Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow.
I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.)
I remember when Chrome shipped with V8 as being a big turning point for the way Firefox was run. Management went from complacent to reactionary. The bug reports regarding JavaScript performance in the Firefox bug tracker at that time were really fascinating to watch - Mozilla was a very disturbed hornets' nest! Then came rapid release and all the arewe*yet.com websites, etc.
Mozilla has been punching above their weight class ever since Chrome came to market, but I perceive that recently Mozilla management has been transitioning from reactionary to offensive. Their moves on Rust and sunsetting XUL and XPCOM are geared towards security AND performance, which are painful and necessary shifts. Largely hitting pause on FirefoxOS and Thunderbird and everything else not Firefox is also the right, if painful, thing to do.
That's why I'm going to stick with my assertion. Every day that Mozilla/Firefox doesn't shrivel up and die has to be a concern to the Chrome team!
Ads in Firefox provide the same revenue as ads in Chrome. What does Google gain by monopolizing?
I think they care more about internet explorer, they don't want it dead specifically, but if it sticks around they want it reliable. Using ie used to be a giant pain and nothing worked right, people would use it to accomplish their goal and be done. Now using any of the three is fairly pleasant and people on any browser could reasonably view many ads.
I would guess control. Owning the dominant web browser allows them to:
* Softly guide front end web tech in a direction of their choosing
* Ensure the supremacy of Google the search engine.
Also if things ever really come to head between ad-blockers and ad-providers owning the dominant platform the former runs on would be very beneficial to the latter.
Most big companies want to control their own technology stack and optimize for their own products.
So Google wants people using Android phones and Chromebooks (ideally, fed by Google Fiber), with Google Chrome browsers feeding traffic to Google Search, Google Docs (with all your files in Gdrive), Gmail, YouTube etc.
This provides the maximum surveillance capacity for maximum tracking and thus the most efficient delivery of advertising. At least to the people who don't use ad-blockers and anti-tracking systems ;-)
"The result is a world where our most intimate personal details are collected and stored. I used to say that Google has a more intimate picture of what I'm thinking of than my wife does. But that's not far enough: Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The company knows exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about it, and when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it remembers all of that forever."
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...
I hate to defend them, as I choose not to use their products, but all that is stated in plain language in the first two paragraphs of their EULA. Nobody reads them, but if they did, they would know at least Goog is clear, unlike pretty much all the rest of the EULAs in the wild.
As long as Firefox has significant share of the market, then yes, I believe the Chrome team would care.
Firefox being a viable and high quality alternative means that any short-term misstep or long-term neglect by Google could create a big fall for Chrome.
A short-term misstep could be something like a disturbing privacy revelation about the Chrome browser that moves large blocks of normal users over to Firefox. Perhaps also the HTML spec might get updated in ways that Google would resist due to it threatening their business. Firefox and other browsers could, and those new features could gain them more long-term converts.
A long-term neglect scenario is maybe possible too. Google might think they've "won" and can reduce their spend on Chrome, or even put it on KLO mode like Microsoft did with IE. Firefox could creep up and get back to 30% marketshare and then not be as easy to displace as the next war begins. The recent instability of Chrome I have experienced makes me wonder if a long-term neglect of Chrome has already set in for at least parts of the browser.
Well, they gain a tremendous amount of insight into your thoughts, plans, mood, etc by Chrome being your input/output mechanism for information. They generate really interesting histograms about your browsing behavior, bundle them up, and send it home to the mothership regularly. This is part of the overall strategy of knowing you, and Chrome is an edge they have over their advertising competitors by collecting this data. Google is a creepy voyeur.
I'll turn your question around a bit, though. Perhaps you step away from using Google.com, the search engine, but continue to use Chrome as your primary browser. This gives Google an intimate view of your activities; they still can build interesting trends locally/state/country/globally based in-part on your surfing behavior. In this way, I view Chrome as being just as important as Google Analytics or google.com search engine to Google's ad biz.
I personally deny Google my search traffic (I default to DDG), browser histograms (I'm on Firefox), and some of my browsing patterns on affiliates (via Privacy Badger, etc.) Obviously, they still know a ton about me by my more promiscuous past and due to my network of less privacy-conscious friends and family. But, they aren't intimately in-touch with me day-to-day and they don't know what I am thinking about up-to-the-minute like they do with their other users.
> Largely hitting pause on FirefoxOS and Thunderbird and everything else not Firefox is also the right, if painful, thing to do.
Unfortunately, that's not what they are doing. They are going full throttle on the nebulous "IoT" on an equal footing with Firefox (VP & all). Mozilla seems to have abandoned it's mission statement: email is still an important part of the internet and it is far from solved. Yet they killed Thunderbird and chased after the ill-fated FirefoxOS. Who knows the next fad Mozilla will be chasing? Yeah, I'm not bitter at all. It's just that Mozilla could be more - they are selling themselves short.
The people count under the IoT VP (the group is actually called "Connected Devices") is about 70 people, ie. 7% of Mozilla Corp. You can not compare that with the 200+ people that were working on Firefox OS, and you can absolutely not compare that with the resources allocated to the core engine (gecko) and Firefox Desktop - I don't have the exact the numbers, but it's obviously most of the org.
About "Mozilla could be more"... sure, but more of what?
> The people count under the IoT VP (the group is actually called "Connected Devices") is about 70 people, ie. 7% of Mozilla Corp
What's the headcount for Thunderbird? My point is Mozilla decided to drop email and chose to pursue Connected Devices as evidenced by their staffing decisions. The 2 decisions might be independent, but it still goes to show that Mozilla doesn't care about email. I know Mozilla is made up of individuals who would rather work on the new hotness, but it does make me wonder how committed they are to their mission statement. If Firefox wasn't raking in boatloads of cash, would it be dropped as quickly?
> About "Mozilla could be more"... sure, but more of what?
How about "more sensitive to their users current needs" or "more focused on their mission statement"?
Can you share some links or blogs or whatever to reinforce what you're saying here? I am not seeing IoT at all on the mozilla website or press releases. Perhaps Firefox itself is integral to the IoT?
I was under the impression that FirefoxOS was on the backburner, not necessarily cancelled. FirefoxOS is a great idea, it's Mozilla's version of Android or WebOS. The fact that they didn't have a runaway success doesn't make mobile a fad for Mozilla - Mozilla has an existential problem if they do not have a strong mobile presence. Mozilla only has a toehold in mobile right now with Firefox iOS/Android, and I expect they will have to circle back to FirefoxOS at some point if they want to increase their marketshare.
But regarding the attempt at building FirefoxOS, I wonder what else would you expected for Mozilla to do given their position? Are you grumpy that they failed at something big? I have it on good authority that Mozilla isn't staffed by super-intelligent brain aliens with infinite time/budgets on their hands. :D
They're trying to divest themselves of Thunderbird entirely, as far as I can tell. Too bad, so sad. The community needs to organize, step up, butch up, and run with it or it will die.
> Can you share some links or blogs or whatever to reinforce what you're saying here?
Yep, have a look at the leadership page[1]. They have an SVP for Firefox, and an SVP for Connected Devices - who is/was responsible for FirefoxOS. There is no SVP for Thunderbird - and this means politically, Thunderbird has no champion/sponsor at executive level, but FirefoxOS and IoT does.
> But regarding the attempt at building FirefoxOS, I wonder what else would you expected for Mozilla to do given their position? Are you grumpy that they failed at something big?
I'm grumpy because they put Thunderbird on ice with no replacement planned. Mozilla's mission[2] is "to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent". How on earth does putting Thunderbird into cold-storage help that mission?
I know they don't have infinite resources, but I question how they choose to distribute them when Connected Devices get some and Thunderbird gets none.
> How on earth does putting Thunderbird into cold-storage help that mission?
Yeah, it's not entirely unfair to call it a copout when you hear the excuse that desktop-based mail clients have been supplanted by web-based email. There's a safety and privacy factor to having a robust desktop mail client, not to mention the addon potential of Gecko and Thunderbird that let you do more. I have always been dissatisfied with open source related to email both on the server-side and the client - it has ALWAYS felt unloved.
I didn't know about the IoT initiative at Mozilla, thanks for the heads up. That does seem like a farout goal compared to other better ideas like Persona, FirefoxOS, and Thunderbird. Maybe Mozilla has identified providing IoT code and services as a revenue source? That could further their overall mission, I guess. Nah, on second thought, I'm grumpy like you on this until I learn more. ;)
Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.