Interesting... You raise an interesting point... Mozilla's primary funding is third hand (Google makes money from ads, ads monetize Google's searches, Google pays Mozilla to make it the default search engine).
I wouldn't be cynical enough to say Mozilla doesn't care about ita customers, but I agree with your underlying premise: its funding model may leave it a little out of touch.
I see this as a publicity problem, as much as anything for Mozilla. You don't make people perceive you as a top competitor in any market by putting out a product that lacks a key feature your competitors have.
I still hope Mozilla reconsiders the decision to suspend its work.
Is Mozilla really concerned with how much marketshare Chrome takes away? As long as Internet Explorer isn't gaining on Firefox, I'd think Mozilla is pretty comfortable doing whatever it wants to do...
Mozilla is a foundation that gets most of its money from a partnership from Google. That means a few things and can provide insight into their operations.
One thing is that since their revenue comes mostly from the Google partnership, they aren't exactly emboldened to users. I know that they would never say that publicly, but look at what they are doing here. Everyone else is developing 64-bit browsers, aren't they?
An then one wonders about the direction of their development, like making a better interface for the changing times. Is that really what devout Firefox users really want? Or the smartphone OS? No. But Mozilla wants to try to not be pigeoned in by Google. They take Google's money but are being badly beaten by them with Chrome. How would you feel about a situation like that?
Mozilla frequently states that it's dedicated to open source software, so it's nice that it decided to release the 64bit code. But how does that prevent outside developers from picking up where Mozilla doesn't want to continue? IF there was real demand for a 64bit open source browser, is Mozilla actively preventing anyone from hacking its existing code? So there won't be official releases, but perhaps Mozilla should open up the development process on projects that it abandons....
It appears that Mozilla either has a clear long-term vision, and knows something we don't, or is focused on a short-term advantage and has lost sight of their true vision as a full-fledged browser. I hope they regain their focus and their leadership role.
At a time when we're seeing more companies become responsive to the demands of customers, it seems ironic that Mozilla is pretty adamant in this regard. While it did make one concession to the demands of power users, it doesn't seem enough. Perhaps as pressure grows (and power users migrate away?), Mozilla will be pressured to, once again, reassess its decision.
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