Firefox and co are open source projects. Couldn't you just create a new company, "Next-Mozilla" or so, and fork off the projects, install a new CEO, take over the developers? You would have to use a new branding, i.e. they cannot reuse the trademark, and they have to make sure that enough people (developers and users) will switch over. But with such bad press, this might not be too hard, if there is one focused attempt for this. Financing is another issue initially, but at some point they would get a similar Google deal. And otherwise, financing like Wikimedia or Internet Archive (mostly donations, right?).
How will you pay for this? Without critical mass you are not going anywhere. FireFox had critical mass, and lost. You won't be able to recover that position without some extremely deep pockets even if you start off from what is there today.
I am not convinced that even if Mozilla/FF got a competent CEO tomorrow and started executing 'just so' that they would be able to recover from their slide, a newcomer would have it harder.
The browser market is so much different now though.
Firefox was originally competing against the pile of steaming garbage that was IE6.
Now they are competing against Chrome which is actually a good browser, and Chrome also has the advantage of having google behind it which can leverage their search/ad monopoly to push Chrome.
The way I’ve heard the story is that by the time of firefox, IE6 was still a really good browser, it had just stayed stagnant for a little too long, and bundled got with Microsoft’s monopolistic behavior.
I think there are more parallels between late IE6 and present day Chrome then you give credit for.
maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I don't have a single fond memory of IE6. I remember it being a revelation how much better firefox was when I first switched back in the day.
Pretty much. But they had not ridden Netscape that far down to the bottom just yet. Don't forget that the roots of Mozilla were seeded in 1998, the Mozilla foundation came 6 years later. Netscape was still hugely popular and FireFox took that popularity and ran with it.
To do this today, with a much more complex product would be no mean feat, back then a browser was a much simpler piece of software than it is today.
Steve Jobs was able to do that with Apple. There is no reason to believe that is not possible with Mozilla. Especially taking into consideration that Mozilla doesn't have to be profitable as a company. Being sustainable would be enough.
Steve Jobs didn't do it alone, there was huge trend transforming all of the music industry, with piarted MP3's over P2P networks, and he rode it, and did so exceptionally well.
What trend should Firefox ride ? And how will it keep that project a secret for long enough, Given that it's all open-sourced ?
Oh tons of ways. The fact that the default search engine is Google is the obvious one, but GSuite is huge for Google - they're competing directly with Dropbox, O365, etc. and GSuite heavily integrates with Chrome.
ChromeOS of course puts them in the OS market, and it's doing very well for a niche operating system - my entire company runs on ChromeOS in fact.
