They can make Firefox better, and have been doing that a lot. The problem is - it doesn't make the users to come. Google, Apple, Microsoft - all own platforms that people use, and they heavily push the users towards their own browsers.
Users nowadays have been conditioned that it’s perfectly normal to download Chrome after installing Windows / buying a new computer. If Google can do this, why not Mozilla?
I think you are having a very selective memory. Since day one, Google put Chrome ads everywhere including on the Google home page when you are visiting from Firefox and there is no way to permanently disable them.
If you are aware of a similiar marketing outreach that Mozilla could do I'm sure they would love to hear about it!
Mozilla cannot really competitively compete with Chrome on features, not for long. Anything new they put out that can pull in a meaningful usershare increase will be replicated by Google. And all the niche features they want to push (privacy et al) aren't going to cause major market swings.
Firefox circa 2004 was dominating because IE was a steaming pile of garbage and Apple had no market share at the time. If you wanted a usable browser it was your only option and even then they were still a minority to the installed by default broken trash.
So what? History has shown that users happily switch to a different browser if it is better. The Mozilla Corporation should know this, as they were the ones making people switch from IE to FF a decade ago. And they were competing against a preinstalled browser!
Aka the browser will no longer bring them any money to sustain themselves. It's sad but we're basically seeing a chromium near-monopoly coming.
From my perspective, the Chrome monoculture is one of the largest threats of the Internet right now, and I don’t see how Mozilla could be relevant without challenging that.
But I guess this goes back to Mozilla the corporation, rather than Mozilla the non-profit org. They want to maintain some form of independence, at the cost of making bit bets.
I get the feeling from this thread that some people think the only conceivable purpose of Mozilla is to maintain an independent browser, and if they can't do that they may as well shut down. Mozilla sees itself in a larger role of supporting a healthy internet, and kind of has to think about what else that might mean besides an independent browser.
