Is Firefox Firefucked?

https://kevquirk.com/blog/is-firefox-firefucked/

39•speckx•1h ago

Comments

mmastrac•1h ago

Firefox's main problem is Firefox users. Seriously, there's nothing but griping about it but it's pretty much the only browser holding back the rendering engine monopoly (intentionally excluding WebKit).

PunchyHamster•1h ago

Ah yes, blame the users for management's incompetence, what is this, game industry ?

messe•1h ago

We're just holding it wrong, that's all.

everdrive•1h ago

I think it's fair to criticize Firefox's user base, but I'm not sure their criticisms amount to very much. ie, if Firefox had a totally pliant user base it seems like Mozilla still would have driven it into the ground.

ToucanLoucan•1h ago

What is this fad on HN right now? All these people are coming out to criticize Firefox (Mozilla really, not Firefox itself) for their bumbling about the past few years, and now there's a backlash to it, like "these entitled users, oh my goodness" as though holding software companies to a standard is somehow a bad thing?

bondarchuk•1h ago

HN is deeply contrarian so once a majority opinion gains a foothold it flips to the opposite opinion.

BeetleB•56m ago

> as though holding software companies to a standard is somehow a bad thing?

I think some feel they are being held to extremely high standards.

As someone who's avoided the drama, and is a power user, Firefox has been great to me, and continues to be so.

mhurron•1h ago

> it's pretty much the only browser holding back the rendering engine monopoly

Maybe that's why they're complaining. Maybe they don't want Firefox spending it's time working itself into oblivion.

Of course the Mozilla Foundation isn't bound in any way to listen to them so it's going to happen anyway, but Firefox's users are upset for good reasons.

amatecha•1h ago

Holding people in power accountable is never a bad thing.

rationalist•1h ago

If anything, it's the powerusers that disable Firefox's telemetry so that they don't know how the power users use Firefox.

(Guiltily raises hand. Although lately I've noticed a ping option, so I left that enabled.)

cosmic_cheese•54m ago

On the other hand, maybe it was a mistake for the industry to start leaning so hard on telemetry. While it can provide useful insights in some cases, telemetry is best positioned as secondary or even tertiary in the decision-making process, because it doesn’t tell anywhere close the whole story and requires a great deal of error-prone interpretation to act upon.

To be frank, I find that use of analytics as the primary determiner to be incredibly intellectually lazy. They’re being used as a stand-in for deep, holistic thought in product design, user research, 1:1 interviews with users, etc when they shouldn’t be, and it’s making software as a whole much crappier than it needs to be.

jonway•7m ago

I just wanted to note that Firefox reached out to me as a user and requested a video call to discuss how I used one of their features.

I declined, but later they reintegrated their request with a servey, which I did accept.

These requests were presented through a dialog box attached to an extension (which many Firefox features are, internally, built-in extensions.)

I really want Firefox to succeed. Please enhance our security, privacy, ensure a performant browser AND I also like the project that Mozilla undertakes (rip send) hope to see more in the future.

OscarTheGrinch•47m ago

I disable everything that is of no direct benefit to me. It's shocking that so many companies don't make the case for the benefits of their systems at the on / off decision point. If you can't outline a positive benefit to the end user what does that say about your product?

kerkeslager•1h ago

Okay... are you saying there are no problems with Firefox? And if not, are how do you propose that users get these problems fixed without talking about them?

nutjob2•1h ago

It's the vitriol, not the criticism.

superkuh•1h ago

Yeah. I see this in every thread. Business types that aren't used to how normal human beings communicate see the human firefox users writing and they can never address the points. Instead they always get hung up on the tone and debate over the irrelevant tone becomes the primary/top thread in HN FF posts.

kerkeslager•49m ago

This feels to me like the scenes from the movie Don't Look Up where anyone actually pointing out what's happening gets told to calm down and be less aggressive.

If people saying what's wrong plainly and clearly is "vitriol" to you, then you have a problem with criticism.

nutjob2•1h ago

It's incredible the whining about AI when you can simply turn it off.

The speed comparisons make no sense either. Chrome is slightly faster so you should give up your ability to block all ads and let Google abuse you in myriad ways while supporting a virtual monopoly? FFS.

Firefox is simply a better browser, hands down. It's a better design and more user friendly than Chrome. I only regret being on Chrome for so long.

damnesian•56m ago

As long as it can be turned off, I will remain a user. I've been a user of this lineage of browser since Netscape. I've got its features baked into muscle memory. But I have no interest in the overhead nor the distractions of AI integration. I guess it remains to be seen how feverently the new CEO wants to alienate the existing userbase.

Loudergood•49m ago

You can turn ever single one of their complaints off. It's ridiculous whining that doesn't get to the core of the problem: No one is out spreading Firefox like they used to be, it just can't compete with platform owners on that front.

jalapenog•1h ago

I’m not saying Mozilla ever had a chance vs Google but they clearly chose Google ad money over their user base.

triceratops•1h ago

What does that mean exactly?

damnesian•57m ago

Google as default search engine for every fresh install, perhaps?

triceratops•54m ago

How does that harm the user base?

cogman10•52m ago

Google paid Mozilla a pretty penny to make Google the default search engine [1]

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/12/mozilla_doj_google_se...

triceratops•50m ago

I'm aware. How is that a move against the Firefox userbase? It seems fairly neutral. If you don't like the default engine, change it. I set mine to Duckduckgo.

cogman10•46m ago

> How is that a move against the Firefox userbase

Were this 10 years ago, I'd say nothing. Today, google is turning into one of the worst at using user data against the users. From pushing ads disguised as search results to mining user data for adverts across platforms.

Making google the default search engine opts non-savvy users into using a bad actor for their searches.

triceratops•44m ago

I see. And that makes it a bad browser for you? You're clearly capable of switching the default. What's your complaint? Do you pay for Firefox?

cogman10•38m ago

> And that makes it a bad browser for you?

No, I'm just stating why using google as the default engine is user hostile.

> What's your complaint?

Mostly that it's a user hostile move. Is it bad enough to make me personally switch? No. Part of why I use firefox is because I don't like the idea of consolidation for browsers into one renderer.

Organizations can make decisions I don't like and I'll still use their products. I'm allowed to identify those as issues. Mozilla hasn't done something that'd make me boycott their products.

> Do you pay for Firefox?

Yes, I donate to the Mozilla foundation.

triceratops•36m ago

Aight you're cool then.

PurpleRamen•1h ago

The community today is the result of 10+ years of disappointment. Some are long enough following Firefox to remember what has been lost, and some have grown and cultivated their grudges over a long time. And people know, there will never be a golden age of Mozilla again, from this point on it's just survival. For many, it's probably just a relationship of necessary evil they have to swallow.

Loudergood•47m ago

The problem is the same exact on that MS was slapped for with IE, except there are 3 major platforms now so none of them are a monopoly.

BeetleB•58m ago

Obligatory thread from yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46318389

graypegg•41m ago

I can't really defend Mozilla's priorities or business model myself, but I do agree that Firefox users create this massive pessimistic cloud overtop of firefox. From what little I know, the Firefox MPL license isn't restrictive at all, other than forcing you to not re-license existing MPL code. Another corporate sponsor could take on the torch, pay a bunch of ex or current mozilla devs/contributers, and make EarthTurtle or WindBird or something. Not just stripping things out of Firefox, but working on the browser engine/js engine/etc, starting from Firefox today and diverging.

Users tend to talk about mozilla like it's holding firefox hostage or something, but really the main gripe they have is building and maintaining browsers is beyond the scope of an individual. THEY couldn't fork firefox, but it's not impossible for someone with resources and connections to MAKE an entity that does. It just... hasn't happened again. Mozilla is a pretty insane freak-of-nature in the business world, and there's honest frustration about that which grows into "Firefox is doomed".

Y-bar•1h ago

I have never been as happy with Firefox as I am in 2025. Yet… Sometimes my fellow FF users seems to be making a worse advertisement than the ”you should rewrite this application in Rust” does for Rust, and those people have by sheer annoyance effectively made me never pick up Rust because I do not want to be associated with them.

kerkeslager•1h ago

I'm concerned, and I am glad people keep writing about this.

But the final bit in this post is really where I'm at: I have no idea where to go from here.

Currently on mobile I use Orion--it's the only mobile browser I've found where setting up AdBlocking is reasonably easy. Maybe I'll try it on Desktop.

But this doesn't really address the issue of there being only one rendering engine out there because it uses WebKit.

bjord•1h ago

are you on android or iOS?

kerkeslager•47m ago

I'm on iOS.

bjord•38m ago

I'm a kagi fan, but my family members who I've had try orion ran into quite a few issues. Might be worth trying one of these with regular safari:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr-2/id1662217862

on android I use firefox with the regular ublock origin extension

bjord•34m ago

and if you're a chrome user on desktop (I use ff), helium might be worth a try

https://helium.computer

full disclosure: one of the devs is a friend of mine

if for some reason you want to use webkit on desktop (linux), there's always gnome web, but in my experience it can't handle anything beyond very basic browsing (for example, a youtube video will cause it to crash)

username223•31m ago

> But the final bit in this post is really where I'm at: I have no idea where to go from here.

That's a good question. Mozilla has something like a half-billion dollars of assets, which is more than twice what the Linux Foundation reports. Does maintaining a web browser cost more than twice as much as maintaining an operating system? Hopefully not, but maybe it's time we find out.

superkuh•1h ago

The post lists a number of ad-tech moves Mozilla has made in recent years, the ever increasing upper management salaries, and the insistence on trying to make Firefox preprocess everything you see on the web instead of showing you the web itself (AI).

I personally agree with these complaints. I think most people who intentionaly install Firefox agree with them. Despite all it's attempts otherwise, Firefox was and still is mostly used by "power users" and we're pretty much the only ones left that intentionally install the browser. Mozilla being the only working alternative to Alphabet domainance over the web doesn't change the validity of these issues. The real issue here is that Mozilla wants to be HUGE instead of just being a browser for humans.

I'd been a Firefox user since K-meleon (with a gap decade when Opera was actually a real browser and innovating). But for me the breaking point wasn't all this ad-tech stuff or the signalling of AI. It was when Mozilla showed they no longer cared about their core userbase and wanted to chase after demographics that didn't care about browsers at all; when they made the security theater Add-ons signing portal in version 37 and made it so one could not edit or install such things without Mozilla's central and continued approval (also, baking in 3 year expiring add-on certs making FF trial-ware). These days, for me, it's just a fallback for my bank. I use a Firefox fork for my main browsers which is much more Firefox than Firefox.

barfoure•1h ago

You let them oust Brendan Eich. I have no sympathy whatsoever because you let the charlatans into the project and now you’re complaining.

Nobody stood up for Brendan. Nobody is going to stand up for you.

LaGrange•1h ago

Brendan Eich was garbage, though, and on top of that he made Brave which is basically a joke, so not exactly missing him.

Levitz•50m ago

In what way is Brave a joke? I ask because it's what I look at whenever I think about finally dropping Firefox

the_biot•1h ago

I have to wonder, who are you talking to?

Pannoniae•48m ago

It's a bit of a generic complaint, but quite apt for the subject matter. Mission creep kills projects, and that's true across a broad range of activities.

More specifically in the case of software, egos kill projects, and expanding the scope of your project to include broader economic or social causes usually does the same.

This is correlated to a huge change in nerd culture - pseudonymity was much more common and encouraged, with people's real-life identities or views not really taken into account. ("on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog")

Social media happened, and now most people use their real-world identities and carry their real-life worldview into the internet.

This had a huge negative effect on internet toxicity and interpersonal trust, and Eich is a good example of that - auxiliary things being dredged up about someone, used as a cudgel against them for their real or perceived transgressions.

The end result is that effective project management has become a rare breed and we see all these colossal failures like Firefox...

schmuckonwheels•57m ago

That was the beginning of the end. A symptom not the cause. Once you inject politics into your organization the project is doomed.

rationalist•1h ago

A problem is no one is testing their websites in Firefox, so often I encounter websites that don't work, but work perfectly fine in Vanadium.

prmoustache•1h ago

often?

rationalist•15m ago

Yes, in fact just today trying to use Dollar General's website to "clip a coupon". I scanned the QR code, found the coupon, tapped on it. I got a blank box (white box on gray background IIRC) in Firefox Focus, but a login screen on Vanadium.

And yesterday, same with a local club's website. Didn't even work in Firefox for Android, but worked in Vanadium. I got the website's custom loading sprinner, so that loaded and worked, but whatever was supposed to change the screen when everything else loaded, did not work.

noman-land•57m ago

This basically never happens.

rationalist•13m ago

What basically never happen? People testing in Firefox, or websites not working properly?

mmastrac•13m ago

I use it daily on mobile and desktop and... this never happens (maybe once a year at most?)? The only thing that breaks pages is the adblocker and things work again when refreshing.

rationalist•12m ago

No adblocker on Firefox Focus.

Zaskoda•1h ago

What is the next best alternative to throw support behind? I did a very shallow search and the forks of Firefox I found don't appear to be actively maintained.

pelotron•59m ago

I see the Waterfox and Librewolf forks mentioned a lot for various reasons.

goda90•53m ago

I can't speak to the quality of any of these, but these all appear to be forks of Firefox that are still receiving updates as of the last few weeks:

https://www.waterfox.com/

https://librewolf.net/

https://floorp.app/

6031769•48m ago

Pale Moon is actively maintained. https://www.palemoon.org/

postflopclarity•1h ago

I had to stop using firefox because it just wouldn't display youtube videos. disabling adblocking, hardware acceleration, updates, etc. etc. didn't help at all

noman-land•58m ago

I don't have this problem.

BeetleB•55m ago

Did you try on a clean profile?

softwaredoug•1h ago

I just don’t understand the purpose of the Mozilla foundation any more. They’re a non profit? But seem to do the bidding of big tech?

I have no sense of what they stand for

That plus seeming to chase every hype wave (Crypto, now AI) I just don’t get why I should care about them.

BoredPositron•58m ago

It's just another money redistribution scheme. Some do art ... some do browsers.

thw_9a83c•42m ago

> I have no sense of what they stand for

There a nice Mozilla Manifesto explaining the Mozilla mission and their values [1].

Apparently, it's difficult to find a stable, independent, and effective revenue model for an open-source browser that is completely free as a product, should not contain shady ads or product promotions, does not sell user data, and always puts the user first.

This is especially difficult because there are other free browsers with a similar mission that don't need to incur the cost of developing their own web engine.

[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

abigail95•1h ago

It's open source, use a fork if you don't like the company.

If you think the product is good keep using it - why on earth would you give up one of your most important pieces of software on your machine because you don't like the company that runs the main repo?

cultureulterior•1h ago

As soon as they bring back XUL I'll go back to supporting them.

talentedcoin•56m ago

I'm disappointed to see this immature, mean-spirited screed on HN.

h43z•55m ago

Firefox is really in a sad state. The politics, ideology is getting worse and the tech is still bad. Kind of crazy that they waste everyones battery and cpu https://b.43z.one/2025-02-12/

Am I the one who is crazy and nitpicking here?

triceratops•53m ago

Firefox works fine. It's my daily browser on a fairly old Macbook. No issues whatsoever, other than some websites that weren't tested on it.

rationalist•5m ago

People seem to think I'm crazy in my other comments when I said I often run into websites that don't test Firefox and thus do not work properly.

E39M5S62•37m ago

That's a fascinating bit of sleuthing! 1.5 watts is a substantial amount of energy when you're in the 4 to 5 watt overall usage range. You're not crazy and nitpicking.

ChrisArchitect•46m ago

[dupe]

Discussions:

Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491

Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299934

No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295268

Make Me CEO of Mozilla

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46303809

dfabulich•5m ago

Mozilla's problem is unsolvable.

Firefox gets 90% of its funding from Google, putting Google effectively in control of Mozilla.

Ideally, Firefox would be financially supported by its users, like Wikipedia. But that requires ads nagging users to donate, preferably on a subscription plan.

Most of Firefox's users block ads, and they refuse to pay Mozilla a dime under any circumstances. Their users are freeloaders, providing no value to Firefox's other users or to Mozilla.

It would be nice if Mozilla could ignore the freeloaders and simply nag for donations anyway, but if the freeloaders leave and Mozilla tries to serve its donor users, they'll lose all of their Google funding and die.

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