Firefox 9 has entered the developer channel with a decent number of enhancements that are scheduled to be released to all users on December 20. It shapes up to be a powerful release in a year that has brought the most dramatic challenges and changes to Mozilla since its founding. Mozilla is under indirect fire as it struggles to maintain its role of Robin Hood of the Internet. Is it time to panic?
Being a bit paranoid about your future and a healthy dose of panic is not bad. But while we here believe that Mozilla is still shaping the Internet, much more than we can see on the surface, Mozilla’s influence is sliding and it has no effective measure to hold on to its user base at this time. We wonder whether it is time for Mozilla to take tougher measures to defend itself on the open web?
Firefox remains Mozilla’s front end in a battle with Google Chrome and Microsoft, both of which have surrounded Firefox with platform strategies that, conceivably, threaten Firefox’ existence in the near future. Recent market share numbers reveal only a delayed picture of Firefox current status. StatCounter’s daily market share data provide more insight in user trends, as, for example, Chrome has taken over Firefox’ role as an expressed weekend browser: Chrome appears to have millions of users who switch from a non-Chrome browser at work to Chrome on the weekends. Last weekend, Chrome hit 25.91% market share which was within less than 1 market share point of Firefox (26.89%). 1 year ago, the distance was more than 20 points.
Firefox 9 will be the best rapid release Firefox yet and take the performance battle back to Google as Mozilla has discovered type inference as a way to accelerate JavaScript. There is a JavaScript interface for Do-Not-Track, a dedicated camera UI for mobile devices, as well as plenty of changes for HTML5 (see more details here). We have noted before that Firefox can be the best compromise for traditional browser performance as well as HTML5 acceleration: Firefox 9 is a different kind of browser than Firefox 4 and the improvements that Mozilla has made in less than a year are impressive. However, how much do they count, if they are not relevant?
So far, the improvements have not resonated with users as Firefox market share has dipped from daily best values of about 30% to currently about 27.5% since the launch of Firefox 4 (IE has lost about 5 points of share in the same time frame). We have mentioned repeatedly that Mozilla’s weak side is the lack of a platform approach that is currently represented by a desktop Firefox, Firefox for Android and a crippled iOS browser. Mozilla has promised to deliver a much more cohesive platform, but it will need to deliver it quickly. Users need to have a compelling reason to stick with Firefox like they did seven years ago when Firefox was launched in 2004 and later delivered support for add-ons that make still a strong case for using Firefox.
As good as Firefox 9 is, there are Firefox developers who are worried that add-ons and extensions can break the reasons for using Firefox, permanently. “I fear that we are frustrating our users with extensions, which ought to be one of Firefox’s greatest strengths,” wrote Benjamin Smedberg in a blog post. Across all of its influencers and developers, who remain very open about their opinions inside Mozilla, Mozilla delivers a picture of significant construction sites that stretch from core issues such as old and unaddressed bugs in Firefox to the perception that Google is now the primary threat to Mozilla. Robert O’Callahan complains that Google is telling developers to develop for Chrome first. He notes that Google is promoting proprietary technologies such as SPDY or NaCL, which hurt the interests of the open web and, ultimately, Mozilla. However, O’Callahan misses the fact that Google is pushing these technologies not against the web or against Mozilla. SPDY and NaCl are, specifically, platform-complementing technologies that help Chrome compete against Microsoft Windows in a platform environment that is driven by cloud services. These are not technologies that impact the evolution of the Internet, but as an opportunity for Google to attack Microsoft at its core strength. This battle has moved beyond the browser more than a year ago.
Just like O’Callahan, Mozilla’s director of Firefox engineering, Jonathan Nightingale is also aware of the threat of walled gardens. He makes the case that the rapid release process is helping Mozilla to stay competitive, but Nightingale discusses an element that has not been considered often enough at Mozilla recently: Clarity. “We, everyone in the Mozilla community, all of us, need to communicate with clarity and sensitivity,” he writes. “We need to help the people who support our mission to understand why these changes are essential. We need to keep listening, and adjusting as we learn. We need to, and we will.”
If there is one reason to panic, it is that Mozilla has a tough time communicating with its users these days. Mozilla needs to make sure again that its users understand what Mozilla does, what Firefox is and what it will be. Mozilla has the legacy, the talent and the tools to keep Google and Microsoft on its toes.
“The push to ship faster isn’t some kind of software machismo,” Nightingale writes. “We push ourselves to ship faster because the web is under threat. Amazing and innovative people are doing amazing and innovative things and right now they have a choice: build for the web, or build for the walled gardens. The web can win that fight.” There seems to be a reasonable amount of panic, or, if you prefer this word – urgency – in this last sentence, and we believe that it is exactly this attitude that will allow Mozilla to get back on track.
Wolfgang Gruener in Products on October 03
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