I do get it but it isn't good. Basically, what happened was that they were cuddled to death by investors after having some initial success bootstrapping out of the failing company that was Netscape. I say failing company in the sense that they had an golden exit followed by years of incompetent management by AOL just before the peak of the dot com bubble. Amazing timing. I guess one of the lucky spinoffs powered by that exit was Y Combinator (and HN).

One stroke of luck was basically the whole thing ending up being open source, which basically meant that the whole team just cut loose from AOL when AOL management got a bit too infatuated with themselves. They continued independently at some point and created the Mozilla Foundation shortly after basically a botched attempt by AOL to get rid of Mitchell Baker; who ended up creating and leading Mozilla after which AOL basically lost most of what remained of their acquisition.

From the ashes of that came Phoenix, which later renamed to Firebird and eventually Firefox. Around the time the Mozilla Foundation became a thing it was convenient for Google to back a browser that wasn't Internet Explorer and they were basically rolling in cash since then without too much obligation to deliver anything more and a vague ambition to do something anyway. That was two decades ago.

Since then, essentially everything they tried that wasn't a browser kind of failed, got neglected, or got killed before it ever saw the light of day. They blew through many millions in the process with no return on investment. The exception is perhaps Rust, which itself was kind of a happy accident in the sense that it was part of a decade plus long attempt to refactor the browser that is still ongoing that happens to have produced a nice language community as a side effect. They cut Rust loose since they couldn't figure out how to monetize that. But it's arguably the most successful thing they accomplished aside from the browser despite the lack of a return on investment. At this point it's independent from Mozilla who bootstrapped it with a lot of cash without ever reaping the benefits. Lots of money but a complete lack of focus has been their story. Too comfortable and no sense of urgency. Lots of little projects that consistently go nowhere.

They should just shut the door on the mozilla corporation part and move the browser development to where it belongs which would be the Mozilla Foundation. Even with a few million users less, there is plenty of money in the user community to keep that going on donations, revenue from deals with Google and others, sponsor ships, etc. Just look at the Wikimedia Foundation, the Apache Foundation, etc. It's a great model for ensuring important OSS software keeps on going.

That would mean letting go of a bunch of offices they don't need, a marketing and business development department that has failed consistently to create new revenue streams, and would allow them to focus on the one thing they are good at which is developing and maintaining Firefox. They have plenty of developer mouths to feed.

I love Firefox. I love using it. I love not having my browser history being sold out to advertisers. And I love their general attitude of them looking out for me. I rarely use Chrome and only strictly for development purposes (i.e. testing stuff in different browsers). Nothing I care about requires Chrome. I don't really care for the countless spinoffs either (Brave, Edge, Opera, etc.). They all have the same problem: corporations with dollar signs in their eyes chasing revenue, which in the end always takes precedence over user interests. I love the engineering mentality and lack of chasing profits in favor of just doing the right things technically that the Firefox team has. It's not always quick to deliver or efficient or even effective but they get there in the end and keep on producing a great browser.

Anyway, important to keep Google honest to have Firefox and Safari around. They are still big enough to matter.