Mozilla Firefox is coming to an end

I have been using Mozilla Firefox for over 15 years, not only because it is open source, but also because it was much better and more secure than Internet Explorer. But that was then.

Today Firefox is in danger of dying.

Mozilla and Firefox are doing a great job. Take a look at JavaScript, Rust and WebAss Assembly languages. 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's Chrome browser, many have changed from Firefox to Chrome. Since then and every year, Firefox's market share has shrunk. In July 2012, Firefox reached an all-time high of 23,75%. By March 2020, according to the Digital Analysis Program (Digital Analytics Program or DAP)) of the US federal government, Firefox adoption rate has dropped to 3,6%.

So Mozilla just went through the second round of layoffs, and it was not a simple layoff. 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 of Mozilla Corporation and president of the Mozilla Foundation, said he was letting people go because of reduced interest in Firefox. Profits fell, and Mozilla was looking for more revenue from "sources outside of search engines." But that never happened.

Nor do we expect it to happen at some point. According to last annual report Mozilla, most of its revenue comes from global search engine partnerships 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 Mozilla has just announced that its new partnership with the Google search engine will give it from 400 to 450 million dollars a year. In exchange for cash, Google Search will remain Firefox's default search engine until 2023.

But what will Mozilla offer?

I can not believe that Google will continue to pay Mozilla the same amount, as the rate of adoption of Firefox continues to fall in the tartar. According to Firefox's market share, logic says Mozilla revenue should shrink.

Nevertheless, Baker assured friends of the browser that Mozilla "will release 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 and Teams) and of course many paid VPNs.

It's a shame though, because Firefox is a major browser and Mozilla is a major open source hub. No;

These days are probably over and Firefox with Mozilla's current policy is officially on the list of endangered species on the internet.