> from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business.
> I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project.
It’s not clear to me. I agree they would have some problems if Google declined to pay them because the next best offer would be lower.
But the best way to keep these payments, or to increase them, is by making a better browser and giving people a reason to use Firefox. After spinning off Servo I lost the last hope I had.
It seems everyone is stuffing AI summary tools into everything, is this something that will retain users or bring in new users? I doubt it.
You bring up a great example. Mozilla poured tons of resources and had very smart people working on Rust, Servo, and related tech projects to improve Firefox. Where was the surge of market share?
We’re at a point where the core functionality of browsers is very mature. It’s unlikely that any amount of investment will produce a browser that is significantly faster at things like JS execution or rendering compared to Chrome.
So alternative browsers add things like better ad blockers, more privacy protections, or maybe LLM summaries to enhance the core browser experience instead.
The least cynical view, in my opinion, is that Google is an ad company, which ultimately means they are a data company. They don't need Mozilla to build a better browser, they need Mozilla to increase the amount of user data Google can collect and ad spots Google can sell.
The more cynical view is that Google doesn't care at all about Mozilla because the investment is nothing more than a hedge against regulatory pressure.
Most non-tech "normies", which is to say 95% of the population, barely know what a browser is. They couldn't describe the function of one, or discriminate what makes one better than another. They certainly won't give a crap about Servo, or extremely marginal improvements in page load time (at best).
Given that web browsers are the heaviest application most users are running, and they are running them on low end 10yr old laptops with 8gb of RAM, I think an ultra modern lightweight web browser would be noticeably better.
Web browser crawl on these low end laptops.
This is how Firefox became popular in the first place, by being better.
The “we need an alternative to the “WebKit/blink/chromium” monopoly is what the majority of people will never care about.
Web slowness has much more to do with sites than with browsers. Where sites have accumulated Everest-sized balls of JavaScript mud, web engines have only become more optimized. If you visit “old web” style pages (Macintosh Garden for example) on old machines with modern browsers there’s no speed problem at all.
In the face of all that JS, there’s only so far a spiffy new browser can improve the situation, aside from maybe drop large chunks of legacy web standards but then you’re breaking large chunks of the web.
Most of the new features on the web are corporation driven. The only web site I reluctantly give microphone access is Google Meet and this should have been a desktop app. We have so many layout engines in a browser while layout for both documents and GUI have been solved for decades. Every new feature is just reinventing the wheel to solve a non problem.
From my experience observing and interacting with “normal” non-tech users, slowness of apps and long loading times are simply ignored. I would think “how the hell can you live like that?!”, and they would at best say “yeah it’s kinda slow”.
They also wouldn't use Firefox - they'd use Chrome, Edge, or (more likely) Chrome/Safari mobile. People who use Firefox are already tech people or the family of.
Browsers are a means to an end for other major providers excluding for Opera. They can be loss leaders even, as long as they do their job of steering users towards proprietary ecosystems
> I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project.
It’s not clear to me. I agree they would have some problems if Google declined to pay them because the next best offer would be lower.
But the best way to keep these payments, or to increase them, is by making a better browser and giving people a reason to use Firefox. After spinning off Servo I lost the last hope I had.
It seems everyone is stuffing AI summary tools into everything, is this something that will retain users or bring in new users? I doubt it.