What They Hate

There is no one idea that caused Mozilla and Firefox to fail. In some ways, it’s not even their fault; they followed the only ethos that was available to them just as most people and organizations do. Right now that is one of authoritarianism and removing control from the user and making all into a worthless consumption device.

They are still worthy of blame, though, because there were tons of people (like me) telling them they were going to fail, and why. In fact, I got banned for Reddit for this after the Mozilla devs whined so much about me doing exactly this. (Note that I did not violate any Reddit rules — they just did not like having a competent, articulate, and correct opponent.)

It’s still sad being able to predict something so, well, predictable and then watch it play out just as you knew it would. It’s like when you know you’re going to fall and can’t do anything about it.

Of course, removing all useful extensions was the final nail in the coffin and one of the single most business-destroying moves I’ve ever seen any company make, but even that was just one of many colossally poor decisions in a long list of them.