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Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

(support.mozilla.org)
1222 points phantomathkg | 16 comments | 22 May 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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segphault ◴[22 May 25 17:45 UTC] No.44064599[source]▶
I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for readability doesn't align with their new direction.

I'd probably be applauding the decision to shut this down if I thought they were doing it to free up resources to increase their focus on the browser, but Mozilla seems to be institutionally committed to chasing its own demise, so I'm sure they will instead focus on AI integration and other stuff that nobody asked for.

Meanwhile, Firefox is still missing proper support for a bunch of modern web features like view transitions and CSS anchor points that are available in every other browser.

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nine_k ◴[22 May 25 19:27 UTC] No.44065800[source]▶
> available in every other browser

Isn't it because almost every "other browser" reuses the Chromium engine? Or is Firefox trailing even mobile Safari here?

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1. mvdtnz ◴[22 May 25 19:28 UTC] No.44065811[source]▶
How does that change the basic facts from the end users' perspective?
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2. maigret ◴[22 May 25 19:30 UTC] No.44065833[source]▶
For users it’s called “putting all your eggs in one basket”
3. Lutger ◴[22 May 25 20:12 UTC] No.44066350[source]▶
It doesn't, but the sentence referred to wasn't really aimed at them. I mean, Mozilla could ditch its engine and adopt chromium in order to really focus on advertising, and then it would also support said features from an end users perspective! Somehow I have a feeling that won't earn Mozilla praise.

For all its flaws, Mozilla is actually the ONLY other company building a browser engine. When its gone, there will basically be only one left.

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4. fuzztester ◴[22 May 25 20:38 UTC] No.44066664[source]▶
what happened to opera?

i used it a good amount earlier, when it was relatively new, but then some issues happened, which I don't remember clearly, then i stopped tracking it.

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5. kstrauser ◴[22 May 25 20:38 UTC] No.44066677[source]▶
Have you forgotten Apple and WebKit?
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6. lawrencejgd ◴[22 May 25 20:54 UTC] No.44066864{3}[source]▶
It's owned by a chinese company and uses Chromium
7. cptskippy ◴[22 May 25 21:28 UTC] No.44067272{3}[source]▶
Isn't Chromium a fork of Webkit which is a fork of KHTML?
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8. Arrowmaster ◴[22 May 25 21:29 UTC] No.44067278{3}[source]▶
If you want old Opera look into Vivaldi. It's run by old staff from Opera pre sale.

Current Opera is owned by a Chinese company with ties to pay day loans and other shady behaviors.

9. fuzztester ◴[22 May 25 21:44 UTC] No.44067442{3}[source]▶
thanks, guys.

i googled:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(company)

10. alwillis ◴[22 May 25 22:08 UTC] No.44067680{4}[source]▶
> Isn't Chromium a fork of Webkit which is a fork of KHTML?

Yes… 12 years ago: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/googl...

They are quite different now.

11. alwillis ◴[23 May 25 02:35 UTC] No.44069350[source]▶
> For all its flaws, Mozilla is actually the ONLY other company building a browser engine. When it's gone, there will basically be only one left.

Safari's iOS/iPadOS global marketshare is about 33%; it's on 2+ billion devices. Definitely not going anywhere [1].

[1]: https://mycodelesswebsite.com/safari-statistics/

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12. KingMob ◴[23 May 25 10:10 UTC] No.44071477{3}[source]▶
> Definitely not going anywhere

Apple will happily let Webkit languish as much as possible to drive people to apps. They have every interest in getting that App Store cut, and none in extending the web with open, competing technologies. (* Maybe the recent app store legal rulings ill change things, we'll see.)

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13. alwillis ◴[23 May 25 17:36 UTC] No.44074789{4}[source]▶
> Apple will happily let Webkit languish as much as possible to drive people to apps.

Doesn't make any sense: why would Apple allow an app that's on 2+ billion devices to languish?

There's no evidence of WebKit languishing. If anything, the WebKit team has shipped important web platform features more quickly than it ever has before.

WebKit is arguably the most important framework for the App Store; many thousands of apps rely on it, including many of Apple's first party apps.

* first to ship <search> in Safari 17, September 2023

* first to ship :has in Safari 15.4, March 2022 [1]

* first to ship wide gamut color support [2]

* the only browser shipping support for JPEG XL

* so many new features shipped in Safari 18.4 it took 8,000 words to describe it all [3]

[1]: https://www.webkit.org/blog/13096/css-has-pseudo-class/

[2]: https://webkit.org/blog/10042/wide-gamut-color-in-css-with-d...

[3]: https://webkit.org/blog/16574/webkit-features-in-safari-18-4...

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14. airbreather ◴[23 May 25 17:49 UTC] No.44074910{3}[source]▶
what about things like the browser object in Qt/PyQt?
15. KingMob ◴[24 May 25 13:49 UTC] No.44081127{5}[source]▶
> Doesn't make any sense: why would Apple allow an app that's on 2+ billion devices to languish?

Because they can make more money on apps. Like I said in the parent comment you're choosing to ignore.

> There's no evidence of WebKit languishing.

It's pretty well-documented that Safari has been a laggard when it comes to web standards, cherry-picked links aside.

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16. alwillis ◴[30 May 25 16:01 UTC] No.44137536{6}[source]▶
> It's pretty well-documented that Safari has been a laggard when it comes to web standards

A few years ago, Safari being behind was a persistent narrative, which started because Safari didn’t support Chrome’s (often) nonstandard features.

These days, any important web features arrive simultaneously on Safari and Chrome (like CSS Grid) or within a month or two of each other… although it took 5 months for Chrome to ship :has in 2022.