Firefox - Murder or Suicide?

I have been using Mozilla’s Firefox browser for many years. Its privacy features are outstanding. They are far better than those of Safari or Chrome or any other browser. Another strength is  that it has also a good number of extensions; though not as many as it used to have. Incessant revisions and a declining market share have made developing Firefox extensions less and less attractive.

All is not well. Many former users have turned to Google’s Chrome browser and Firefox’s market share is now tiny. There have been several big staff lay-offs.

Under the lawyer Mitchell Baker’s leadership Firefox is failing badly.

 

Browser market shares are -
Chrome. 65%
Safari.   18%
Edge.  3.4%
Firefox  3.2%

With an annual salary of over $2 million Baker is being well compensated for failure.

 

Murder or suicide?

Is Firefox being killed by the competion or is it killing itself by its own foolish actions?

Well, there is a suicide element.

This is one of Firefox’s suicide notes.

 Yesterday it appeared eight times in my browser.

Somebody at Mozilla wants me to update and thinks the right way to do it is by incessant nagging.  They may see the nagging as a cunning plan. Others, including me,  may see it as abysmally stupid.

One of the golden rules of software development is

Don’t make users mad!!

If Mozilla is bleeding users it should stop driving away the few that remain. Annoying users is foolish. Baker needs to find out who is responsible for this and encourage them to seek alternative employment. 

Updates.

Mozilla boasts that it gives users an updated browser every month.

Why?

I don’t want a new browser every month. Just as I do not want my car dealer shouting through my letterbox that they have a new paint in stock and he is going to hammer on my door until I agree to have my car resprayed.

Updates should be few and far between. They should only be issued when there is a compelling reason to do so. Users should be confident that the update is worthwhile and will not worsen their experience.

Trust

Trust is important with software but I do not trust the numpties at Mozilla. The last time I updated they removed the option for me to control when I updated and introduced the exciting new nagging feature. If I update what new 'improvement' will I find?

The antics of the Mozilla numpties mean that I don’t trust Mozilla and will not be buying one of their VPNs or any other new products.

Mozilla is trying to introduce new products but the majority of Mozilla’s money comes from Google. They are paying Mozilla $450M pa to be the default search engine on Firefox. That deal is soon due for renewal. Google will probably continue to prop up Mozilla, though perhaps not as generously. They will not want the EU to think they have a browser monopoly. Firefox will probably survive but with an even lower market share.