google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
There is a realistic chance that Google's funding of Firefox/Mozilla through default search engine deals will be struck down by a court in the current antitrust case.
If that happens, I do not think Mozilla can survive financially on their own, at least not at the scale they are operating at right now, despite their half-assed attempts at "creating other revenue streams" over the years. I also question the maintainability of their existing browser codebase.
So. If you've been contemplating whether to start building a new browser engine... now's the time to start. This is your advance warning. Make sure it's one you don't need millions of dollars for to maintain.
It's going to take a while, most likely, for all of this stuff to go through the courts, so there's time. But building a browser engine is a big task, too, and ideally it should be started *before* things implode over at Mozilla.
google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@joepie91 how terrible is it that the more probable outcome of a web browser antitrust case is that Mozilla, rather than Google, has to seriously scale back or risk going out of business
google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@someonetellmetosleep On the one hand, I understand where that feeling comes from.
On the other hand, I think it's high time to stop idealizing Mozilla as some great and irreplaceable organization, because they absolutely have not been living up to that expectation for at least a decade by now, and it's an open question how many alternatives have never come into existence because of the public perception of Mozilla 'having it under control' (which they most assuredly do not).
google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@joepie91 I mean I'm aware that Mozilla is bad in many ways (it wasn't even that long ago that they stuffed an LLM into MDN, for just one example), but they're not "destroying the open internet" bad and Google is doing pretty much all the same things to a much greater extent
google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@someonetellmetosleep I don't know that that is actually true, to be honest.
Sure, they are not *actively and willfully* destroying the internet, but whether by intention or otherwise, they have certainly been acting as controlled opposition - never genuinely threatening the dominance of Google (who *are* destroying the open internet), but being high-profile and *just* useful enough that it discourages and inhibits more radical efforts, because "we have Mozilla already!".
I would argue that they have certainly been *contributing to* the destruction of the open internet, by being such a poor steward of the task of "safeguarding openness" while constantly claiming to be taking the responsibility upon them in their public-facing marketing.
Or to put it differently: Firefox going under is going to have serious consequences for a lot of people, and this sucks and mitigations are needed for this. But I am not sad about *the organization itself* going under, because I am much more interested in what could exist once Mozilla is no longer sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
discussion re: google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@someonetellmetosleep That's the thing, though - why would you put in all of the effort to create a new, better browser... when Firefox is right there, and it's Good Enough and the degradation is slow?
This is the core problem with controlled opposition; it is Good Enough by some metric that gets slightly worse every year, but never too fast to freak people out and create an opportunity for a critical mass of "people who want to start their own thing" to exist.
So yes, no other browser options exist. But why is that? Because the existing options are Good Enough. And yes, the standardization process is thoroughly captured. But why is that? Because no other browsers exist and the power is heavily centralized in Google and, yes, Mozilla. And Mozilla has every reason to go along with Google, and so functionally all the power lies with Google.
Mozilla is never going to throw Google out of the standards process, they're never going to go against them, because Google will just steamroll over them and this will only hurt Mozilla. So a third party is needed to do that - but there are none left, because you cannot gain any traction on *creating* one, because again, Firefox is Good Enough.
What I'm trying to say here is that all the issues you are describing likely exist *because* of Mozilla being controlled opposition. They cannot provide any counterweight, and they cannot fix the issue, they can only discourage others from even trying to.
And yes, I *do* expect that to improve when Mozilla goes under, simply because there is a vacuum, and the problem becomes obviously visible, and that makes it a lot easier to mobilize people.
Will that happen quickly? No, probably not, which is the usual problem with accelerationist views, which is why I'm trying to put out early warning here, to hopefully mitigate or eliminate the timespan during which there are zero alternatives.
discussion re: google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@joepie91 I just think that any good things that could happen with Firefox going under are hugely outweighed by the good things that would happen if Google's browser monopoly (at least) were broken up, and it's sad that there's practically no chance of that happening, at least before the alternative
discussion re: google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@someonetellmetosleep Sure. But that is comparing to a non-existent alternative - the antitrust ruling concerns their search engine and search advertising business, not their browser, so the chances of this resulting in a browser breakup are essentially nil.
Hence only bringing up the Firefox funding issue, and how I feel about the possibility of Mozilla going under - because that's simply the only impact this ruling is likely to have on the browser world.
discussion re: google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@joepie91 I feel like you misunderstood where I was coming from because I've been aware that Google's browser business is basically perfectly safe and that was kind of my point
google, firefox, browser development, and comments of mild impending doom
@joepie91 I mean sure, they are controlled opposition, absolutely. They have been for a very long time now. I just can't see how the situation can get better by removing the controlled opposition.
Or to put it another way, do I have lots of problems with Firefox? Yes. Would I switch to another browser that solved them? Yes. Does such a browser currently exist? Not that I'm aware of. Does it seem likely to me that one will spring up rapidly after Firefox loses support? Not remotely.
Making a browser for for the modern internet is a huge amount of work, and Google is to blame for very thoroughly capturing the standardization process and bloating it so much.