I know it feels a little like kicking someone while they’re down, but I wish Mozilla had just focused on improving their browser product to compete with Chrome during that critical period when Chrome ate all their marketshare.
I mean if you make one product and the biggest company in the world comes at you with a direct competitor, you have to step up. Not try to make another competitor from scratch that competes with the big company’s other products.
Also, Mozilla had $450m revenue in 2018. I guess I’m just a professor and maybe that’s what a couple of SF apartments cost now, but: that seems like a very respectable budget to invest in making your browser better.
I guess I should add that I use Firefox and I plan to keep using it while it exists. Because (1) Mozilla eventually fixed many issues, and (2) has very belatedly begun to focus around privacy.
It is deeply unfortunate that Mozilla’s recent moves around privacy only began after Apple took such a big bite out of that space.
Someday someone will write a very good book (for a very small audience) about the second browser wars, and what Mozillans were thinking when they saw Apple start to actually do the anti-tracking and privacy stuff Mozilla had held back on launching.
Anyway, I’ve been told I’m a jerk for saying all of this and my thoughts here are banal, sort of hard to argue with that! But if there’s anyone who does need help connecting with privacy/security opportunities and I can amplify, please DM or just mention.
