There is a very loud part of HN that strongly dislikes mozilla/firefox. It's disproportionate imo, I don't understand why they're singled out so often.
I don't think it's disproportionate at all. Nerds very badly want a viable alternative to Chrome and "Chrome with s paintjob". The only alternative is Firefox, but Mozilla has been a pretty shitty company and very bad stewards of an open web.
People are mad at Mozilla and Firefox because they're squandering resources on PR and "optics", shoveling in ads and AI crap instead of focusing development efforts on making Firefox actually competitive.
People are mad because Mozilla wants us to think they're a good company who will bring back a fair and open web, but their actions say they're just a profit motivated company who is content to put in the minimum viable resources into Firefox without investing in a real competitor to Chrome. Mozilla is just gobbling up google money and is content to let google and chrome continue operating a near monopoly with a browser and internet that are actively bad for and hostile towards users.
Yes, this exactly. Firefox became the one good avenue for preventing a Google monopoly over the web and Mozilla just completely fumbled the opportunity again and again. This isn't about one or two screwups, it's been a decade or more of the same problems.
It sucks. I absolutely don't want Google to have total control over the web and still want Firefox to succeed, but at this point it's clear they have failed. I still use Firefox, but much less than I used to and I stopped recommending it to non-techies a while back when they broke a bunch of functionality on mobile.
>one good avenue for preventing a Google monopoly over the web
This may be a canard but I was under the impression that Google maintains Mozilla through default search payment in order to have a bare minimum competitor to head off regulation. By that interpretation, dysfunction at Mozilla is preferred if not explicitly part of the plan.
Speaking for myself, it's really irritating to support a chrome alternative precisely because it's a chrome alternative and have it constantly shoot itself in the foot.
It sucks that I can't even attempt to convince someone to use it beyond "it's not Google", and data privacy. The vast majority of users won't ever give a damn about either of those by themselves.
A dozen years ago I was installing it on every computer I touched for more than a few minutes. Now I can't recommend it to anyone convincingly, especially because what I have to do to it to keep it as usable as it is for me (and what people see when they see me using it) is nothing that I could expect anyone normal to put up with. I honestly don't even want to use it at all without Debian standing between me and them.
But the sad part is all the hassle I go through gets it to about 80% of where it was a dozen years ago. A lot less crashy, though, I'll have to give them that - although everything is less crashy now. But they haven't destroyed the browser.
That's in a way even sadder: they decide every day to wake up and be bad, when any day they could decide to be better. Instead they've entered the modern massive predatory nonprofit space. Which usually is a vehicle for insiders to get rich off government grants, but Firefox have chosen the even eviller alternative of running interference for google as a product.
Any day they could choose to center the user and the health of the internet again. Every day they choose not to. They're just a valve that keeps paranoid and aware techies from going berserk and seriously competing against chrome, and that keeps antitrust away from google (not that there's anything for big business to to fear with horrible Obama judges like Amit Mehta on the bench.) It's their only serious source of income.
>> because what I have to do to it to keep it as usable
I find this confusing. Why is Firefox so much effort? Install it + badger + adnauseum. Done. Why so hard for you? I am not a power user, is that why I don't see the effort?
Gobbling up hundreds of millions of dollars to finance non-core missions and fat director bonuses while you sack the Servo development team might be a cause.
Agreed, though I think that spectator-sports-fandom (if that's what you meant) analogy also has emotional team-identification connotations that don't apply to the majority of HN strong opinions about browsers. (But apply more to, say, Emacs vs. Vim, or tabs vs. spaces.)
I think lot of the HN browsers strong opinions more akin to "Why do historians have strong opinions on geopolitical intrigue X" or "Why do doctors have strong opinions on the effectiveness of pharmaceutical Y". Strong opinions, because they are experts who care for important objective reasons.
Betrayal has that effect. They're supposed to be the good side. They abandoned that, and now they're just like any other unsuccessful tech company, desperately clinging to relevance while discarding all the ideals that made some of us support them.
You have to separate the browser (I'm using it to type this), and the Mozilla corporation / C-suite. The C-suite at Mozilla took the Google firehose of money, spent most of it on their own salaries, followed by idiotic vanity projects, and spent least of all on the browser itself. Never mind building a warchest or anything responsible like that. It's quite rational to dislike what Mozilla managers are doing, while supporting Firefox as a browser and the developers and volunteers who make that happen.
They fired the inventor of Javascript as their CEO. They hired some grifter as their CEO who just keeps giving themselves more money. They keep throwing money at vanity side hustles. They purposefully confuse the Mozilla foundation with the browser, and have increasingly made the foundation redirect their funds to C level salaries and their own personal political passion projects that are not aligned with the Mozilla Firefox project. If there were actually focusing on being the best browser and web privacy, it would be good. But they aren't.
At least part of the Mozilla antagonism on HN comes from highly motivated culture war participants. The Brendan Eich situation was a seminal event, but the underlying reasons for it are why the grudge endures.
If Mozilla were consistently making good decisions in the years since then, nobody would be wasting their time with "What if Eich were still in charge?" The only reason anybody still talks about that ousting is because they have other more current grievances with Mozilla.
Also, the reason HN has so many people ready to gripe about Firefox is because HN still has a large number of people using Firefox. I never complain about technical or policy decisions from Chrome or Safari because I don't use those browsers! The only reason I have complaints about Mozilla is because I actually use Firefox.
I used to give money to Mozilla foundation, even when I didnt have much. Then I learned none of it goes to firefox. I think if Eich was still in charge there would be more focus on Servo, Rust, etc. making a better browser and less on selling AI and channeling money to absurd NGO causes.
Eich's own company, Brave, is pushing AI plenty hard: the Brave browser promotes a "smart AI assistant" called Leo. That's much more AI integration than I see in Firefox.
I don't speak for everybody but personally I like applications experimenting with ways of using new technology instead of taking some sort of political stand against AI. Firefox's translation extension is based on such technology I believe, and works well enough, I like it. Going further, like Brave is doing, also seems interesting. I think people who get upset about ineptly implemented AI features are being a bit unreasonable. It's new technology so people still have to. figure out what does or doesn't work. Mozilla using funds to develop new browser features is something I want more of, not less.
Not wrong, but that comes with promoting yourself on ideology grounds. If you want support because you are the plucky underdog community project that cares about people and are running ad campaigns how you are not evil big tech, then don't be surprised if people hold you to it. Mozilla is in this weird space where it wants to be both the good little guys and a proper Silicon Valley tech company, and those don't necessarily mix well.
