> is the collective psyche in the US is viscerally against any entity rising to the top that does not have profit as its sole goal.
It might be the other way around in this case.
Mozilla rose to the top because of the promise of an open web and always making sure their users would come first, generating near endless goodwill and advocacy, and it was free software to boot.
Throughout the years when choices had to be made Mozilla didn't always side with the open web or the users, and whenever they were asked about it, the answer was always the same:
"Not our hill to die on. We need the clout we would lose, otherwise we won't be big enough to have any say when the next thing comes around."
and then the next thing came around, and the next...
The problem is that Mozilla seems to have revenue as an important goal. I imagine that's why people clamour for them to focus on the browser instead of pointlessly playing corporation with borrowed feathers.
They sold out.
Mozilla rose to the top because IE6 was obsolete trash, Opera cost money, and Chrome didn’t exist. The “promise of an open web” didn’t enter into it.
... and the installer would download very quickly on your mom's dial-up, unlike the full Mozilla Suite which was huge, and it was much lighter-weight, better-performing, and had better default features for people who didn't need all of Mozilla Suite, so you could install it on there so she'd stop getting 500 pop-unders and then ending up with a virus and ten "browser bars" you had to fix.
Otherwise, yes, you've nailed it.
When IE6 came into the market it was the best on its class, the only problem was Microsoft declaring victory and dismantling the team to create Avalon (WPF), which is also the background why CSS Grid came from WPF.
> We need the clout we would lose, otherwise we won't be big enough to have any say when the next thing comes around.
As John J. Chapman said in 1900:
> I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.
> Mozilla rose to the top because of the promise of an open web and always making sure their users would come first, generating near endless goodwill and advocacy, and it was free software to boot.
No, they had a free browser with tabs.
So this was because of the tabs?
"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 15th, 2004 – [..]The ad, coordinated by Spread Firefox, features the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation’s fundraising campaign to support last month’s highly successful launch of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.
Spread Firefox is the volunteer-run Mozilla advocacy site, with over 50,000 registered members, where community marketing activities are organized to raise awareness and to promote the adoption of Firefox."
(https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl...)
That's how you hear about a free browser with tabs, not how you finally satisfy that deep, nagging yearn for an open web.
At least that's how I remember it. Tabs were a huge improvement to the web browsing experience.
Before Firefox, Opera was known as "The Tabbed Browser".