Most of Mozilla’s money of course comes from Google to make them the default search engine on Firefox. And of course its a way for Google to ensure there’s at least one alternative browser engine. Reading about how Texeira was recently fired and how executives have been pushing for AI features for a long time, Mozilla certainly loves chasing trends and then forgetting them, like how Google kills lots of products. It seems like the company can’t stand on its own two feet without Google’s funding and is poorly run.

What happened to Mozilla over the years? How much effort did they put in to trying to be a successful tech company? because it hasn’t been until the past few that I really started following Firefox and Mozilla news.

I wonder if Mozilla could’ve been Proton, years before Proton AG existed, making their own comprehensive suite of privacy-friendly tools, since Mozilla makes privacy their brand. And they were late to the smartphone game with Firefox OS. If they were smart, they would’ve ensured their long term survival with an actual business, to continue funding development of their privacy and FOSS software like Firefox, without large funding sources like Google.

  • Tywèle [she|her]
    21•1 day ago

    I wonder if Mozilla could’ve been Proton

    I wonder if Proton will someday in the future add a browser to the tools they offer.

    • Rozaŭtuno
      22•1 day ago

      If they do, it’s unlikely they’ll build one from scratch. It’s still gonna be either a Chrome or Firefox fork.

        • @TheTwelveYearOldOPEnglish
          1•17 hours ago

          No way in hell would Proton make a Chromium-based browser, the only way that would not be hypocritical is if they fully open sourced it (you could compile it yourself), and maintained their own fork completely devoid of Google tracking and telemetry.

          • @[email protected]
            3•16 hours ago

            Well, Chromium is fully open source and I think largely devoid of Google tracking, and there is prior art with ungoogled Chromium for the rest of it. So a Proton “fork” would basically just be a rebranding of that project.

            That said, if they do make a browser, I hope it’s a Firefox variant instead of a Chromium one (or even better, Servo).

      • bruhSoulzEnglish
        4•1 day ago

        That’s most likely the truth. Or perhaps… a servo or ladybird fork by the time were there? 😳

    • @TheTwelveYearOldOPEnglish
      3•17 hours ago

      Right now I don’t think Proton would do much better than existing options. There are browsers on different ends of the privacy to convenience spectrum (and these are all Gecko based):

      • Firefox: decent privacy by default without changing any settings
      • Librewolf: Firefox but with hardened settings for privacy
      • Mullvad Browser: Almost the same as Tor but not on the Tor network, which is admittedly slow
      • Tor: Uses the Tor Network and by default very hardened for Privacy but makes lots of convenience and QoL tradeoffs, including letterboxing to common browser resolutions.