresponsive to input, freeze, and lag constantly. Even for amazon's own shows. It has only gotten worse over time. I'm slowly just moving towards getting a windows instance to every tv in house.

bdcravens2• 5 years ago

Yes, I've noticed the same, as well as software getting buggier over time (I have a 1st gen Fire TV 4k, and the Disney+ app doesn't respond to pause)

maxerickson• 5 years ago

I botched the password input the first time I tried to log into the Disney+ app. It apparently stored that password to use for subsequent runs, as I was prompted for the password every time I ran it. Resetting the app data fixed the problem, so that's where the assumption about storing the wrong password is from.

(I'm saying, don't necessarily blame only the hardware)

noneeeed• 5 years ago

Oh god, the Disney+ app is a complete dumpster fire.

There is a fix for the Disney+ pause issue: Got to Settings -> Display -> Sounds -> Audio -> Dolby Digital Output and turn it off. Obviously that's crap if you want Dolby Digital Output, but for some reason it fixes the issue.

I don't actually have a problem with the Firestick as a whole, seems responsive enough for the services I use, but Disney really needs to up their game, it's the only one I have an issue with.

Sebb767• 5 years ago

I've actually looked into buying one recently, but between general slowness (a friend of mine has one), price and lacking an Alexa-less option if you need 4k, I'm actually considering an used AppleTV 4k now.

nailer• 5 years ago

I had the old Fire TV Stick and can confirm the latency was bad.

The 4K one is much faster (irrespective of display resolution) than its predecessors. I really like it.

deadmutex2• 5 years ago

You may also want to consider ChromeCast with Google TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sb9-NOxZlg . ~$50

katbyte• 5 years ago

Got an apple tv 4k just for infuse<>emby and am very happy with it, looks much better with 4k HDR content then anything else i've tried: andriod tv apps, emby app, netflix, prime (was the worst) and casting to a 4k chomecast.

gizmodo59• 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, why did you choose firetv and firestick compared to the alternatives? (Apple TV, roku, chrome cast etc). I’m trying to decide

CodeGlitch2• 5 years ago

Not OP but I chose FireTV because of the inbuilt Alexa support.

Shouting "Alexa turn the TV off" from another part of the house when it's my daughter's bedtime is worth the entry fee! Also when my wife is in the car with her Echo Auto, she can say "announce that I'm coming home" and that message will play on the TV (and convert it to text as well). Ps. we didn't know the FireTV did this when we bought it. It's quite nice finding these features as you use other Alexa devices.

I've not experienced much in the way of lagging or unresponsiveness. Note that they just released a major update.

deergomoo• 5 years ago

The Prime Video app for Tizen-based Samsung TVs is a shit-show too. Every other app I use is acceptably responsive, but Prime Video consistently feels like the UI runs at 5fps with about half a second of input latency

notatoad• 5 years ago

I have the same experience on Roku. It was bad enough that I cancelled prime and started pirating the couple of prime shows I wanted to watch. The Plex app on my Roku runs great...

heavyset_go3• 5 years ago

I have multiple models of both the Fire TV/Stick and the Chromecast, and I agree.

I really, really want someone to release a Chromecast-like device that isn't Amazon or Google, though.

The latest Chromecast with Google TV barely works without granting Google access to a whole bunch of your private data. For example, you need to enable Web & App Activity across your entire Google account to use normal Chromecast features.

I will pay good money for a device that uses the castv2 protocol and doesn't siphon my data to Google's servers just so I can watch videos on my TV.

klondike_• 5 years ago

Miracast is an option

tssva2• 5 years ago

Given current and ever falling Firefox usage rates I find it hard to believe that the dropping of a platform by Mozilla is any kind of sign regarding the future of the platform.

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

I wonder if this might be a play to try and get some money from Amazon to reverse course...?

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

The main reason to drop support for Amazon devices is you want to start using some Google Play Services API's.

They include everything from fitness tracking to push notifications to face/voice recognition.

I wonder which they want to use?

caturopath• 5 years ago

Push notifications seem like something a browser would want -- is it a thing on any platform?

I tried searching, but I suspect there are a lot of subtleties to the technologies involved (with similar names and such) that I don't know how to connect whether this fills a gap.

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

All major Web browsers on Android and iOS provide push notifications to websites (if granted permission).

Most webpages use it for spammy notifications of little value to most users sadly...

yosito2• 5 years ago

The main reason to drop support for Amazon devices is you want to start using some Google Play Services APIs

I'm assuming this is slight hyperbole, as there are other plausible reasons to drop support for Amazon devices. But I'm curious to know if you have any other reason to believe that Firefox plans to use Google Play Services APIs?

dal• 5 years ago

Firefox is not available on my Nvidia Shield Android TV either. So seems like Mozilla just does not want to have a browser on TVs.

vetinari• 5 years ago

There would be something other at play, as no other browser - Chrome, Opera, Edge, Vivaldi, Brave - is available for Nvidia Shield either.

Wintereise• 5 years ago

FWIW, it works fine if you grab the apk and install it yourself.

I use the Chrome Canary channel on my Shield, and it works OK.

franklyt5• 5 years ago

Unpopular opinion: Firefox is allowing itself to be phased out, and contributing to a less free internet, with their business moves. It was hugely upsetting when they axed their dev team mid-pandemic.

sgt2• 5 years ago

They said they did the axing due to the long term viability of Firefox. So it would be ironic if this axing had such bad PR that it had a worse effect than having too many heads.

the_duke• 5 years ago

Mozilla really can't do that much to prevent it.

Firefox only got popular because it was so much better than IE at the time.

Now Chrome and Safari are the preinstalled on most devices or are pushed on you if they are not. They are also good enough or better that users don't have enough incentive to switch, especially with ad blockers working just fine on the competition (for now...). And Google won't allow Chrome to fall behind in a meaningful way.

There is not much market opportunity to compete against the monopolistic distribution channels that Apple and Google can leverage.

franklyt5• 5 years ago

This would be a decent point if nobody had any interest in chromium alternatives and Firefox was a new upstart brand, neither of which are true.

Usually, when a CEO heads an explicitly sinking ship, the CEO will be removed and someone will be brought in to turn around the company.

No idea why that hasn’t happened.

goonogle• 5 years ago

Mozilla isn't the same company as when I was a teen.

I've attempted to use their platform on numerous devices over the last 3 years and ran into issues. I've moved on.

No amount of HN praise can override my real world experience.

varispeed3• 5 years ago

If Apple can pull off its walled garden thing and there are many people defending it, then why should Amazon be any different? They jump on the bandwagon and will milk it until regulators ban the practice (hopefully). It's all about money.

shawnz2• 5 years ago

Firestick users can also connect a USB mouse with a USB-OTG adapter and sideload the Firefox mobile APK (the one for phones). In my opinion it gives a much better experience than the Firefox for Fire TV app, although as noted it's basically unusable without a mouse. You can get updates by sideloading the F-Droid APK (which works great on Fire TV).

yosito2• 5 years ago

Are there any organizations talking about forking Firefox and taking the software in a different direction than Mozilla is taking it?

psim1• 5 years ago

This sucks. Firefox actually works great on FireTV Stick, unlike many other apps available for the device. It is useful for loading stream sites that don’t have apps; e.g. Stanford Puffer.

tyingq• 5 years ago

Amazon's list of apps in the "web browser" category: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/mobile-apps/9408941011...

Looks like Firefox would be a pretty big loss for them. I don't recognize much on the list other than Opera.

End of support for Firefox on Amazon devices

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