Game Over for Firefox? (Premium)

Microsoft’s belated adoption of Chromium is great news for everybody. Well. Almost everybody.

There is one obvious loser here: Mozilla, makers of the once-popular Firefox web browser. And while I feel it’s only a matter of time before Mozilla wakes up and adopts Chromium too, it may already be too late.

Using whichever market research firm you prefer—I’ll go with NetMarketSharesince Microsoft told me it offers the most believable data—you’ll see nothing but bad news for Firefox. This once-beloved browser is quickly sinking into irrelevance.

On the desktop—meaning PC, Mac, and Linux—Firefox is hovering at 10 percent usage share, so it should hit the single digits within a few months given its downward trajectory. Even more embarrassing, Internet Explorer, which Microsoft has not updated in years, commands more users, with 11.19 percent usage share.

On mobile—e.g. smartphones and tablets—it’s even worse. Here, Firefox doesn’t register at all, with just 1.2 percent usage share, good for an 8th-place finish behind such choices as QQ, Baidu, and UC Browser. Whatever those are.

Chrome, which is based on the open source Chromium web browser that Microsoft just announced it is also adopting, dominates on both platforms, and its usage has been likewise steady on both for the past year. Chrome controls 64 percent of all desktop browsing and is unchallenged. And Chrome controls 63 percent of all mobile browsing, well ahead of Safari, with 22 percent.

For Mozilla’s remaining fans, this is likely disheartening. The firm positions itself as a force for “keeping the internet open and accessible to all.” And it positions Firefox as the only major web browser that isn’t driven by corporate greed to invade the privacy of its users.

In this era of privacy fears and Google antitrust action, that message should really resonate. But … it doesn’t, and Firefox’s usage share numbers have been on a long and steady decline at a time when the opposite should be happening. The browser itself is excellent, too. It’s not like there are major disadvantages to making this choice.

And yet.

Mozilla’s knee-jerk reaction to the Microsoft decision is off-base and similar to some of the negative feedback I’ve received from those who don’t truly understand what’s happening. It commingles Chromium, which is open source and not owned or controlled by Google, with the search giant itself.

That makes for some dramatic and inflammatory FUD. But it’s still FUD. Chromium and Chrome are not the same things.

“Ceding control of fundamental online infrastructure to a single company is terrible,” a Mozilla blog post explains.

Folks, that is not true.

Microsoft is not “ceding control” to a company, as Google, again, does not own or control Chromium. Instead, Chromium is an open source project, and Microsoft, like Google, can both contribute to it directly, benefiting any company that uses Chromium, and it can build on top of it in ways that are unique to its own browser.

Microsoft’s explanation for this decision is truer and more accurate.

“Plans to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop [will] create better web-compatibility for our customers and less-fragmentation of the web for all its developers,” the Edge team explains. “Our plan is to engage in a way that embraces the well-established open source model that’s been working effectively for years: meaningful and positive contributions which align with long-standing thoughtfully-designed architecture, collaborative engineering, and keeping in mind that we, together as a community, seek the best outcome for all people who use the web across many devices.”

I feel bad for Mozilla. But I feel wronged that its argument against Microsoft and Chromium is built on a devious miscommunication about Chromium’s heritage and ownership.

“Microsoft’s decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us,” the Mozilla blog post continues. “We compete with Google not because it’s a good business opportunity. We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice. They depend on consumers being able to decide we want something better and to take action.”

Ah boy. Here’s the thing.

Lest we forget, Microsoft also competes with Google. And while it’s not entirely clear if this new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser will take the high road, like Firefox and Safari, and adopt anti-advertising and tracking features that would harm Google, it could easily do so. Hell, that’s exactly what the Brave web browser does, and it is also based on Chromium. So is Opera, another Google competitor that offers a built-in ad blocker.

The only thing Mozilla communicates that I agree with is that this move by Microsoft will ultimately harm Firefox. Not because it deserves to fail or suffer. But because Firefox, by refusing to embrace an open source and de facto standard that will make the web better for everyone, is using a 1990’s mentality to compete for users in 2018. The underlying web rendering engine is not the place to innovative and differentiate. When you do that, you make life harder on developers and you make the web worse for everyone. That is not, I believe, Mozilla’s mission. But that is, in fact, what it is doing. It is what Microsoft has finally woken up to and is now correcting.

Mozilla and Firefox are going to have to change to adapt to this reality. It’s a weird thing to even think, but this company is very much on the wrong side of history, at least on this topic. And it’s just sad watching this happen.