How long will Firefox survive, given market share and likely demise of main income source: Google Search (via Thom – Exquisite.social)
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/11
Interesting take of which I was subconsciously aware for a while as well: [Wayback/Archive] Thom :linux: :kde: :systemd:: “My concerns about the future o…” – Exquisite.social
My concerns [www.osnews.com] about the future of Firefox keep becoming reality [www.osnews.com] and yet nobody who relies on Firefox – Canonical, Fedora, KDE, GNOME, etc. – seem to give a shit.
Y’all realise Mozilla is about to lose 80% of its revenue, right? And y’all do understand what this will mean for Firefox, right? Why aren’t you taking any steps or making any plans to prepare for what this will inevitably mean for the most important and crucial desktop Linux application?
I feel like Kassandra [en.wikipedia.org] over here.
It is not a Desktop Linux problem alone: it is a Firefox problem at heart which will also (and in much larger numbers) affect other platforms as it also means one less browser engine: the Gecko browser engine used by Firefox and other browsers highly depends on Mozilla funding.
Given the long lasting keyboard productivity problems in Firefox on MacOS and Windows (even without any extensions installed), I don’t think that my frequency of Firefox usage will increase beyond occasional use.
A few examples hampering power usage of Firefox:
- Enter sometimes fails on the URL input box (you have to click with the mouse on the Firefox suggestion)
- No keyboard shortcut to set focus at bookmarks bar
- Arrow-up key on top of first level bookmark folder scrolls from bottom upward, but fails on second and further level bookmark folders
- Especially in TinyMCE but also in other instances: keyboard handling is not synchronous (example for WordPress hyperlink editor: if you continue typing when the editor still needs to display, the text editor part of TinyMCE gets the keyboard input which means there are multiple keyboard handling queues)
- Same when opening a new window or tab by keyboard: after pressing the corresponding shortcut, continue typing; what you type does not appear in the URL bar of the new window/tab, but the current window. This means you have to *wait* until the new window/tab has been completely rendered until you can continue typing
- Arrow keys go to keyboard elements not having focus (especially when an auto-complete is showing selections): alphabetic input limits the autocomplete selection, but arrow up/down keys are directed to listboxes not having focus
Chrome/Edge/Safari have lack these issues (apart from Safari which lacks 2.)
UX issues get low priority (check out for instance [Wayback/Archive] 892485 – History sidebar/Library scrolls to top when selected history entry is revisited), so reporting them is useless as these won’t be fixed anytime soon either (I will outlive them): they don’t tick boxes in the right KPI chains.
Archived links from above:
- [Wayback/Archive] Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem – OSnews
- [Wayback/Archive] US judge rules Google is a monopoly, search deals with Apple and Mozilla in peril – OSnews
- Cassandra
- 892485 – History sidebar/Library scrolls to top when selected history entry is revisited
Below the signature the first social media mention I found about the judge’s opinion of the Google Search case.
--jeroen
[Wayback/Archive] Thread by @jason_kint on Thread Reader App – Sorry, my “bam!” was cryptic.
Sorry, my “bam!” was cryptic.
Google has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by maintaining its monopoly in two product markets in the U.S….
It’s 286 pages – be back with a thread shortly along with implications for the adtech antitrust trial starting in five weeks. /1
ok, here we go. I read the 286 pages for those who don’t have time. Or to help translate to industry and public minds. This is a landmark decision vs Google. The court has found Google’s exclusive deals, primarily with Apple, foreclosed one half of the search market. /2it also found Google manipulated its ad prices without – even considering – competitive effects. Reminder they doubled their search text ads on surfaces so THIS ABUSE SCREWED THE PUBLIC AND PUBLISHERS BY MANY MANY TENS OF BILLIONS. /3Oh and about the finding in another federal court (NdCal) Google purged evidence which just this weekend DOJ motioned for an “adverse inference” decision, this Court largely agrees but says it’s irrelevant as intent isn’t necessary. He already found Google violated law. /4Digging deeper on things that stood out to me. Court as expected very much understood Google’s myth of Hal Varian, Adam Kovacevich, Googlers downplaying scale is just that. He flags Google received 19x more queries than all other rivals combined on mobile. /5I’ve reiterated this data point from the trial as I believe in remedies stage it is critical to consider impact on future of AI. 98% of unique phrases are seen only by Google. Very important to grounding and training LLMs in real-time. No one can touch this market power. /6This is a super important finding by Court. There is a whole section on importance of scale (p234) but generally speaking Google’s approach to relentlessly crawling, freshness, and query data scale is captured. Again, highly relevant to avoiding further entrenchment in AI. /7Court did a nice job batting down Google’s myths and noise in its defense. For instance, so many times Google’s shills pointed out Bing users search for Google but Court flipped it pointing out 80% of MS Edge users stick to Bing. Mostly internal docs killed Google, though. /8A couple fun visuals in the decision. Here is one from Microsoft demonstrating the fly wheel of market power to users to data to market power…. /9And yes, the marketing funnel :) Google attempted to say this is a dead concept in marketing which was patently absurd in the context of how it was being put into evidence. /10Court found Google’s attempt to a reduction in data study to show diminishing returns of data to be interesting but then again turned it around on Google to ask why it needs to store an incredible amount of data on every user for 18 months considering privacy and costs. /11In terms of Google’s argument that generative AI is an emerging competitor, the Court mostly batted it down, too. AGAIN, I AM SHOUTING THAT AI’S MARKET POWER TO ALSO DOMINATE GAI is SUPER IMPORTANT TO THE REMEDY STAGE. BREAK UP BROWSER/CHROME, OS/ANDROID, SEARCH DEALS. /12In terms of pricing manipulation findings, Court chose not to reiterate all of the specific examples from the trial but just read this carefully and understand its implications to the rest of industry. if you’re in a trade group with Google, maybe think twice how they act. /13In fact, the Court found Google just spread out its manipulations of pricing in order to make it appear to just be “noise.” This is the part where my screaming in joy (thanks for all of the messages everyone :) ) turned to anger as I consider impact to Rest of World. /14Again, read this and consider the impact for the company approaching $300 billion in revenues. For those who have argued on Google’s behalf against the revenue sharing with news orgs in Canada and Australia, just send them this page please. /15Here is a profound and important finding that should play into US v Facebook, too and antitrust law in general. The Court notes (and it goes on to another page) that ability to reduce quality (think privacy fails) is on par with increasing price without losing share. /16Barrier to entry impossible to match. /17Beyond damning evidence from inside Google, former executives also were powerful. The Court makes special note of Ramaswamy. There are several “Xooglers” testifying in adtech trial starting 9/9. Note, perjury is a crime. They know that. /18Google also tried to argued its deals for default search slot weren’t “exclusive.” Court crushed this argument using Microsoft decision. This may well be important for the appeal. /19Court also said the same thing about Google’s MADA – its deals to bundle its services for Android devices to carriers. Again, exclusive in practice. No one else can match it. /20Google failed to argue its revenue sharing on Android was “procompetitive” because it passes so much cash into the ecosystem. This will likely be relevant to Adtech trial, too, as Google will argue its end-to-end control of ad market helps everyone. /21Don’t overlook the impact this may have on Apple. Yes, I believe any remedy has to look at forced divestiture of Chrome and Android in addition to killing the exclusive dealing. But if Apple loses its sweetheart deal with Google, it may lose $12B in revenue (mostly profits). /22As it relates to other pending lawsuits, FTC should note that social media ads were found to be a distinctly different market than search. We know this but nice to see another Court find it as Meta and Amazon will likely try to confuse relevant markets. /23Also, noted Court took evidence from the pending Klein v Meta/Facebook private antitrust lawsuit in NdCal. I hadn’t noted this evidence but apparently when Nike boycotted Facebook, the dollars didn’t flow to Google. Note that please. /24So I will end there for now. Props to the plaintiffs. Congratulations. Their work coupled with a Court willing to take the time to understand the market is the reason they won. Somewhere I have tweets calling they would bring down Google but nice to see. Now to remedies and the 9/9 Adtech trial. /25A link to press coverage as I make my way through it…. /26
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