On Firefox and scapegoats
[Thu Oct 6 14:44:43 CDT 2022]

A few days, I read an article titled Mozilla is looking for a scapegoat, by Matt Asay, on the dwindling install base of the Firefox browser and the possible reasons behind it:

Mozilla recently released a 60-page report calling on regulators to take action to give consumers a “meaningful opportunity to try alternative browsers.” Alas, the problem for Mozilla isn’t anti-competitive practices from rival browser makers. The problem is competition itself, and Mozilla lost. Mozilla says its mission is to “rally citizens,” “connect leaders,” and “shape the agenda” to foster a “healthy internet.”

Maybe it should spend more time building a great browser.

For years Mozilla has concluded its dwindling market share has more to do with nefarious business practices than poor product development. This led it to plaster cities with billboards that read, “Every browser does fast. But not every browser does good.” It turns out, however, that most people don’t use browsers to serve their charitable impulses. They just want something that works, and Google’s Chrome has delivered that experience consistently across devices more than other browsers.

He goes on to provide some examples of Mozilla's fumbles. So, for instance, the fact that they entered the mobile market a bit late and, to make matters worse, they wasted some precious time trying to sell Mozilla as some sort of web-oriented OS. I'm not sure I share Asay's views. To be clear, he does make a few good points. However, the reality is that Google Chrome does come by default with every Android device out there. One has to go out of one's own way to install something else. I know because I'm one of those users who consistently installs not one, but two alternative browsers (Firefox and Brave). Likewise, his comparison to Edge or Safari are not relevant either, I think. Both those browsers also come preinstalled with their respective OSes. Finally, just in case Asey didn't notice, there is an obvious common thread here: all those browsers he is talkng about are sponsored by major technology behemoths, which is not the case of Firefox.

One way or another, the reality is that we are quickly approaching a situation where the Chrome rendering engine becomes pretty much a monopoly. While I wouldn't like to see the Government stepping in to force things, I also find positions like the one taken by Asey a bit disingeneous. For the time being, I prefer to continue using Firefox as a way to assert my own independence, and that is also what I recommend to other people when they ask. I try not to bother people evangelizing, but I also try not to fool myself into believing that this is a levelled plain field. It is not. {link to this entry}