I will stick with Firefox for the time being. One must not forget that Firefox provides the basis for all the alternatives listed here. Despite all the controversy surrounding Mozilla, I still think Firefox is the better alternative to Chrome. And I would like to support this at least until there is a truly free browser. My hope is that Ladybird will be a success. However, it will take at least another 1-2 years until development is so far advanced that it can be used as a browser for everyday use. Until then, I think we should all continue to support Firefox so that it doesn't disappear completely from the market.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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I kind of wish browsers would use cooler names, not "ladybird". Look at Brave. Pretty bad browser, surrounded in questionable stuff, but pretty much estabilished userbase nearly instantly, and I feel like much of that success is simply thanks to a catchy name
Firefox main problem with profitability relevance. They need more people to get people to use their tools
So I just have two questions.
- How does this get new users?
- How does this help retention?
The only answer is it doesn't and we don't care because we're going to cash out.
I'm not running away, I'll still open Firefox tomorrow like yesterday because the browser landscape is terrible and the shadow of what Firefox was is still good.
But I'm looking for the disruptor because as questionable as a lot of the new smaller browsers are, there are people out there trying and it's going to happen.
I'm waiting for Ladybird
I remember reading a lot this past year about Mozilla fretting about their market share and trying to figure out how to grow their user base. Did I hallucinate that? Cuz their actions lately appear to be driving users away. Are they taking notes from Google or is there some other MBA making these brilliant changes?
Remember the Looking Glass fiasco? The people in charge of Firefox are so stupid it's indistinguishable from malice.
Idk the CEOs $6mil salary sounds more like malice to me
Need more advertising in Firefox to keep pumping those exec salaries.
Most of their income has come directly from Google, the incumbent browser monopoly. I'm full tin foil hat on this one, Google is pulling the strings here.
Didn't judge rule that google can no longer pay mozilla?
Yeah you're correct the deal was cut off late last year so it was not renewed for 2025 but it was on the radar for a couple years. It's why the sudden sketchy rush for other sources of income so they can keep going as normal. I did make an edit to my post and changed 'comes' to 'has come'.
It's been set up to fail. Over 80% of their revenue was from that deal and Google could likely dictate whatever they wanted as part of it. That income is the only thing that even allowed for such an insane pay package for their c-suite in the first place, and so the current form of Mozilla is a direct result of all that cash. It's supposed to be a nonprofit and now they're basically in withdrawal because they cannot afford their insane"normal tech company leadership" salaries.
Idk how Mozilla survives this without another sugar daddy, the leadership pay looks like the biggest liability killing the company and they have to willingly give it up before the company goes bankrupt and/or becomes another ad machine.
I would really love for them to drop pocket and all their other stupid shit and just make a browser like they used to. Even just that is a huge undertaking these days though, and that is because of (again) Google's ability to basically dictate web standards. They strung Mozilla along as a pet "look we're not a monopoly" competitor while continuously raising the bar to entry for any competition. I think the antitrust case should have gone after web standards to allow for competition rather than basically cutting off the only real competitor, but that would have been harder to do and the actual case was based specifically on Google's search and ad monopoly rather than the chromium browser monopoly.
It never actually clicked to me how screwed mozilla is, but your comment made that pretty clear. At this point, to me it seems like the best course of action would be to fully embrace open source and community driven development instead of trying to run it like before, especially if paying wages becomes unsustainable.
As of 2023 Mozilla had over 1.3 billion dollars in reserve (thanks Google!). This is not over yet, but it will be drained pretty quickly if they keep treating a nonprofit like a typical silicon valley tech company.
I am very averse to companies breaking my trust.
Mozilla can win it back by explicitly stating what they are collecting, why they are collecting it, and making opt out the default.
you mean opt in
No, I mean by default you are opted out.
that is called opt in -> you have to opt in to the feature
Okay, but when this is discussed "making opt out the default" means you are signed up and have to opt out if you don't want to be signed up.
Yeah they're not going to do that until a few people leave the company. And they have no plans to leave.
If I were paid that well I would ride the sinking ship all the way to the bottom.
And that's fine, I'll just use different browsers until they change their stance.
That's very optimistic. Mozilla is not in good shape and the c suite may simply ride their paychecks from the endowment off into the sunset.
What's optimistic about telling a multi-million dollar company that if they don't operate with principles that I agree with that they won't get my business?
Mozilla is run by a nonprofit and just lost 80% of its revenue from the Google ad antitrust case. How is your using their browser making them any money? That's literally the rub here. The whole promise of Firefox is that they don't data mine your activities like chromium browsers do and data mining and ads would be the way to make revenue anywhere near on par with what was lost. The CEO gets paid the same either way out of the billion or so that Mozilla has in financial reserve. Firefox keeps losing user base yet the CEO pay keeps going up.
We know and that's why I dumped Firefox after 15+ years.
LibreWolf and Floorp is all I have. Oh and I kicked Thunderbird to the curb too for BetterBird.
very cool. thanks for sharing this. they even have an official flatpak.
What are mobile options here? I'm not really seeing anything better on Android- Waterfox?
I'm on ~~Ironwolf~~ now
Edit: It's Ironfox, I got that and Librewolf confused in my brain thingy
Also Fennec, iirc.
Fennec from fdroid, it's just Firefox built from source
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Nah, Waterfox and Floorp devs are trying to make money out of their software.
LibreWolf or Zen
As long as they do it ethically, there's nothing wrong with that. That's also how Foss projects stay alive.
Awh. I was gonna go with Floorp on the name alone. Great name...
Nah, you can still try Floorp. It’s very similar to Vivaldi (Chromium). I’m happy with it after using it for a few days to where I uninstalled Firefox. Shame for Firefox, been a user since 2003 or whenever.
It took me less than five minutes to easily migrate my data from Firefox to Floorp. If Floorp enshittifies in the future, it’ll be super simple to migrate to another Gecko browser, or possibly Ladybird or other engines.
Zen has been really nice for the few days I’ve been using it. It feels real sleek and just more modern over all.
My computer is a bit old though and I wonder if there is something similar that is even lighter on resources. Zen is still pretty dang light though.
Anyone have any good iOS alternatives? I’m eyeing Orion currently
After reading this comment, I downloaded it and am liking it so far. Thanks for spreading the word about it!
Orion looks good as it does not collect any data. I don’t want Apple profiting from my safari usage.
Same. I’m about done with all things big tech. As much as is possible at least. Orion it is! I also saw Vivaldi but I’m not super interested in all the other services that come along with it.
Wow it also supports Firefox and Chrome extensions on iPhone! That’s a killer feature!
Yeah, started using it last night and I think it’s gonna stick. No complaints so far
Bye Firefox. Boy we had some good times, huh.
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