Rawen's Musings

I’ve been pretty much a lifetime user of Mozilla’s Firefox. From the first days, through its rougher times up until recently. The absolutely arse-backwards decisions, personal problems and recent downright idiotic developments made me finally lay the fiery floof to rest. Here I’m to make a little nostalgia trip. Keep in mind that I’m forming all this based on my personal experience and rather surface knowledge of the surrounding events so don’t take my word with any significant weight.

Early days: Indirectly beating the IE behemoth

Imagine me being a kiddo in the 90’s from a somewhat technically literate family. No IT folks but still my dad had some knowledge. However, when it came to the Internet, the ever-present Internet Explorer was the go-to gateway. I had absolutely zero knowledge when it came to any alternatives. My first taste of Mozilla’s warm foxy browser came when I was starting to get a bit deeper into tech and got around actual IT people. They were slowly “converting” their customers towards alternatives since IE was already a mess. Back then, FF was already miles better but it was usually the various services that required certificates to function that were wonky. Remember, stuff like SSL was still niche. But once I had that first taste of having choice, FF became pretty much ubiquitous in our home and with people around.

Golden days: So many choices

With the rise of FF being unstoppable and IE starting to fumble, more alternatives started to show up. Opera, the “Swiss army knife” of a browser started being visible and the “browser wars” were slowly firing up. Later down the line a rather small, simple but well-maintained contender showed up with an absolute behemoth carrying it forward, Google’s Chrome. And each of these had something to offer, be it the extensibility of FF, the complete package of Opera or back then the simplicity of Chrome. Having multiple browsers and swapping between them just out of curiosity was a thing back then I somewhat enjoyed. And it was during those days that darker clouds started forming over FF.

Weird days: Firefox’s stumbling era

During the times of my smaller crisis with FF, there were some developments that just felt weird. Some bad actors got into the dev team, some stupid decisions were made and overall FF was starting do fumble. Unstable, slow, inconsistent … just kind of not there. And people let Mozilla know that this is not the way since FF started losing its momentum to Chrome quite significantly. A change was needed.

Resurgence: The Quantum Leap

The change came. FF kicked into the gear and managed a solid rework of it’s most known product. The change managed to solidify its place in the ever-growing sea of Chrome-like browsers. Leveraging it’s extensibility, it gained quite a userbase among people who like to tinker with their browsers and tune it to their liking. Firefox also strongly leveraged it’s commitment to not just bend over to trends.

Idea: Carrying the flag of non-conformance

And here’s where the idea of non-conformance came into. Firefox being the only prominent browser with a different core since everything else is effectively re-dressed Chrome, was this refuge for people who want to keep the Internet diverse. The movement is pretty much a necessity because right now we’re effectively back in the IE era, except it’s not as much of a punch in the face. And with Firefox being alive and carrying the flag there was still some competition. There was also the factor of privacy commitment.

The fall: We’re different … except we’re not at all

But all that was to end. And ironically in the stupidest way imaginable. First, Mozilla acquired a company that is dealing in advertising. Yes, that same Mozilla (and I’m aware that there are 2 entities, Mozilla Corp. and Mozilla Foundation) which is herald of privacy acquired an entity which does something that breaks privacy. Yes, I know who they are and no, I don’t trust their claims, period. But that was something that put FF on my personal watchlist. However, that wasn’t what broke the camel’s back.

That was the update 130. The update which, with NO FORWARD NOTICE, added an AI functionality which not only is pointless in a browser but it’s one of the worst and most wasteful uses of this tech. Yes, I know it’s experimental but this absolutely tone-deaf step considering Firefox’s primary userbase is so damn stupid that I had me and I believe many other go “Fuck this, you’re no better.” Not sure if this was a desperate move to gain some userbase but I’m afraid that it did the exact opposite.

So yeah, so long Firefox. You betrayed your mission and your users. Will I come back? Maybe, if they do something that will earn their trust back. But that will be a long hard work.

R.R.A.