Comments on: The world stands on its head

By: Eice

Eice — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:59:34 +0000

“So, Gecko/Firefox is basically our only hope in the fight for a *really* open web. The more market share Mozilla gets, the better.”

Beware of self-proclaimed saviors.

By: zbraniecki

zbraniecki — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:51:20 +0000

@marcoos, wondering, what made you take 15% for Opera, 10% for Webkit, and not the opposite.

By: marcoos

marcoos — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:15:31 +0000

Of course, we’re not looking for market domination itself. But, to paraphrase Linus T., that’s just a nice side effect. In order to keep the web open, though, we have to take care about our market share, even in countries like Poland, where Mozilla is what the majority uses. Treat market share as a tool, not a goal.

As a web developer, I really like WebKit, it’s a nice engine almost as good as Gecko and much better than Opera’s engine. As an open web supporter, I’m worried about the possibility of WebKit winning the so-called “second browser war”, though, because that would, for example, make H.264 a “de facto standard”, which would be pretty sad. And, while WebKit is below 5% in Poland now, it’s rapidly growing thanks to Google on the desktop and iPhone/iPod on mobile.

So, Gecko/Firefox is basically our only hope in the fight for a *really* open web. The more market share Mozilla gets, the better. (Yeah, I’ve changed my mind. I used to think it would be best to have each rendering engine at equal percentage. Today, my perfect web browser world would look like this: 70% Gecko, 15% Opera, 10% WebKit, 5% all the rest )

And this is also why Fennec is really important in the mobile area. We really have to make it kick Mobile WebKits’ asses (plural ), by making it a lot better, faster and available on any reasonably powerful phone.

By: Damian

Damian — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:15:26 +0000

One of the things which is quite good as well is Mozilla’s new effort for quick turn around browsers. With 52% of the Market share and if there were long cycle releases like Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 it would perhaps not do the web justice.

Mozilla needs to keep pushing forward, onward and faster

By: Tristan

Tristan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:39:15 +0000

Marcoos : we’re not looking after market domination. Market share is important to influence our competitors and make sure they build better Web browsers, but market dominance is not required for Mozilla to be successful.

Also, with regards to your first comment, there is seasonality in Firefox adoption, at least at a global scale, and I see it on Ranking.pl’s graph too. There is limited growth between Q3 and Q4 each and every year.

I also agree with your second comment! 52% is just crazy when you think about it

Keep up the good^W great work,

–Tristan

By: Nj3ma

Nj3ma — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:12:35 +0000

Ok! Great news! Here in Kenya Firefox is ubiquitous. Sure it has over seventy per cent of the browser market.

By: Denver Gingerich (ossguy) 's status on Friday, 13-Nov-09 01:24:22 UTC - Identi.ca

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:24:34 +0000

[...] http://diary.braniecki.net/2009/11/12/the-world-stands-on-its-head/ a few seconds ago from xmpp [...]

By: Mike Linksvayer (mlinksva) 's status on Friday, 13-Nov-09 00:40:01 UTC - Identi.ca

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:40:07 +0000

[...] http://diary.braniecki.net/2009/11/12/the-world-stands-on-its-head/ a few seconds ago from web [...]

By: Christopher Blizzard (blizzard) 's status on Thursday, 12-Nov-09 23:52:58 UTC - Identi.ca

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:53:14 +0000

[...] http://diary.braniecki.net/2009/11/12/the-world-stands-on-its-head/ a few seconds ago from web [...]

By: marcoos

marcoos — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:31:45 +0000

BTW, on a positive note, if someone told me five years ago that I’d be worried about Firefox being stuck at 52%, I’d have thought it’s totally crazy. But hey, that’s where we are now.