Mozilla Firefox is coming to an end

I am using the browser Firefox of Mozilla over 15 years, not only because it is open source, but because then it was much better and more secure than Internet Explorer. But that was then.

Today ο Firefox is in danger of dying.

OR Mozilla and Firefox they do important work. Take a look at JavaScript, Rust and WebAss Assembly languages. THE Mozilla is a champion in security and privacy. Projects like DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and the overall security improvements are amazing but apparently users are not interested.

With the advent of Google Chrome browser, a lot has changed since Firefox in Chrome. Since then and every year, its market share Firefox shrinks. In July 2012 o Firefox reached the highest rate of all time 23,75%. By March 2020, according to the Digital Analysis Program (Digital Analytics Program or DAP)) of the US federal government, its adoption rate Firefox has fallen to 3,6%.

Thus the Mozilla just proceeded with the second round of layoffs, and they were not simple layoffs. He fired some of its top executives. They were top developers and they were almost a quarter of its staff.

This is of course not a good sign. In January, Mitchell Baker, CEO Mozilla Corporation and President of the Foundation Mozilla, said he let people go because of the reduced interest in him Firefox. Profits fell, and the Mozilla was looking for more revenue from "non-search engine sources". But that never happened.

Nor do we expect it to happen at some point. According to last annual report of Mozilla, the majority of its revenue comes from global partnerships with search engines claiming a place in the browser. This includes the agreement he signed with Google in 2017.

For the recent layoffs, Baker blamed [PDF] the coronavirus pandemic. I suspect it has a lot more to do with the difficulty of finding funding.

It is true that the Mozilla has just announced that its new partnership with the Google search engine will give it between $ 400 million and $ 450 million a year. In exchange for cash, Google Search will remain its default search engine Firefox until 2023.

But what will the Mozilla;

I can not believe that Google will continue to pay at Mozilla the same amount, after its adoption rate Firefox continues to fall on the tartars. According to its market share Firefox, logic says that its revenue Mozilla should shrink.

Nevertheless, Baker assured friends of the browser that Mozilla "Will launch new products faster to develop new revenue streams." These include the application of bookmarks Pocket. the virtual room Hubs and the Firefox VPN which comes in at $ 4,99 a month.

But there are already a lot of successful bookmarks (Evernote, Flipboard and Instapaper), virtual meeting rooms (Zoom, Slack και Teams) and of course many paid VPNs.

It is a pity though, because the Firefox is an important browser and the Mozilla a major open source distributor. No;

Probably these days are over and Firefox with its current policy Mozilla officially enters the list of endangered species on the internet.