Firefox lost the browser war and what we can do?
Tags: mozilla, firefox, browser
Published: 2020-03-09 11:19:28

---
title: Firefox lost the browser war and what we can do?
published: true
date: 2020-02-14 10:38:15 UTC
tags: Mozilla, firefox, browser
canonical_url: https://daniele.tech/2020/02/firefox-lost-the-browser-war-and-what-we-can-do/
---

I saw that title on Twitter <a href="https://www.protocol.com/mozilla-plan-fix-internet-privacy">about this article</a> and I thought that can be a good idea to start an article (required few time).

Just as intro I am a <a href="https://daniele.tech/mozillian/">Mozilla volunteer since 2013</a>, <a href="https://reps.mozilla.org/u/mte90">Mozilla Reps</a> since 2015 (twice in the Reps Council), Mozilla TechSpeaker since 2016, I <a href="https://daniele.tech/2017/09/why-developing-browser-extensions/">develop</a> <a href="https://daniele.tech/2018/03/2-years-of-glotdict/">browser</a> <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/share-backported/">extensions</a> for Firefox, leading the Mozilla Italia community for the participation side, doing <a href="http://mte90.tech/">talks</a> and stuff, <a href="https://daniele.tech/2018/12/mozilla-orlando-all-hands-2018-i-was-there/">joined</a> <a href="https://daniele.tech/2018/06/mozilla-all-hands-san-francisco-2018-i-was-there/">7 times</a> <a href="https://daniele.tech/2017/07/san-francisco-all-hands-2017-io-cero/">the</a> <a href="https://daniele.tech/2018/01/austin-mozilla-all-hands-was-there/">Mozilla All Hands</a> and <a href="https://discourse.mozilla.org/u/mte90/summary">many other things</a>.

I am not pro-Google, I use LineageOS for my phone with no Chrome, no Google Contact/Calendar but my Nextcloud instance also for my files, duckduckgo for my searches and so on.
<h3>Why Mozilla lost the war?</h3>
For Google there is a project that gather all the products that was <a href="https://killedbygoogle.com/">killed by Google</a>, this list is something like that but also include the various fails where other competitors instead achieved something that moved Mozilla less important in the tech market.

Just as note as volunteer since 2013 I can consider myself a veteran, also I often saw that volunteers remember better this list compared to the Mozilla employees that often stay inside the company/foundation for few years and not so much time like a volunteer.
<ul>
 	<li>The new <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/01/29/lazy-loading-images-in-wordpress-core/">Lazy Loading that will be implemented in WordPress</a> but is supported only by the Chrom* ecosystem and <a href="https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/3752">is not a standard yet</a>, <a href="https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/15/firefox-75-gets-lazy-loading-support-for-images/">Firefox 75 got that feature</a>.</li>
 	<li>Jitsi is not supported in <a href="https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/4758">Firefox because some APIs for WebRTC</a> are missing, so in this situation of a lot of people switching to remote solution (the coronavirus stupid pandemia) the red panda is not offering a very good experience.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://webreplay.io/about.html">WebReplay</a> is now a Firefox fork <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/WebReplay">because for Mozilla</a> this dev feature is <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonlaster11/status/1226965515144482827">not important anymore</a> maybe for the last changes of layoffs...</li>
 	<li>Electron conquered the world but the <a href="https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/">Mozilla alternative was abandoned</a>. If Gecko was embeddable in the right moment maybe the web won't so Chrom* centric.</li>
 	<li>Firefox OS is just a big example of a lot of huge promises and results that wasn't realistic.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/artifacts/mozilla-backpack/">Mozilla Backpack</a> with the Mozilla portal for volunteers badges (yes maybe I am the only one remembering it) was the first step to promote the badge technology in the learning world and now died (migrated to another service).</li>
 	<li><a href="https://indieweb.org/Firefox_Hello">Firefox Hello</a> started and later killed but maybe if Mozilla still worked on that the WebRTC technology <a href="https://browserleaks.com/webrtc">was more privacy friendly</a>.</li>
 	<li>Mozilla WebExtension changed the ecosystem a bit as you can see from the <a href="https://blog.chromium.org/search/label/extensions">Chrome blog in the extensions category</a>, 2013-2018 with no posts in a very huge time frame. The Addon ecosystem changed in Mozilla (recently also in Thunderbird) but didn't affect anyway the Chrom* APIs also with the <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-manifest-v3-faq/">Manifest V3 changes</a>.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/artifacts/thimble/">Thimble</a> started during the Web Literacy after the dead of <a href="https://webmaker.org/">Mozilla Webmaker</a>, and now closed.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/artifacts/popcorn-maker/">Popcorn Maker</a> was a cool project to do interactive video with Web technology but shutdown like the others.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://learning.mozilla.org/en-US/">The Mozilla Learning Network</a> started during the effort of Web Literacy that Mozilla chosen to close also if it is still a hot topic and other realities are now moving on this, the difference is the scale that Mozilla achieved is not reached by anyone now. At least the portal is still alive with all the content...</li>
 	<li>WebUSB started as project by Google but because is not a <a href="http://www.hbyconsultancy.com/blog/webusb-is-dead.html">standard now is dead</a>, Mozilla is still behind on adopting new API like <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897">WebMidi</a>. This means that there are no way that Mozilla start to look on these proposals and do something to help on becoming standards.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://github.com/firefox-devtools/debugger">Debugger.html</a>, that started as a project to run the debugger outside Firefox but is now stopped also if there are <a href="https://github.com/firefox-devtools/debugger-examples">nice debugger examples</a>.</li>
 	<li>Google is now doing things for web literacy (like this <a href="https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/">one to tests users' abilities on identify phishing</a>) when was the first goal in Mozilla few years ago (excluding the mozilla club program) with <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/03/30/everyday-internet-users-can-stand-up-for-encryption-heres-how/">Encrypt campaign</a>, <a href="https://daniele.tech/2016/05/take-back-the-web-campaign-italy-1-week/">Take back the web</a> campaign (there aren't anymore official links to that), <a href="https://codemoji.org/#/welcome">Codemoji</a> (to learn cyphers), <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/webdev/2014/04/28/celebrating-the-web-we-want/">WebWeWant</a> campaign. Instead, is doing other things like <a href="https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/">privacynotincluded</a> that in my personal opinion don't compete with the scale of the others campaigns.</li>
 	<li><a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1303739">Warn when downloading executable files over HTTP</a> now is supported in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/10/21132099/google-chrome-users-block-insecure-downloads-https-android-ios">Chrome 82</a> but not in Firefox. Last comment of an user "Firefox could have been a pioneer, instead it looks like Chrome will get there first."</li>
</ul>

Check the rest of the post on the [blogpost](https://daniele.tech/2020/02/firefox-lost-the-browser-war-and-what-we-can-do/).