Mozilla is trying to innovate and bring new features to Firefox, but the browser continues to lose users. Despite these concerning market trends, the company is actively...
If I was Mozilla CEO I know exactly what I would do. I would double down on the users.
Immediately put out a press release that Mozilla will not for as long as I’m in charge make one single dime selling user data. Put in our very corporate charter that we are required to collect as little data as possible to make our products work. Also make a public promise that any AI features which aren’t 100% local will require a very big opt-in and we will try to avoid shipping any such things at all.
Focus on speed. Chrome started getting market share in the first place because they advertised it could render a web page in under 100ms. So that’s what I would shoot for. Screw everything else, the main rendering parts of the browser should be fast, threaded, and stable.
Part of that would be to include some script selection processes in the browser itself. This would partially be like an ad block but more like a priority system. Right now you go to a news website and there’s a good chance you’re pulling tens of megabytes of JavaScript that tracks everything and actually runs a fucking auction in your browser where advertisers are bidding on the right to show you an ad. This does not help the user. So I would focus on developing a system that identifies what JavaScript code renders the bulk of the web page and what is for things like ads, the add code goes dead last. That way the content of the page loads very quickly.
Then I would basically license ublock origin and include that functionality in the browser itself. I would throw Dev time at optimizing the hell out of that. And that would be one of the questions asked at first run, do you want to block advertisements? If user says yes then ublock is enabled.
That alone will probably get a shit ton of users, because it will do the same thing as Chrome did years ago, just make the experience of web surfing better.
Not two months ago I was downvoted to oblivion on this community when arguing with someone who claimed that any feature being opt-out is bloat and dark patterns.
Understand that people are speaking from frustration. Users are tired. We are sick of having things we don’t want shoved down our throats and told that we want them. This is not just Firefox, this is most software.
Sure, but I’m talking about making an exception for just this one. But fine, it can be opt-in. I can’t imagine why, though; I have it on literally every device and it rocks.
If I was Mozilla CEO I know exactly what I would do. I would double down on the users.
Immediately put out a press release that Mozilla will not for as long as I’m in charge make one single dime selling user data. Put in our very corporate charter that we are required to collect as little data as possible to make our products work. Also make a public promise that any AI features which aren’t 100% local will require a very big opt-in and we will try to avoid shipping any such things at all.
Focus on speed. Chrome started getting market share in the first place because they advertised it could render a web page in under 100ms. So that’s what I would shoot for. Screw everything else, the main rendering parts of the browser should be fast, threaded, and stable.
Part of that would be to include some script selection processes in the browser itself. This would partially be like an ad block but more like a priority system. Right now you go to a news website and there’s a good chance you’re pulling tens of megabytes of JavaScript that tracks everything and actually runs a fucking auction in your browser where advertisers are bidding on the right to show you an ad. This does not help the user. So I would focus on developing a system that identifies what JavaScript code renders the bulk of the web page and what is for things like ads, the add code goes dead last. That way the content of the page loads very quickly.
Then I would basically license ublock origin and include that functionality in the browser itself. I would throw Dev time at optimizing the hell out of that. And that would be one of the questions asked at first run, do you want to block advertisements? If user says yes then ublock is enabled. That alone will probably get a shit ton of users, because it will do the same thing as Chrome did years ago, just make the experience of web surfing better.
I would stop reinventing the UI every two years.
If I was its CEO, I would endorse AdNauseam as an official, built-in, opt-out ad-blocker.
Not two months ago I was downvoted to oblivion on this community when arguing with someone who claimed that any feature being opt-out is bloat and dark patterns.
Understand that people are speaking from frustration. Users are tired. We are sick of having things we don’t want shoved down our throats and told that we want them. This is not just Firefox, this is most software.
Sure, but I’m talking about making an exception for just this one. But fine, it can be opt-in. I can’t imagine why, though; I have it on literally every device and it rocks.