Firefox's main problem is Firefox users. Seriously, there's nothing but griping about it but it's pretty much the only browser holding back the rendering engine monopoly (intentionally excluding WebKit).
I have never been as happy with Firefox as I am in 2025. Yet… Sometimes my fellow FF users seems to be making a worse advertisement than the ”you should rewrite this application in Rust” does for Rust, and those people have by sheer annoyance effectively made me never pick up Rust because I do not want to be associated with them.
The post lists a number of ad-tech moves Mozilla has made in recent years, the ever increasing upper management salaries, and the insistence on trying to make Firefox preprocess everything you see on the web instead of showing you the web itself (AI).
I personally agree with these complaints. I think most people who intentionaly install Firefox agree with them. Despite all it's attempts otherwise, Firefox was and still is mostly used by "power users" and we're pretty much the only ones left that intentionally install the browser. Mozilla being the only working alternative to Alphabet domainance over the web doesn't change the validity of these issues. The real issue here is that Mozilla wants to be HUGE instead of just being a browser for humans.
I'd been a Firefox user since K-meleon (with a gap decade when Opera was actually a real browser and innovating). But for me the breaking point wasn't all this ad-tech stuff or the signalling of AI. It was when Mozilla showed they no longer cared about their core userbase and wanted to chase after demographics that didn't care about browsers at all; when they made the security theater Add-ons signing portal in version 37 and made it so one could not edit or install such things without Mozilla's central and continued approval (also, baking in 3 year expiring add-on certs making FF trial-ware). These days, for me, it's just a fallback for my bank. I use a Firefox fork for my main browsers which is much more Firefox than Firefox.
What is the next best alternative to throw support behind? I did a very shallow search and the forks of Firefox I found don't appear to be actively maintained.
I had to stop using firefox because it just wouldn't display youtube videos. disabling adblocking, hardware acceleration, updates, etc. etc. didn't help at all
It's open source, use a fork if you don't like the company.
If you think the product is good keep using it - why on earth would you give up one of your most important pieces of software on your machine because you don't like the company that runs the main repo?
Firefox is really in a sad state. The politics, ideology is getting worse and the tech is still bad. Kind of crazy that they waste everyones battery and cpu https://b.43z.one/2025-02-12/
Firefox gets 90% of its funding from Google, putting Google effectively in control of Mozilla.
Ideally, Firefox would be financially supported by its users, like Wikipedia. But that requires ads nagging users to donate, preferably on a subscription plan.
Most of Firefox's users block ads, and they refuse to pay Mozilla a dime under any circumstances. Their users are freeloaders, providing no value to Firefox's other users or to Mozilla.
It would be nice if Mozilla could ignore the freeloaders and simply nag for donations anyway, but if the freeloaders leave and Mozilla tries to serve its donor users, they'll lose all of their Google funding and die.
I've personally used and still use FF for year and have now no intentions of switching.
I don't care about the Ai stuff as long is mostly opt-in or easily disabled at least.
Having said that I've been looking forward the Ladybug project as a another browser not part of the chromium swarm. I'm sure I'll give it a try when it's more mature.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 34.5 ms ] threadBut the final bit in this post is really where I'm at: I have no idea where to go from here.
Currently on mobile I use Orion--it's the only mobile browser I've found where setting up AdBlocking is reasonably easy. Maybe I'll try it on Desktop.
But this doesn't really address the issue of there being only one rendering engine out there because it uses WebKit.
I personally agree with these complaints. I think most people who intentionaly install Firefox agree with them. Despite all it's attempts otherwise, Firefox was and still is mostly used by "power users" and we're pretty much the only ones left that intentionally install the browser. Mozilla being the only working alternative to Alphabet domainance over the web doesn't change the validity of these issues. The real issue here is that Mozilla wants to be HUGE instead of just being a browser for humans.
I'd been a Firefox user since K-meleon (with a gap decade when Opera was actually a real browser and innovating). But for me the breaking point wasn't all this ad-tech stuff or the signalling of AI. It was when Mozilla showed they no longer cared about their core userbase and wanted to chase after demographics that didn't care about browsers at all; when they made the security theater Add-ons signing portal in version 37 and made it so one could not edit or install such things without Mozilla's central and continued approval (also, baking in 3 year expiring add-on certs making FF trial-ware). These days, for me, it's just a fallback for my bank. I use a Firefox fork for my main browsers which is much more Firefox than Firefox.
Nobody stood up for Brendan. Nobody is going to stand up for you.
I have no sense of what they stand for
That plus seeming to chase every hype wave (Crypto, now AI) I just don’t get why I should care about them.
If you think the product is good keep using it - why on earth would you give up one of your most important pieces of software on your machine because you don't like the company that runs the main repo?
Am I the one who is crazy and nitpicking here?
Discussions:
Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491
Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299934
No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295268
Make Me CEO of Mozilla
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46303809
Firefox gets 90% of its funding from Google, putting Google effectively in control of Mozilla.
Ideally, Firefox would be financially supported by its users, like Wikipedia. But that requires ads nagging users to donate, preferably on a subscription plan.
Most of Firefox's users block ads, and they refuse to pay Mozilla a dime under any circumstances. Their users are freeloaders, providing no value to Firefox's other users or to Mozilla.
It would be nice if Mozilla could ignore the freeloaders and simply nag for donations anyway, but if the freeloaders leave and Mozilla tries to serve its donor users, they'll lose all of their Google funding and die.
I don't care about the Ai stuff as long is mostly opt-in or easily disabled at least.
Having said that I've been looking forward the Ladybug project as a another browser not part of the chromium swarm. I'm sure I'll give it a try when it's more mature.