Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
305 comments
·December 17, 2025lxgr
nialv7
The interpretation is not the problem. Whether he will do it, is actually secondary to the fact that he thinks cutting adblock can bringing in money.
No, it will just kill the browser. The fact he thinks otherwise tells me how out of touch he is.
JoeJonathan
Like many others, the ability to run uBO is the main reason I use Firefox. Otherwise I'd use Chrome or Safari.
throwaway613745
I have used Firefox as my default browser through thick and thin for damn near two decades.
If Mozilla killed andblocking extensions I’d switch to Helium Browser in a heartbeat since they’re maintaining manifest v2 support for uBO and even ship it OOTB.
The web is unusable without a proper Adblock.
agumonkey
and funnily enough uBO author didn't want any money even though he's making our lives a lot better
rat9988
You are just looking for something to be angry at. I guess this why PR is hard and all corporate communication are sterilized.
stuartjohnson12
I don't think HN comments have an irrational burning pit of hate for Mozilla. If Mozilla was shaped more like the Tor foundation in their words and actions I think a lot more people would be supportive.
guenthert
Is it him or is it you? I'd think within the Mozilla organization is a data trove of telemetry which renders a fairly good picture of how many users actually are using ad blockers.
animuchan
Yep, and that's how he arrived at the $number. If a small number of people were using ad blockers, the cited sum would approach $0 since disabling ad blockers would affect very few page views, right?
dspillett
I think it is him. Chrome making blocking harder is one of the issues that has been pushing some users away (and a good portion of those in the direction of FF). If FF is not better is that regard then those moving away for that reason will go elsewhere, and those who are there already at least in part for that reason will move away.
If this happened it would be the final straw for me, if I wasn't already looking to change because of them confirming the plan to further descend into the great “AI” cult.
b112
Not sure what your point is? It doesn't matter the number of users, because the GP's point is that those users are going to immediately bail, for a browser thsy supports ad block.
So that extra money will never materialize. And usage numbers will again crater. This is the point.
(You can disagree with that assessment, but that has nothing to do with telemetry, which cannot gauge users hanging around with blocked .. adblockers)
kakacik
This is academic discussion, where you think when X is said it means this, somebody (others here) think its that and so on. Grasping straws and all. I guess when around Christmas work churn slows down and some people spend more (too much?) time here.
p-e-w
Firefox has a market share around 3%. Even most technologists stopped using it long ago. Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries.
Nothing can kill Firefox, because it’s already dead for all practical purposes.
tda
I use Firefox as my daily browser. If i have a website that fails to work, I might try chrome maybe once every two months. And then it usually also doesn't work. So for all browsing I do on the internet, Firefox works like a charm
graemep
> Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries.
I cannot remember the last time I came across one myself.
ojosilva
3% market share is 150 million active users give or take. That's no death by any count in the software world.
Gosh, I really wish Mozilla would just dig into their user-base and find a way to adequately become sustainable... or find a way to make it work better as a foundation that is NOT maintained by Google, ie like the Wiki Foundation. I do spend a LOT of time in FF, can't anyone see there's a value beyond selling ads and personal info that could make Mozilla more sustainable, dependable and resilient?
Cthulhu_
When they say "don't support it anymore", does that mean they're back to the IE era of using Chrome specific technologies so it doesn't work in any browser, do they use user-agent sniffing and show a big popup, or is it just that they're not testing it in FF anymore? The latter shouldn't be an issue as long as they use standards, the only thing they would run into in this day and age is browser specific bugs - but Safari seems to have that the most.
csin
This 3% number is deceptive.
The whole desktop market is cratering.
I was talking to a reddit mod a few months ago. He was looking at the subreddit stats. 95% of his users were on mobile.
Think about that. We desktop users are dinosaurs.
So FireFox having a 3% market share might actually mean more than half of desktop users are on FireFox.
mosquitobiten
that 3% is of total users including mobile which chrome is king because it's basically force fed to users. this is important because there is no choice with browsers for the common mobile user, most of them don't know what is a browser even if they used it every day. also in the 2000s IE was king because guess what? that was what came preinstalled with winxp
timeon
Have not used Chrome-based browsers 3+ years and never had problem with Firefox. Sometimes Safari was not working 100% - but nothing serious. Maybe it is because, only page from google I use is Youtube; however Firefox has best experience there, even better than Chrome - thanks to proper uBlock Origin.
iso1631
Wikimedia stats from last year put it at 15% of desktop browsers, ahead of Safari and Edge.
roenxi
Yeah, the article's quoting didn't help its case. It doesn't seem fair to quote someone saying [I don't think X is a good idea] as evidence they are about to do X.
That being said, in the original context [0] it does sound a lot more like an option on the table. That original article presents it as the weakest of a list of things they're about to explore - but who knows, maybe the journalist has butchered what was said. It is an ambiguous idea without more context about how close it is to Mozilla trying to make life hard for ad-blockers.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz...
tdeck
In addition "off-mission" is a pretty weak way to describe completely destroying your credibility and betraying your user base. Building the Firefox phone was off mission. Buying Pocket was off mission. Maybe it's just me, but selling your remaining faithful users down the river to make a quick buck from advertisers seems a little, I don't know... worse than that?
autoexec
The part about making money through advertising and selling data to 3rd parties (though "search and AI placement deals") is already not a good sign. Planning to make their money through ads and surveillance capitalism is already making it impossible to say "I always know my data is in my control. I can turn the thing off, and they’re not going to do anything sketchy"
kunley
Except that expressing loud doubts about something ethically dubious is often a sign that an opposite action will be taken. So many business people want this moral excuse "but I had doubts" while being totally cynical
Brian_K_White
"feels off mission" exposes how little conviction there is behind this position.
That is a flimsy tissue paper statement about a concept that should be a bedrock principle.
It's irrationally charitable to give it any credit at all. Especially in context where anyone who's awake should understand they need to be delivering an unquestionably clear message about unquestionably clear goals and core values, because this ain't that.
Or rather, it is a clear message, just a different message to a different audience.
asddubs
yeah, it reads to me like "we probably shouldn't do it"
kuschku
You wouldn't calculate the expected RoI of killing adblockers if killing adblockers was never considered.
matwood
Part of being CEO/running a business is considering all options, but it doesn't mean it will ever move beyond the ROI/risk phase. Ever read one of the risk assessments in a companies public filings? It's the same thing.
latexr
Finally, a situation besides “are we the baddies” where a Mitchell and Webb sketch is highly relevant.
p-e-w
All options that are in line with the organization’s mission.
The CEO of an organization like Mozilla even considering blocking adblockers for profit is like the president of Amnesty International considering to sell lists of dissidents to the secret police.
boomboomsubban
It's not hard to imagine the last default search contract negotiation had Google go "we'll give you $x if you kill manifest v2, $x-$150 million if you don't."
edited to correct my misunderstanding.
jamesnorden
Firefox supports Manifest v3, they just didn't kill Manifest v2 after implementing it.
littlecranky67
for it to be considered, somebody must have offered to pay that 150M. Or he considered going to somebody (we all know that somebody is Google) and asking them for that money in return for killing ad blockers.
gr4vityWall
> You wouldn't calculate the expected RoI of killing adblockers if killing adblockers was never considered.
I agree, although if someone isn't the kind of person who would calculate that, they're probably not the person who will become the CEO of a company that size in the first place. I don't think organizations have the right incentives in place to push people with those values to the top.
duskdozer
I could see myself saying something like that despite having no intention to do it. But I'm also not a CEO.
takluyver
I agree with all the people saying it would drive a lot of the remaining users away, and I hope they don't do it. But I'm not remotely surprised that they considered following what their biggest competitor (Chrome) already did.
tdeck
Because Chrome was built by the world's biggest advertising company. If the World Wildlife Fund started selling ivory to pay the bills, would that not be surprising?
prmoustache
It isn't even true that it would bring $150M. This is a calculation accounting on users staying on Firefox.
If they do that, most of the remaining users would flee and goodbye to your millions if you don't have any userbase anymore to justify asking money to anyone.
kace91
“I wouldn’t sell sexual services. I’ve spent an evening checking the going market rate for someone my age in my area and it’s 2k! Can you believe that? That’s a ton of money! Totally not going to do it though”.
It’s an eyebrow raising comment at the very least.
animuchan
The OP doesn't even say "Totally not going to do it", merely "it feels off-mission", so a vibe check away from doing it.
RossBencina
> It feels off-mission.
That's supposedly The Verge paraphrasing the CEO (Unfortunately I can't verify because the full article requires subscription.) I would like to know what the CEO actually said because "it feels off-mission" is a strange thing for the leader of the mission to say. I would hope that they know the mission inside out. No need to go by feels.
autoexec
Here's that part of the article:
> In our conversation, Enzor-DeMeo returns often to two things: that Mozilla cares about and wants to preserve the open web, and that the open web needs new business models. Mozilla’s ad business is important and growing, he says, and he worries “about things going behind paywalls, becoming more closed off.” He says the internet’s content business isn’t exactly his fight, but that Mozilla believes in the value of an open and free (and thus ad-supported) web.
> At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
> One way to solve many of these problems is to get a lot more people using Firefox. And Enzor-DeMeo is convinced Mozilla can get there, that people want what the company is selling. “There is something to be said about, when I have a Mozilla product, I always know my data is in my control. I can turn the thing off, and they’re not going to do anything sketchy. I think that is needed in the market, and that’s what I hope to do.”
shaky-carrousel
I don't like how he assumes that a free internet must be ad-supported. The ad-supported web is hideous, even with their ads removed. A long, convoluted, inane mess of content.
On the other hand, the clean web feels more direct, to the point, and passionate. I prefer to read content written by passion, not by money seeking purposes.
chii
> a pretty uncharitable interpretation
like hoping for the best, but planning for the worst, you must interpret people's intentions using the same methodology. By quoting that axing adblock could be bringing $150mil, but also saying that he doesn't want to do it, it's advertising that a higher price would work - it's a way to deniably solicit an offer.
SiempreViernes
So then we should interpret Bruno adopting this uncharitable interpretation as evidence they are intentionally trying to ruin Mozillas reputation rather than sincerely analysing an interview, right?
And in turn my comment above is not a honest remark that your suggested interpretation strategy seems to be selectively applied, but rather an attempt to hurt your standing with your peers.
herobird
It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
mrtksn
The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money and everything was great until every corner was taken, the land grab was complete and the time to recoup the investment has come.
Once the users were trapped for exploitation, it doesn’t make sense to have a browser that blocks ads. How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions. They all end up doing one of those since the incentives are perverse, that’s why Google didn’t just ride the Firefox till the end and instead created the Chrome.
It doesn’t make sense to have trillion dollars companies and everything to be free. The free part is until monopolies are created and walled gardens are full with people. Then comes the monetization and those companies don’t have some moral compass etc, they have KPI stock values and analytics and it’s very obvious that blocking ads isn’t good financially.
MindDraft
while i may agree with the first line, rest are little skewed perspective.
> People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions.
hate subscription?? may be. if it's anything like Adobe then yes, people will hate.
that constant update, is something planted by these corporates, and their behavior manipulation tactics. People were happily paying for perpetual software, which they can "own" in a cd//dvd.
mrtksn
People weren't happily paying, there was huge pirated business that was run on porn, gambling ads and spyware revenue.
One time fee software ment that once your growth slows down you no longer make money and have plenty of customers to support for free. That's why this model was destroyed by the subscription and ad based "free" software.
shakna
> The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money
Huh? Nexus was funded by CERN.
Newsgrounds was never investor funded.
Yahoo! Directory was just two guys, and you paid to be listed. There were no investors involved.
WebCrawler was a university project. Altavista was a research project.
gr4vityWall
People seem to forget the non-commercial web ever existed.
mrtksn
That was ine inception age when very few people were online, its not the stage of mass adoption. The mass adoption starts with the dot.com era with mass infrastructure build up.
But sure, if you think that we should start counting from these years you can do that and add a "public funded" era at the beginning.
tietjens
I take your point, but I think the comment was referring to Web 2.0.
shantara
Ditto. A fully functional uBlock Origin is the only remaining reason why I'm still sticking with Firefox despite everything
gvurrdon
Containers are also very useful indeed; I have to log into various different Google and Github accounts and can do this in a single browser window.
vanschelven
It's financially beneficial for them in exactly the same way as setting yourself on fire makes you warmer
PurpleRamen
Knowing an option, doesn't mean it's his goal. It's probably just a regular offer from Google, they always decline.
hu3
Mozilla has pressure from their sugar daddy, Google, to weaken ad-blockers.
buran77
The only reason Mozilla matters in the eyes of Google is because it gives the impression there's competition in the browser market.
But Firefox's users are the kind who choose the browser, not use whatever is there. And that choice is driven in part by having solid ad-blockers. People stick with Firefox despite the issues for the ad-blocker. Take that away and Firefox's userbase dwindles to even lower numbers to the point where nobody can pretend they are "competition". That's when they lose any value for Google.
Without the best-of-the-best ad-blocking I will drop Firefox like a rock and move to the next best thing, which will have to be a Chromium based browser. I'll even have a better overall experience on the web when it comes to the engine itself, to give me consolation for not having the best ad-blocker.
agumonkey
i left chrome to avoid ads.. i'd rather use dillo than ads infested firefox
ghusto
Which alternatives though? On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives.
swiftcoder
> On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives
Surely Mac is the only place there is a viable non-Chromium alternative (Safari)?
deanc
There is Orion which is built on top of WebKit so you get a lot of the battery life optimisations built into Safari
mark_l_watson
I use the Duck Duck Go browser for almost everything. I is open source for iOS/Android/macOS platforms, but I think there are parts of their platform that are not. The DDG browser hits all my privacy requirements.
7bit
I prefer Firefox over Chromium. But I much more prefer having a working ad blocker. Therefore I support that statement and when Firefox starts removing support for that, I'm out and there's enough alternatives I can go to, even tho they're Chromium based.
janv
Orion is pretty viable alternative. Based on WebKit.
actionfromafar
What problems do people have? I use Firefox on Mac since a decade at least.
latexr
Personally, the lack of AppleScript support kills it for me and every user of my tools. Firefox is the only major browser which cannot be meaningfully automated on macOS with standard tools. Also, pretty much every decision by Mozilla these past few years have put me off Firefox.
I also avoid Chromium browsers because of Google. There’s not a single browser these days I’d use without reservation. I had high hopes for Servo, but Mozilla fucked that up too. Maybe Ladybird will be decent?
saubeidl
Zen is basically Firefox with Arc's UX. It's by far my favorite browser.
iso1631
There's only two alternatives, safari and chrome-based browsers. Safari isn't cross platform either
woadwarrior01
> Safari isn't cross platform either
WebKit is[1][2].
[1]: https://webkit.org/downloads/ [2]: https://webkit.org/webkit-on-windows/
simiones
That second link says it all about how wise it would be to try:
> This guide provides instructions for building WebKit on Windows 8.1
CamouflagedKiwi
Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, I guess I can see the temptation to try to regain it by reaching out to others, but doing that at the expense of your core is a terrible business strategy. It's not like those users are all that sticky, they're leaving as Mozilla pisses them off, and likely Mozilla are going to be left with what they stand for - which these days is nothing.
It's sad, I'm sure there was a better path Mozilla could have taken, but they've had a decade or more of terrible management. I wonder if the non-profit / corp structure hasn't helped, or if it's just a later-stage company with a management layer who are disconnected from the original company's mission and strategy.
ekjhgkejhgk
CEO
> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
LOL the day that Firefox stops me from running what I want is the day I'll get rid of it.
Silhouette
I still think it was a mistake for Firefox to dump its old plugin model. The customisation was a USP for Firefox and many useful tweaks and minor features have never been replaced.
Today the ability to run proper content blockers is still a selling point for Firefox but obviously wouldn't be if they started to meddle with that as well. (Has there ever been a more obvious case of anticompetitive behaviour than the biggest browser nerfing ad blocking because it's owned by one of the biggest ad companies?)
Other than customisation the only real advantage I see for Firefox today is the privacy angle. But again that would obviously be compromised if they started breaking tools like content blockers that help to provide that protection.
tempay
> Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
I feel like this question has been valid for almost as long as I can remember (e.g. the Mr. Robot extension incident). I find myself struggling to tell if Mozilla is an inherently flawed company or if it's just inherent to trying to survive in such a space.
dom96
Genuinely can someone with knowledge of the business explain why they aren't simply doubling down on making Firefox better? Is there an existential problem facing them that they are trying to solve by adding AI into the browser?
austhrow743
Their Google dependency is their existential problem. They're limited by what they can do with "making Firefox better" while effectively being a client state. An off the books Google department. Doomed to forever being a worse funded Chrome because they can't do too much to anger their patron.
By selling browser UI real estate to AI companies[0] they reduce the power Google has over them. If they get to the point where no individual company makes up a majority of their revenue, it allows them to focus on their mission in a much broader way.
[0]These will be very expensive listings should this feature become popular: https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/media/u...
Krasnol
Is there any prove for Googles influence on their development you outline here?
bluehatbrit
Google pay Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars each year to place Google as the default browser. It's by far their biggest income stream. In 2023 it was reported as 75% of their revenue.
There's no world in which 75% of your revenue coming from Google doesn't influence what you do. Even if it's not the main driver of all decisions, pissing off Google is a huge risk for them.
robbie-c
There's proof of financial dependence, here's a recent report https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
In 2021 they got $500M "royalties" (this is their payment from Google) with only $75k revenue from all other sources, including $7.5k donations.
K0nserv
No knowledge of the business. But I think it's because of the underlying question that plagues Mozilla: How will that make money?
lopis
I'm not sure how well know this is, but besides their contract with Google to be the default search option, Firefox does earn money through revenue share with all other default search options. A normal healthy company would just rely on those. Growing the user base would therefore grow the amount of rev-share income. So improving the product by itself, and thus attracting users, does make money - and probably enough to run Firefox and Mozilla. Just not enough to pay their CEO.
pas
it's a completely obvious "problem" -- more users are easier to monetize, even if they "simply" go the Wikipedia donations model
many people stated that they are happy to do targeted donations (ie. money earmarked strictly for Firefox development only, and it cannot be used for bullshit outreach programs and other fluff)
and if they figure out the funding for the browser (and other "value streams") then they can put the for-profit opt-in stuff on top
tessierashpool9
Google pays Mozilla, Mozilla has more money, Mozilla spends more money (especially in compensations to a bloated C-level), Mozilla needs more money, Google threatens with paying less, Mozilla will lube up and bend over.
4gotunameagain
They don't really need money. Look at Mozilla's CEO compensation for example. It was 7 million USD in 2022. Seven. Million. For ruining a bastion of the open internet.
The problem is the MBAs.
RobotToaster
It still seems obscene to me that anyone at a non-profit, that begs for donations and volunteers, makes 7 figures.
(Yes it's technically a company, but it's a company owned by a non profit.)
pas
multiple things can be true at once.
is that too much money for one person? well, apparently it depends on who do you ask. and even if the board members who approved it might thought it's too much, it still could have been cheaper than to fire the CEO and find a new one and keep Mozilla on track.
CEO compensation is usually a hedge against risks that are seen as even more costly, even if the performance of the CEO is objectively bad.
https://www.ecgi.global/sites/default/files/working_papers/d...
framing Mozilla/Firefox as some kind of bastion is simply silly - especially if it's supplied by the gigantic fortress kingdom of G, and makes more money on dividends and interest than on selling any actual products or services.
it's a ship at sea with a sail that's too big and a rudder that's unfortunately insignificant.
but whatever metaphor we pick it needs to transform into a sustainable ecosystem, be that donation or sales based.
on_the_train
It's a git repo. They don't need employees besides a few programmers
concinds
You can't monetize a browser. They have to keep trying to create new products, but they inevitably fail. Pocket, FirefoxOS, Persona, all dead. This new stuff will fail too, because Mozilla has no USP and no way to create a best-in-class product in any market. So they rely on imitating what everyone else is doing, but with more "crunchy" vibes ("values", "trust", "we're a nonprofit") because that's the only angle they can compete on. They missed mobile completely so even their browser is bleeding users and dying.
The way to interpret Mozilla is that they're a dying/zombie company, fighting heroically to delay the inevitable.
oneeyedpigeon
> You can't monetize a browser.
You very much can if all the competitors are either a) ad-ridden, ai-infested, bloated monstrosities or b) don't provide the functionality people want. In that case, there's apparently lots of demand which could easily support either a pay-once or a low-subscription-fee model.
NothingAboutAny
I'd pay $10 a month for a browser, I pay that much for music and TV shows and I spend more time in a browser. I'm sure the market doesn't agree with me but I pay more for things that are less useful.
RobotToaster
They already do monetize it, every search engine included by default paid to be there. They forcefully remove those that don't pay from existing installations without the user's permission, as they did with yandex.
rvba
They dont have to.
They could be lean and focus on firefox only.
Now they get 150m from google, spend just a part on firefox and rest on failures and hobby projects to get promoted.
If they were focued on core business, 1) they would have a war chest 2) they could leave off donations
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...
tjpnz
Fork Firefox, bundle uBlock Origin, Sponsor Block et el and sell it is a consumer web security product (that's not complete shit) with a monthly subscription. Use some of the proceeds to support the devs working on the underlying tech, similar to what Valve are doing for Wine, Proton and Fex.
Bonus points:
1. Multi layered approach to dealing with ads and other malware.
2. A committment to no AI or other bloat - that's not what I'm paying you for.
3. Syncable profiles.
csin
Please enlighten me. How does one make a browser "better" these days?
- They were ahead of the game with extensions. Then everyone copied them.
- They were ahead of the game with tabs. Then everyone copied them.
- They were ahead of the game with containers. Then everyone copied them.
- They are still the best browser to use for an ad free internet experience.
- The only flaw I can think of, is they are not leaders in performance. Chrome loads faster. But that's because Chrome cheats by stealing your memory on startup.
How would you make FireFox better? When you say they should be making FireFox better, what should they be doing? Maybe they should hire you for ideas.
Because to me, they seem to be constantly trying to make FireFox better. It's just hit or miss.
Extensions was a hit. Tabs was a hit. Containers was a hit. They had a shit tonne of misses over the decades. We just don't remember them.
The crypto and ai stuff just happens to be a miss.
OvervCW
In my experience Chrome does not just load faster, but it also uses less memory than Firefox because of its more aggressive tab hibernation that is enabled by default.
On my laptop I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome because it kept filling up all of my RAM resulting in other applications crashing.
colesantiago
What does "doubling down on making Firefox better?" mean?
What can Mozilla Firefox do to make their 500 million without Google?
philipallstar
They could just make less money and deprioritise non-engineering/engineering-leadership personnel.
lukan
In short, they could become a non profit again, with a single mission - build a open source browser with the interests of its users as first priority.
rvba
They dont need to spend millions on other products and politics for start.
nikanj
Society doesn't get improved by doing incremental work on a browser, and Mozilla's mission is to improve society
jowea
A decent chunk of the users who bothered installing an adblock would also be bothered enough to install a FF fork with adblock, so I doubt the revenue increase would be much.
As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?
theasisa
Do any of these forks have the ability to sync, either with Firefox or something self hosted? Or are they all just basically reskins with a single toggle added or such?
elashri
Yes you can actually self-host both Firefox sync server [1] and use Firefox accounts (which also can be self-hosted [2] and someone put something simpler in docker image [3]). And those can be used even with Firefox itself not only the forks.
[1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs
[2] https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/devel...
master-lincoln
I don't see how your 2 questions are related to each other.
> Do any of these forks have the ability to sync, either with Firefox or something self hosted?
The Firefox Sync web service is provided by Mozilla but can be self hosted: https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs. That could also be used in forks. See e.g. https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-with-... . I don't understand what you mean by sync with Firefox.
> Or are they all just basically reskins with a single toggle added or such?
Hard to generalize, but definitely not all of them. see e.g. https://lwn.net/Articles/1012453/
falcor84
Good point. I'd actually be happy to pay a couple of bucks a month for a good syncing solution based on an open source protocol, to make it easier for me to use the same history and preferences across browsers, IDEs and other such tools. It's actually a similar need and setup to that of a password manager, so I wonder if this is something Bitwarden could take on.
shantara
LibreWolf has a Firefox Sync option, though it's disabled by default
fijuv
I think it's too late for Mozilla, since it seems they already squandered most of their good will, userbase and money.
At any rate, I think their only good path of to get rid of Gecko.
The best would be to replace it with a finished version of Servo, which would give them a technically superior browser, assuming Google doesn't also drop Blink for Servo. It may be too late for this, but AI agents may perhaps make finishing Servo realistic.
The other path would be to switch to Chromium, which would free all the Gecko developers to work on differentiating a Chromium-based Firefox from Chrome, and guarantee that Firefox is always better than Chrome.
skrebbel
I don't think it's too late at all. I mean, there's recurring outrage whenever Mozilla does something silly again but all through that Firefox is still a fantastic browser. Don't under-value the many quieter parts of Mozilla who just keep kicking ass day in day out.
0dayz
>The other path would be to switch to Chromium, which would free all the Gecko developers to work on differentiating a Chromium-based Firefox from Chrome, and guarantee that Firefox is always better than Chrome
No they would get fired, unless Firefox found a new big project to earn money from, which at the moment is not very likely.
takluyver
I doubt AI agents are going to greatly accelerate the development of something as big and complex as Servo. It seems more realistic that Firefox would be built around either Blink (from Chromium) or Webkit to lean on Google/Apple.
saubeidl
If they switch to Chromium, they'll just become yet another Chrome rebrand. It'll kill what makes their browser special.
theandrewbailey
They keep redesigning their UI to be more like Chrome, might as well go deeper.
vdfs
What makes their browser special really? Just chasing profits and google handout and not caring about their user base
Iolaum
The web without ublock origin is a hellscape. Whenever I try another browser, I immediately go back to firefox.
Do these people even know their users?
For example: Fedora Silverblue default Firefox install had an issue with some Youtube videos due to codecs. So I tried watching youtube on Chromium. Ads were so annoying I stopped watching by the second time I tried to watch a video. Stopped watching youtube until I uninstalled default firefox install and added Firefox from flathub. If the option to use a good adblocker gets taken away I 'll most likely dramatically reduce my web browsing.
P.S. Maybe someone ports Vanadium to desktop Linux? If firefox goes away that 'd be my best case desktop browser. Using it on my mobile ;)
nephihaha
I prefer Brave but already have suspicions about that too.
throwfaraway135
Mozilla CEO compensations
2018: $2,458,350
2020: Over $3 million
2021: $5,591,406.
2022: $6,903,089.
2023: ~$7m
Mozilla declined to detail the CEO's salaries for 2024+
ajdude
I'm going to repost/merge a few comments I made about this a while ago:
I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
Mozilla has hired a lot of execs from Meta and bought an ad company, looking through a lot of their privacy policy at the time, a lot of it involves rewriting it to say that they can serve you sponsored suggestions when you're searching for things in their search bar and stuff and sharing out some of that data with third parties etc.
Firefox was bringing in half a billion a year for the last decade, if they would've just invested that money in low risk money market accounts (instead of paying their csuite executives millions of dollars in salary and putting the rest on non-Firefox related related social causes), the company would be able to easily survive off the interest alone.
I've been using Firefox since 2006 and have defended it for decades even when they've made questionable decisions that have gotten everybody upset with them. But this time it wasn't just making stupid decisions to try and fund the company, this time they actuality sold out their own customers.
In public announcement in the above link explaining why they removed "we don't sell your data" from the FAQ, the rationality was that some jurisdictions define selling data weirdly, they cited California's definition as an example but California's definition is exactly what I would consider the definition of selling my personal data.
They're justifying this by saying that they need it to stay alive since they're not going to be getting money from Google anymore, but I argue that you shouldn't sell out your customer base on the very specific reason anyone would choose you. I would rather pay a monthly fee to use Firefox to support them, but even if you gave them $500 million today they would just squander it away like they've done since forever so I really don't have any solution I can think of which frustrates me.
I switched to Orion (and use Safari if a site doesn't work in Orion), which can be a little buggy at times but I'm happy that it's not based on chrome at least.
>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
> It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.
Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M USD".