tbolt

Mozilla Won

There has been some back and forth between Mozilla and Chrome in regards to browser market share. While Chrome has signifigantly higher market share, I found this HN comment spot on:

But I don’t think Mozilla lost.

I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome.

John’s response was awesome. “This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to have a choice” Firefox was a response to a world of “best viewed in IE” badges, and it changed the browser landscape.

Now, we have options. Chrome is great, but so are Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox. There’s a lot of options out there, and they’re all standards compliment. And that’s thanks to Mozilla.

So, in my mind, Mozilla won. It’s a non-profit, and it forced us into an open web. We got the world they wanted. Maybe the world is a bit Chrome-heavy currently, but at least it’s a standards compliment world.

I hope Mozilla sees that. I hope they take credit, and move on to what’s next: privacy and net neutrality. Our privacy is under attack, and Mozilla is one of the few companies that can (and would want to) help. I know, I know. Nobody cares about privacy. Nobody cared about web standards, either, but Mozilla bundled it into an attractive package and it worked. It’s time for Mozilla to declare victory, high five the Chrome team, and move on to the next big challenge.

We really need someone to fight for our privacy and neutrality. And I really believe that this could be Mozilla’s swan song.