alt Hacker NewsNaturally - losing a few hundred million users is likely why they are trying to find a different strategy than focusing on privacy or what power users comment on in the following decade and expecting better results for some reason.
Mozilla's funding comes almost entirely from the Google search deal. They can't afford to let the user count continue to dwindle on a principled stance alone. They either need to find workable alternative income of the same scale (which they've tried at least a dozen things that didn't pan out) or try to focus on what the average user wants in a browser rather than what the GNU fan power user comments in tech forums. They don't need a few principled people to stick with it, they need to be popular with the average person again.
I am saying power users bring general audience. Thats alwas the case. Whether it is tesla/saas/browser or ur new notebook app... the power users pay/invest time initially. They talk, the promote they bring the initial general audience and from there, it becomes commonly used. Firefox is losing their power users and are not getting general audience.
Unless you can show increase in userbase with any of the BS Mozilla has done recently against their community, I'm not sure how I can agree with you.
They started this around 2015. One freaking decade with zero results. Apart from increase in Mitchell Baker's salary YoY, I dont see anything else increasing. In fact they sold Rust and MDN to their competition.
Most importantly, community unrest has only increased. Not decreased. And the userbase dwindling aligns with the same. So tell me, make me, a "GNU fanboi" understand how I am being unreasonable.