Quick. Can you name the most popular browsers on planet earth? Well, there’s Google’s somewhat ubiquitous Chrome. Top Dawg. Then, way, way down the list– almost tied for 10th place, but actually in 2nd place– is Apple’s Safari.
Yeah. That Safari. The one that is Top Dawg on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Then, even farther down the list are the also-rans; browsers that are good but living like Chrome zombies in the Google ecosphere. Microsoft’s new Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, and, uh, um– about 100 or so more.
What browser is in third place and falling fast? The much improved and somewhat desperate Firefox. Mozilla’s Firefox. Facing the potential of fading into the past, over the past few years Mozilla has managed to do what Google and Apple cannot do with Chrome and Safari.
Improve.
Alright, that’s not quite, true.
Google’s Chrome now uses more of your Mac’s battery life than ever, right? Apple still puts Google’s search engine as the default on Safari. So much for privacy and security, right?
Firefox gets improved in ways that Chrome and Zombie Chrome and Safari do not. Privacy. Security. Speed. Power consumption.
Guess what? Firefox plans to improve faster. Mozilla:
We typically ship a major Firefox browser (Desktop and Android) release every 6 to 8 weeks. Building and releasing a browser is complicated and involves many players.
Hmmm. What could Mozilla be enticed to do with Firefox while facing the potential of extinction?
We’re moving to a four-week release cycle! We’re adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly.
It’s time to market in marketing parlance.
Of course, marketing speak is what all the big companies use these days, so how does Mozilla plan to squeeze six to eight weeks into four?
Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market requirements. With four-week cycles, we can be more agile and ship features faster, while applying the same rigor and due diligence needed for a high-quality and stable release.
Uh sure.
Coming up is Tay Tay’s latest single, the 5th of three in a row on Beats 1. That’s how we play more music here on Beats 1. We cheat on the count.
Mozilla might be putting Firefox into a time distortion loop which moves up the space-time continuum, grabs features from the future, then brings them back to the present– four weeks later. But you get the idea.
More features faster. Mozilla has become so good at getting newer, better, faster, more powerful features than enhance privacy and security that Firefox has become less popular than ever.