Why Google's legal troubles could hasten Firefox's slide into irrelevance

Firefox has never been the most popular web browser. At its peak, in 2010, Firefox was used by 34.1% of the market. Today, the US federal government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), with its running count of the last 90 days of US government website visits, the most reliable web browser survey, shows Firefox with a mere 2.8%. 

That’s not Firefox’s all-time low, but it’s still miserable. Chrome, as you might guess, is the leader with 54.5%, followed by Safari, thanks to iPhones, with 24%, and Edge with 14.2%. Only Internet Explorer — yes, some people are still running it — of the well-known browsers has a smaller number of users, with 1.7%.

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Chrome’s numbers are even bigger than they first appear. Its open-source foundation, Chromium, also powers Microsoft Edge. Except for Safari and Mozilla Firefox, all the other web browsers that matter, such as Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave, run on top of Chromium. Altogether, these alternative browsers equal Firefox’s market share with 2.8%. 

Even Firefox’s parent organization, Mozilla, show Firefox’s numbers dwindling. Since March 2020, Firefox has lost over 50 million monthly active users (MAU), dropping from 206 million to 155 million as of July 2024. 

In a word, ugh.

So, why has this slide happened? Well, it all started when Google rolled out Chrome. As Hiten Shah, CEO of Nira, a cloud security company, observed, Google fundamentally reinvented the browser. In 2008, Google started creating an entirely new operating system for a cloud-based open web with its extensions and applications. 

To make that happen, Google “poached” top web browser developers from Firefox, such as Ian Hickson, Darin Fisher, Pam Greene, and Brian Ryner. Microsoft and the Mozilla Foundation were caught flat-footed, and neither have caught up. 

Eventually, Mozilla figured out what was happening. It took them much too long. In 2017, almost a decade after Chrome appeared, then Mozilla CEO Chris Beard admitted, “Firefox did not keep up with the market and what people really want. A lot of hardcore Firefox fans are now happy Chrome users.” 

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Since then, things haven’t gone well with Firefox. For example, the shift towards mobile browsing has favored pre-installed smartphone browsers, such as Chrome and Safari. Indeed, when you install “Firefox” on an iPhone, you only have a Firefox skin with the Safari Webkit running underneath it. It’s only in the European Union, starting with iOS 17.4, that when you run Firefox on an iPhone, you’re actually running Firefox. 

Many Firefox users have also gotten sick of the browser. As one recently wrote on Reddit, “Let’s not pretend Mozilla isn’t its own worst enemy. When the focus seems to be more on choosing the right shade of blue for hair dye rather than delivering features people have been begging for — some for over a decade.”

Of course, others passionately defend Firefox, but objectively, Mozilla appears to be circling the drain. Take, for example, the simple fact that Mozilla Foundation recently laid off 30% of its employees because of a “relentless onslaught of change”.

Specifically, Mozilla wiped out two major divisions: advocacy and global programs. This move came after Mozilla Corp. laid off 5% of its workforce in February. This led to cuts in the company’s Mozilla social, VPN, Relay, and Online Footprint Scrubber.

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Moving ahead, Mozilla is spending its remaining resources on incorporating “trustworthy” AI capabilities. Its latest launch is a project named Lumigator 2. Its job is to “help developers confidently select the best LLM [Large Language Model] for their specific project.”

Good luck to artificial intelligence in saving Mozilla’s bacon when every company and its brother are burning money and hoping for an AI miracle. 

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For any of this approach to work, Mozilla must rely on Google. 

I find it more than a little ironic that many people still pick Firefox as their web browser because they hate Google and Chrome. Mozilla, Firefox’s parent organization, lives and dies by the money it gets from Google. 

No Google: No Firefox. Seriously.

In its last financial report from 2023, the Mozilla Foundation reported a total revenue of over $593 million. Of that cash, $75 million came from subscriptions and advertising for approximately 12.6% of the total revenue. The rest, $510 million, about 86%, came from search engine royalties, primarily from Google. 

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Why does Google do this? In a Bloomberg report, Chris Messina, a product designer and early Firefox adopter, said, “What a great foil for Google to then sponsor a nonprofit competitor that was never quite as good.” 

That approach made some sense when Microsoft Internet Explorer was still a viable rival to Chrome. That hasn’t been the case for some time, though. 

Indeed, paying Mozilla so that Google remains Firefox’s default search engine seems like a bad move. In August, the Department of Justice won a court case that found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” partly because of its search engine deals with Apple and Mozilla. 

Given this decision, would you renew a deal with Mozilla if you were Google? Yeah, I wouldn’t either. 

So, where does that leave Mozilla? I don’t see Mozilla and Firefox collapsing immediately. After all, Mozilla has over a billion dollars in cash and investments. 

So, why has Mozilla been cutting resources, with all that money in hand and all that cool Google cash coming in? That’s a good question. 

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One cynical answer comes from Windscribe, a virtual private network (VPN) company. The firm thinks, “Some of you may be under the impression that Mozilla is a simple non-profit, out to save the world one smidge of privacy at a time.” 

Windscribe said it’s not: “The whole ‘not-for-profit’ play is really just corporate speak for we are better at avoiding taxes than you. Despite the illusion of separation, these entities are all so tightly intertwined that the auditor’s report simply refers to the collection of the three as ‘Mozilla.'”

The company continued, “In the period between 2008-2018, Mozilla lost 85% of its market share, while [CEO Mitchell] Baker’s pay simultaneously rose 400%. I wish I could fail upward like that.” Don’t we all?

So, while Mozilla’s executives continue to profit and the company/foundation salts away money, it also keeps laying off employees. Of those who work there, twenty on the job review site Glassdoor used the phrase “absolutely disastrous management“. Others used stronger language. 

In its day, Firefox was a vital, major open-source program. Today, it’s on the way down and out. I doubt Mozilla or Firefox will survive until the end of the decade. Depending on what happens with Google, Firefix might not even make it to the end of next year.