I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Emacs is a spreadsheet, photo editor, toaster oven, or hair stylist. For the right people, it’s a desert-island app.
"Nooooo, you need to use FF no matter how much it pisses you off, since we can't let Google be a monopoly (even though it already is and it's the government's job to crack down monopolies)"
You put that in italics and quotes, presumably to mock the people saying this but...yes, you should! Google does much worse things and is effectively a monopolist, so not using Firefox necessarily means using Google, which only entrenches their monopoly further.
Why? They're actively hostile to me as a user and nor catering to my needs and desires.
>Google does much worse things and is effectively a monopolist
Monopolies are the government's job to tackle so talk to your representative about Google, but leave suers alone to use what they like. When cars polluted we had the government force them to lower emission, not shamed users for buying cars.
>Bitch at Mozilla, sure, but don't stop using it.
How is bitching more effective tool than not using a product I dislike? Not using their product is my only way of protest as that shows in their statistics and analytics while they can and do ignore bitching.
Mozilla is a major corporation not a 15 year old with cancer sewing Knick-Knacks for donations in his bedroom, so it will only improve if the user base goes elsewhere, otherwise if people keep using it out of spite, they have no reason to ever improve.
I think you're overstating the hostility relative to what an average user might say (biased pro-firefox user myself but I don't take their browser imperfections as active hostility).
And yeah, despite your protestations to the contrary, not wanting one company to have a browser monopoly really is a legitimate reason to support alternatives. In fact it's one of the best reasons. That's the problem with ridicule detached from reasons, you're going to look down like Wile E. Coyote and see there's no ground under you.
I'd love for real conversation about, say, keeping Servo, Web Assembly, the fallacy of "privacy preserving ads", how it would be nice to have a Firefox OS now with Android forcing "verified developers", about working with EFF to keep open standards and privacy at the center of the web. There's a rich conversation to be had about the role of Mozilla in the future of the internet, but incredulity and vague generalizations should be left back in the writer's room at Warner Bros.
>I'd love for real conversation about, say, keeping Servo, Web Assembly, the fallacy of "privacy preserving ads"
What is a "real" conversation? And what do those conversations help with here? Do you think Mozilla listens or cares about your conversations when they have all those billions coming from Google and can just sit and do nothing?
>how it would be nice to have a Firefox OS now with Android forcing "verified developers"
A lot of things would be nice, like ending world poverty and wars, but I'm being pragmatic and realistic instead of dreaming about things that won't realistically happen since in our world high level changes only happen, if big money or politics get involved.
>There's a rich conversation to be had about the role of Mozilla in the future of the internet
Conversations that would be a waste of time since Mozilla won't act based on our conversations. HN is full of such conversations. I'm being pragmatic, not entertaining some shallow philosophies of "wouldn't it be nice if" that don't lead anywhere since if 'ifs' were cookies I'd be fat.
Mozilla is constantly responding to community feedback, almost to a fault, encompassing everything from user interface changes, to features requests, to rolling back undesired changes. I would recommend reading more about Mozilla Connect, which I would argue was specifically launched to get ahead of spurious accusations like these. For a big flashy example, their blog post introducing Tab Groups is titled "You Asked for it, we built it", and the first line is "What happens when 4,500 people ask for the same feature? At Firefox, we build it."
Moreover they've revised their Terms of Use following criticism (much of it here on HN), wound down Pocket and Fakespot in response to feedback about these being outside of their core mission, implemented visual search in response to community requests, made it easier to switch between different profiles again based on community requests, added a rollback option for extensions to previously approved versions in response to developer requests, brought back night mode on iOS after having removed it because the community asked for it, changed the design of the iOS toolbar to get rid of the share button, centralized developer support tools in an all-in-one add on hub. And offered extensive explanations when choosing not to implement or maintain features (e.g. Live Bookmark tool).
The trouble with the real work of responding to requests is it's often granular and unsexy, even when examples abound, and it's easy to not know what they're really doing and reach for the pitchfork.
It's not about whether you should or shouldn't use Firefox, it's about whether you should or shouldn't switch from Mozilla to Google.
If you want to boycott Mozilla, cool, stop using it and go to Ladybird or at least Waterfox. But if your solution to "this thing is hostile to me" is "so I'll switch to this other thing that is more hostile to me" and you don't see the flaw in that logic, I don't know how to explain it to you...
Mozilla get >80% of its revenue from Google, by making Google Search as default search engine on Firefox.
While Mozilla pretends to be a non-profit, its CEO makes millions of dollars annually.
Mitchell Baker: Stepped down as CEO of Mozilla in February 2024. Her salary for 2023 was reported to be $6.9 million.
Laura Chambers: Became interim CEO of Mozilla in February 2024. Mozilla has not disclosed her salary for 2024 yet.
As of October 2025, the average annual salary for employees at Mozilla in the United States is ~$115k.
Not bad for a "non-profit", eh?
Yup, Mozilla and Firefox are surviving (nay, thriving) due to Google.
But Google's hand on the Mozilla tiller, is merely the top of the proverbial iceberg.
Google has a monopoly on the browser market, encouraged by Apple Safari slipping down to <14% market share amongst the leading browsers.
Google's Chrome (>71% market share) and the other Chromium forks (>9% market share: Edge ~4.5%, Samsung Internet Browser ~2%, Brave/Vivaldi/etc. ~1%) dominate the browser market. Opera (~1.75% market share) is not a Chromium fork, but it is based on Chromium Project.
