Mozilla execs clash over whether Firefox has a future

Current head of marketing urges users to resist Chrome's domination with Firefox; former CTO says the battle's been lost.

Calling Google "too big for its britches," the lead marketing official at Mozilla last week belittled browser rival Chrome as domineering and implored users to give his company's Firefox another try.

In response, a former Mozilla chief technology officer argued that Firefox is "declining unsustainably" even after Mozilla reenergized Firefox development.

"Chrome is not evil, it's just too big for its britches," wrote Eric Petitt, Mozilla's director of product marketing, in a blog post where he claimed his comments were strictly his, and not reflective of his employer. "Its influence on the internet economy and individuals is out of balance."

Petitt's argument was not that Chrome isn't in the browser driver's seat, but that its dominance and Google's business model is detrimental to the Web overall. "Google built [Chrome] to maximize revenue from your searches and deliver display ads on millions of websites. To monetize every... single... click," Petitt said.

The solution? Run Firefox, urged Petitt, who touted the performance improvements Mozilla has made in the last several years, including thestaged release of a multi-process Firefox that will bring additional content processes to users in version 54, slated to ship June 12.

Mozilla's new online ad campaign, dubbed "Browse against the machine," relies on those same arguments of Chrome's share supremacy and Firefox's new skills. But Petitt felt the need to preempt critics of that effort. "Some folks might interpret 'browse against the machine' as a desperate cry, but it isn't," Petitt asserted. "Firefox grew in users last year and Mozilla is financially healthier now than it has ever been."

Desperation may be in order, countered Andreas Gal, former Mozilla CTO. In a post to his personal blog, Gal used data provided by Irish analytics vendor StatCounter to forecast Firefox's -- and other browsers' -- future. The trend line wasn't pretty.

"Despite an expanding market both [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] and Firefox are declining unsustainably" on personal computers, Gal concluded. "Firefox is not going anywhere. That means that [it] will be around for many many years, albeit with an ever-diminishing market share. It also, unfortunately, means that a turnaround is all but impossible."