Since 2018 and management changes Firefox lost a lot of users. [1] Firefox has now 3.67% market share.[2]

Mozilla is mismanaged, to quote another commenter from HN:

>Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes $3 million a year, and Mozilla asks you to donate "to help a nonprofit organization". >"On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

>"By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic."

>This lady then goes on and on talking about "social justice".

>Also Google deal produces 90% of Mozilla's revenue. I would say Mozilla is really controlled opposition.[3]

Mozilla derives over 90% from it's income from Google deal.[4]

If we take all these points in considerations, it seems Firefox is in peril. It can either disappear, become totally irrelevant or do what its biggest customer dictates it to do.

If web becomes a monoculture and only one company will be able to dictate its features, than the future isn't exactly rosy for users and developers alike. We need Firefox and other rendering engines and browser to have a healthy competition.

Is it possible that some company with deep pockets forks Firefox and hires what it's left from its development team to further develop Firefox and improve its market share?

Can it be in some big company's interest to push for web competition?

Since many big corps derive their incomes from the web, it should be. If they let someone control the web, it can be detrimental to their businesses.

[1] https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-decline/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28926582&p=2 [4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-go...

user:	fabco
created:	May 19, 2020
karma:	0