HN Reader

While there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It does have vibes of Mayers and the Yahoo logo. The ship is going down but we have a fresh new look!

Yes, that will certainly improve the current 3.7% market share [1].

[1]: https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage#top-browsers...

I love this. It’s good to see Mozilla trying different revenue generating approaches (edit: the merch with Kit), even if they may seem too small compared to what it gets from the default search engine arrangement with Google.

I pressed the “play animation” button, and the fox disappeared and nothing else happened. If I hadn’t had video autoplay disabled, the fox would just not have been visible in the first place.

> Media resource https://assets.mozilla.net/video/kit/pop-up-800.webm could not be decoded, error: Error Code: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005)

> Details: auto mozilla::MediaChangeMonitor::CreateDecoderAndInit(MediaRawData *)::(anonymous class)::operator()(const MediaResult &) const: Unable to create decoder

Unfortunate.

(firefox-nightly, Linux.)

Well at least there's no AI involved. Take your wins where you can

Does anyone remember when Firefox wiped all whimsy animals from their error pages? I still remember.

that's what firefox really needed

A rebrand is the most ominous sign of Mozilla’s declining health I could have imagined.

If you’d rather do something about resource consumption instead of childish antics.

Nice, glad they're actually adding more fox and not less fox. I remember that foxless rebrand they had to walk back a little, it was lame.

No plushie in the merch store, literally unusable

Everyone asks, what does the fox say, no one cares how the fox feels. Thank you Mozilla, now we know the fox feels like open source.

That's one weird looking red panda.

I know I'm going to get downvoted into oblivion here but I do think it looks kinda nice -- like I might would buy one of the sweatshirts

the responsive layout is all broken on Safari. I know they make a competing browser, but come on...

That's one cute lil' fella :)

Happy to see that Alphabet's $100M/yr. are being wisely spent.

IMO, Mozilla should make BDK - the browser development kit, allowing for easy creation of custom browsers.

AI era is ripe for disruption, and Firefox with it's openness can aim to kill the browser mono-cultures, but it's vision-less ATM.

Cute, but I can't help but wonder if the resources used for this could have been better utilized elsewhere.

This may be a controversial position but I actually enjoy using Firefox. Vertical tabs, better profile management, etc. have all been welcome things I had in other browsers (cough Arc cough) that have made it bearable enough to use Firefox as my daily driver. They may not be as privacy-focused as some of the other derivatives of Firefox but they’re sure not Chromium.

Finally! All these years everyone has been complaining about this or that missing feature or lingering bug in Firefox, or how Mozilla has been hostile to users and pulling stupid stunts which only waste money and alienate even their most passionate fans, but by far the number one grievance everyone had was how Firefox was missing a mascot. At last I can make my mother switch to Firefox. I’m messaging all my friends right now, this is exactly what Firefox needed. Mozilla is finally back on track, focusing on the right things. It gives me tremendous hope for the continued bright future of Firefox.

Their latest 2023 results, shows Mozilla still has enough revenue to do something [1]:

  - Total revenue: $653 million
  - Revenue from Google 85% ($555 million)
  - Total expenses $496 million (Software Development Expenses $260 million)

But even after spending 1/2 Billion annually I'm not expecting them to regain relevance. They'll likely keep the existing board until the money runs dry, axe more technical talent and promising projects.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

The criticism of this in the other comments is so strange. If Mozilla can raise some money independently of Google by selling merchandise, all the better!

And it's not like software engineers are spending time on this instead of working on Firefox. That's not a real tradeoff. It's an effort that pays for itself and doesn't take away from Firefox development.

> The Firefox brand is getting a refresh and you get the first look.

Mozilla makes it really hard to root for them.

Cure. Ordered a shirt and stickers. Looking forward to being able to rep Firefox!

Has the vibe of getting a new hair color to start your "new" life. Just to see in a week or two that you actually have to change to change.

This is only getting hate because people love to hate on Firefox. Firefox having a name and identity for the little guy in their logo is a no-brainer.

I put my money where my mouth is, I use Firefox everyday for my regular browsing both on my computer and on Android. It works great. So tired of the FUD.

this is gonna make even more people think firefox is a fox

Even with $400M in "revenue" gifted to them by Google, Mozilla can't muster even 4% market share. This project is dead. There is no path to increased market share. They have no viable plan to generate revenue beyond what they get from Google. Outside of features like container tabs, which only appeal to a small niche, they don't have much going on. The browser has dramatically higher power consumption in an age where a substantial portion of internet users are on battery-powered devices, it is noticeably sluggish compared to the competition, it has a dated looking UI, there is an apparent void in leadership and development capabilities at Mozilla. Now we get a silly little mascot? Firefox will never regain the ground they lost. The sooner we realize it, the sooner we can get behind something else.