Success and Competition

July 11th, 2013

Last week one of the regular browser competitive “bake-offs” named Firefox “speed king”, which highlights how much competition has improved Firefox. This time we beat Chrome in performance areas where Google once had a significant lead. This has caused me to think a bit about competition, why it matters, when it goes bad, and how we think about it.

First of course, it’s fun to excel and I’m very proud of the Mozilla teams that made this happen. Competing with Google is no easy task –Google’s resources are immense and their employees are talented. Kudos to everyone involved.

Second, competition in “our” space is one aspect of success. When we started building Firefox, no one believed a browser mattered on the desktop, and a lot of people didn’t know what a browser was. Today that’s not the case. The introduction of Firefox spurred the browser into prominence, and generated competition first from Microsoft, and then from Google. This competition has validated our message from long ago that creating the product through which people access the Internet has immense impact. Google will undoubtedly surge ahead on some aspects of performance before too long, we should expect this, rise to meet the challenge and view it as success.

Third, we need to make sure we’re competing in things that matter. A neck-and-neck competition in an area that doesn’t provide value to consumers isn’t a great use of resources. We should periodically evaluate if the thing we’re competing about is worth the focus. Today raw speed is a key competitive area. That makes sense. It’s worth asking if at some point if improvements in raw speed will become overshadowed by needed improvements in other areas, but right now raw speed is important to users.

We’re also working on performance in new areas. With Firefox we are also bringing things like high performance 3D games and video calls to the Web. These rich activities like games and video calls were some of the last remaining challenges to prove that the Web is a capable and powerful platform for complex tasks. Addressing these challenges is another step in Mozilla’s mission to advance the Web as the platform for openness, innovation and opportunity for all.

Fourth, great products are key at Mozilla. Firefox on the desktop allows us to enhance the key aspects of online life we care about. It will help us connect “the desktop” to “mobile” and provide a unified online experience based on the freedoms and openness that drive us.

Categories: Mozilla

46 comments for “Success and Competition”

1
InternetExplore said on July 11th, 2013 at 9:25 am:

Well played… well played, Mozilla.
2
Jerson Lima said on July 11th, 2013 at 9:27 am:

so proud.
Go Mozilla!
Go Firefox!
3
ite said on July 11th, 2013 at 9:33 am:

you are the best
4
Metysj said on July 11th, 2013 at 9:39 am:

Kudos guys, many props for upping the ante. It’s indeed no small feat to go up against GooG or M$, let alone beat them, even for if only for a couple weeks/months.
5
Michael Valinis said on July 11th, 2013 at 9:42 am:

Bravo, Mozilla, but ” key aspics [sic] of online life?” Really….
6
Tony Mechelynck said on July 11th, 2013 at 10:04 am:

The benchmark only compares Firefox 22, Chrome 27, IE10 and something called “Opera Next”. Shall I understand that SeaMonkey 2.19 is, for all extents and purposes, to be counted with Firefox 22 (since it is based on the same Gecko 22 engine) or, on the contrary, that “it doesn’t count”?
7
Stephan Sokolow said on July 11th, 2013 at 10:30 am:

@Tony: Opera Next is the Opera equivalent to Firefox’s Beta and Aurora channels and Chrome’s Beta and Canary channels.

They included it because it’ll be the first release of Opera based on Blink (Google’s new WebKit fork) rather than Presto and it would be irresponsible to judge Opera purely on an engine they’re about to replace.
8
Jim Geiser said on July 11th, 2013 at 11:04 am:

I used it up until yesterday and quit because it quit responding every 15 to 20 seconds and was dead for long time. Went back to IE and had to relearn how to use it. If you ever get it to work with Windows 8.1 let us know on facebook.
9
Lozzy said on July 11th, 2013 at 11:11 am:

Wow, a big pat on the back for all the Mozillians who have helped make this happen. It must be incredibly satisfying and empowering for them all.
10
Google Chrome said on July 11th, 2013 at 11:33 am:

🙁
11
Stephen said on July 11th, 2013 at 1:14 pm:

Great browser, but aspics?
12
Mitchell Baker said on July 11th, 2013 at 2:43 pm:

Actually, I’ve always wondered what an “aspic” is. Now I know: a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic).

Not really a great way to think about competition and success ….
13
Benjamin Kerensa said on July 11th, 2013 at 2:43 pm:

I so looking forward to each coming release which we are baking with goodness.
14
Mark Anthony Degamo said on July 11th, 2013 at 7:46 pm:

I use Chrome and Firefox everyday…They are both great…It’s amazing how competition leads to better products…
15
Fawad Hassan said on July 12th, 2013 at 3:09 am:

Honestly those benchmark results are totally unexpected. I was not expecting such improvements from Gecko. I used to think Mozilla will beat Google when they will release Servo based browser.

Excellent job by Mozilla and don’t forget to keep it up! 🙂
16
anthony jenson said on July 17th, 2013 at 9:28 am:

You the best mozilla no competition require to prove that…i had used chrome but it got problems like some time the buttons dont work they are dead…
17
Me said on July 18th, 2013 at 4:19 am:

Ok. Now do the same with the Android version, which just sucks. It takes like 30 secons to open a link, whereas the Android native browsers starts to load the pages inmediately, at least in Jelly Bean.
18
Elaine Phillips said on July 18th, 2013 at 6:54 am:

I usually use both Chrome & Firefox, With the new Chrome Mail Box, I will be using Firefox more,
Made it my Default..

With the new Speeeeed This Fox is on Fire..

Got Firefox.. Love You.. since you was (3)
19
cal said on July 18th, 2013 at 7:10 am:

I’m not even surprised. I left those other browsers behind for good last year because, in my opinion, Firefox is hands down the best there is. And you just know it’s only getting better.
20
Victor said on July 18th, 2013 at 7:47 am:

Yay. 🙂
21
boojum said on July 18th, 2013 at 7:54 am:

a great project by a kool team, thank you all… Mozilla rocks!!
22
LWSH said on July 18th, 2013 at 8:35 am:

Excelent job Mozilla Congratulations.
Saludos desde México
23
muthusamy venkatachalam said on July 18th, 2013 at 8:45 am:

FIRST LET me have it downloaded then i shall opine
24
Pranav Kulkarni said on July 18th, 2013 at 9:23 am:

WTG Firefox. Keep it up.
25
pcahan said on July 18th, 2013 at 9:37 am:

Firefox is excellent on Windows platforms, but is buggy and much slower on Mac/OS X platforms. Before patting yourself on the back too much, spend some time bringing the non-Windows versions of Firefox up to speed. Then you will have something to truly crow about.
26
axle montoya said on July 18th, 2013 at 11:35 am:

good work guys..keep it up..I’m 100% supportive of MOZILLA’S IDEALS & PROJECT..
LET ME KNOW HOW CAN i BE AN ELEMENT ON YOUR ENDEAVORS DEALING WITH A PROJECT THAT i WOULD BE QUALIFIED TO PARTICIPATE..
WE THANK YOU GUYS.
”GOD SPEED”
27
Thomas said on July 18th, 2013 at 1:44 pm:

I was forced into this update and have had nothing but problems ever since. My entire system is slower than my dead grandmother and my windows office suite is totally messed up and all of my previous documents are lost in cyber space , any new document now wants to go to Adobe PDF automatically and just keeps going in a circle when I wish to print it. How do I go back? or am I going to have to go all the way back to the joke of IE? This shows that you are much like Microsoft and did not fully test this product before forcing it down our throats, nothing like being cyber raped.
28
ronald kowalski said on July 18th, 2013 at 1:57 pm:

Firefox is the best. I tried goggle chrome twice and I back to Firefox. This time to stay, no more experiments.
29
Anas said on July 18th, 2013 at 2:19 pm:

Fast or not I would never leave FF
30
Van Beylen Marcel said on July 18th, 2013 at 2:20 pm:

Up till recently Mozilla Firefox took a long time to start up and was rather slow on my PC
31
Van Beylen Marcel said on July 18th, 2013 at 2:30 pm:

Up till very recently Mozilla Firefox took a long time to start up and was rather slow on
my PC , in spite of my complaints

Marcel Van Beylen
Prof.Em. Chemistry
University Leuven
B-3001 Belgium

Priv. Molenveldlaan , 10
Kessel-Lo (Leuven)
B-3010 Belgium
32
helen baxter said on July 18th, 2013 at 2:37 pm:

i always use ff its gr8 thanks
33
Richard Bledsoe said on July 18th, 2013 at 2:57 pm:

Fast, yes, but…..I’m seeing on the help forum that many others as well as I can no longer copy and paste from web pages using FF 22. You might want to slow down enough to get it right.
34
Ramir Balquin said on July 18th, 2013 at 6:26 pm:

FF started as a real good browser, up until when it is continually being updated to a point that several useful FF add-ons have become unusable by making them incompatible with upgraded FF.

I agree with @Marcel Van Beylen about FF low start-up on PC. Then, there are issues also with some anti-virus software such as Trend Micro Titanium. These issues can all be googled (no pun intended) on the ‘net. (I am stuck with the AV software only until its expiry, though, to recover my money paid for it.)

FF devs, please consider that when FF is being upgraded, it should continue to be legacy-free for very useful FF add-ons like Screengrab, Print pages to PDF, etc.

For now, I opt to stick with FF 21.0 until such time that I cannot read any more adverse issues on upgraded FF that would disable very useful FF add-ons. For this issue, perhaps, FF devs may wish to advise their add-on providers for the latter to make their apps compatible with upgraded FF.

Thank you very much.
35
Ramir Balquin said on July 18th, 2013 at 6:52 pm:

Re: FF on mobile

FF devs, please note that majority of mobile phones worldwide are running on Android. Equally in competitive abundance are mobile browsers too that support it.

I have mobile phone browsers such as FF, Chrome, Google, Dolphin, and recently Next, on my mobile phones. While these browsers perform decently enough on my mobile phones, my latest installed Next browser is far-performing them all. Arguably, of course, mobile browser performance
varies with mobile phone units. But, all my mobile phones register the same upscale performance of Next.

Mozilla team is doing a great service to the netizens. Seriously. But, if only FF can become more responsive to the fast-paced race on the internet highway, by making FF legacy-free for its add-on apps and making it out hugely on the mobile browsers race, I could see lots of smiling netizens giddying up the ‘net with gusto.

Cheers….from Sydney, AU
36
Mary Workman said on July 18th, 2013 at 8:54 pm:

I have used Firefox for a long time & I love it. How do I get the new version?
37
Mary Workman said on July 18th, 2013 at 8:54 pm:

How do I get the newer version?
38
Dnyanesh said on July 18th, 2013 at 9:16 pm:

Firefox browser is customizable thats what i like about it. Great add ons. There are some feedback try to add more apps to firefox OS like whatsapp, wechat, line, temple run, fruit ninja, BBM, process manager, ram optimizer etc. this will increase the sale of firefox OS in India and other countries too.
39
iFX said on July 19th, 2013 at 2:21 am:

Awesome work guys!

I’ve been a looooong time mozilla user… back since the netscape days… FF was always my favourite (later on, once it came on the scene) – loved and got hooked on being able to customize just about anything in it (and the add-ons).

I’m constantly being told by others how good Chrome etc is… but as a web dev, I have them all installed and have to test in them all – so yeah I have plenty of opportunuty to compare all the browsers while testing our sites.

I switched to Chrome as my main browser for a while a few years, but after plenty of use (and plenty of issues), both MSIE and Chrome are just too resource hungry and, in turn, unstable for me.

Sure they’re probably fine for the average user that only has a few tabs open at a time, but I usually have a shipload of tabs and windows open and the only browser that seems to be able to handle it and still remain stable (and recover without losing anything on the odd occasion of a crash) is Firefox.

No other browser can handle what I throw at it and no other browser can be customized to how I like it or has all the add-ons I use every day – I find what uses a few hundred MB of RAM in FF, uses GBs of RAM in Chrome and MSIE – not to mention the way MSIE lies about it’s memory usage.

Anyway, enough of my ranting 😉 – Congrats to the FF dev team and I look forward to trying out FFOS some time in the hopefully not too distant future 😉
40
Dennis Tsubaki said on July 19th, 2013 at 2:03 pm:

In support of Firefox, I would not mind user-optional, safe and clean, passive advertisement in my Firefox and Seamonkey browsers to help raise funding for Mozilla. The user should have the option to opt out of getting ads and have control over the advertisement to prevent interference with the user’s work. The ad should not be active advertisement that pops up and takes over your browser so it becomes non-responsive. My Yahoo Mail has ads that pop up and freezes my browser, even if the cursor doesn’t go over the ad, the cursor just has to pass nearby. The browser and Yahoo Mail become non-responsive and I cannot sign out of Yahoo Mail and if I’m in my SPAM folder, the ad seems to pop open some of my SPAM e-mail as well. Usually I have to disconnect power to unfreeze the computer. The user should also have control over the size and location of the ad so it doesn’t interfere with the user’s work. I hope this will help fund Firefox and Seamonkey.
41
sai charan said on July 22nd, 2013 at 9:42 pm:

‘ve been using FF since 2010. No other browser feels so reliable as FF does. To be named speed king beating all other competition is just icing on the cake.

If I had to say one thing that I really like about FF is its presentation. Geek and great.
42
Sukhendu Bera said on July 28th, 2013 at 10:26 pm:

I am happy with Mozilla Firefox.
43
Mark said on July 29th, 2013 at 11:24 am:

I think some people will try to blame Mozilla for their cars not starting.

Well done, Mozilla, on a truly significant accomplishment!

(P.S. To the complainers: 99% of your problems with speed and crashes are with addons and if addons are not being updated to be compatible with the latest Firefox they are not being maintained efficiently. Mozilla can’t slow down browser development and improvement for the sake of addons that may never even be updated. It’s up to addon developers to keep up – which is much easier now than it ever was.)
44
rental mobil surabaya said on August 3rd, 2013 at 8:04 am:

The user should have the option to opt out of getting ads and have control over the advertisement to prevent interference with the user’s work. The ad should not be active advertisement that pops up and takes over your browser so it becomes non-responsive
45
irshadbaig said on August 9th, 2013 at 7:10 am:

i always use FF , its great to use and better than IE,OPERA and GOOgle chrome
but can anyone tell me whether this SPEEEEED KING is compatible with IDM…….becoz last version was not compatible…..so users plz let me know,,,
46
Eric Faccer said on January 6th, 2014 at 2:55 am:

Hi Mitchell,

I’m Eric, part of the Uplink Aero project. You can learn a bit more about our project here:
http://tricorder.org/eric/uplink.html, http://uplink.aero, http://uplink.aero/project.html http://igg.me/at/aero

We are taking an expansive view of what the open web means and we have some great ideas on how to get there. Our IndieGogo campaign has had only a tepid response, and I think we have learned a few reasons why, but I don’t think that necessarily reflects on the quality of our ideas. Making internet acquisition a one time cost in the developing world is clearly a win. Our approach has several advantages and lacks the ‘chattiness’ problem that prevents other mesh-networking projects from scaling. We’d love to partner with a progressive organisation like Mozilla to help make these technologies available to the 2/3 of the world who lack internet access.