Turnarounds are tough. Weighted with expectations, hopes, and worries. And fighting gravity to stop decline can feel harder than fighting gravity to scale a growth curve. But it’s doable with will, inspiration, and execution.
An article ran in Wired earlier this year called “Is Firefox OK?” It stated that Mozilla’s Firefox browser has about 4 percent market share and depends on a deal with Google that makes Google the default search engine in Firefox, to the tune of about $400 million per year. Mozilla’s total revenue in 2020 was about $496 million, so $400 million is quite a chunk of that.
There’s a quote in the article from an analyst that once a company or organization loses market share, it’s hard to gain users back. From a system dynamics perspective, falling market share can indicate a reinforcing loop at work. For example, loss of users reduces word of mouth, which reduces the number of new users, which reduces the word of mouth, and so on. Ouch. But there’s one counterexample written in lights, and it’s worth considering what they did different(ly).
Yes, that counterexample is Apple. In 1997, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates announced a Microsoft investment of $150 million in Apple, ensuring, among other things, that Microsoft Office would be available on Mac OS and Internet Explorer would be the default browser.
Mozilla is in a similar but not identical position today, accepting payments to make Google’s search engine the default in the Firefox browser. So, what could Mozilla do from here if it wished to reach for the sky? Let’s look to Apple’s playbook.
A new statement and beyond
Apple’s renaissance didn’t come primarily from Macs, but the stylish iMac released in 1998 served as an initial shot across the bow, indicating Apple meant business. It was still a Mac, but it aimed to capture magic—and attention—with its design.
Similarly, if Mozilla chose to try this path, a hypothetical Step 1 might be a redesigned, amazing Firefox browser. One that pulls a few users away from rivals toward something that makes a new and compelling statement. (Full disclosure: I often use Firefox and think it’s pretty great already—but when’s the last time any browser made you say, “Wow!”?).
But of course, after the success of the iMac, Apple didn’t stop and rest content. Their next step was to tackle a fragmented market with no clear winners—the MP3 player market—and become a behemoth in it. The original iPod of 2001 didn’t have WiFi, it wasn’t a Star Trek-adjacent device, it just played music. But it played music really, really well, and in 2003, Apple paired it with an ecosystem: the iTunes Store, which legitimized a market heretofore populated by Limewire and Kazaa, among others.
In other words, Apple focused on a market that was a wide-open field, plagued by inconsistent user experiences and shady legality. By focusing on usability and inking deals with record companies instead of trying to do an end run around them, Apple gave consumers what they really wanted: a simple, seamless way to enjoy and share their music online, in any location, and across all their own devices. It turned out people weren’t in love with the idea of streaming torrents or stealing MP3s. They were in love with the ideas of portability and sharing. Apple was the company that best grasped this market opportunity.
Seeking out fresh snow
So, Step 2, if they choose to take it: Mozilla needs a greenfield market opportunity. Their best bet isn’t in areas that have dominant competitors; it’s in areas that are kind of a mess right now. Maybe cryptocurrency? Maybe privacy, which plays to Firefox’s strengths? Although the Brave browser already operates in these spheres, it hasn’t become dominant yet in the mainstream consumer market.
But cryptocurrency is pretty polarizing, and some people even hate it. Not that many people hate music. And consumers aren’t rushing out to seek privacy the way they rushed out to seek music.
I’d argue that web publishing might be a promising market, after nearly three decades of fragmented, imperfect solutions, but who knows? Maybe web games and apps? It’s a hard task, finding a market ripe for arbitrage and innovation. But if Mozilla can do it, that could be their Step 2, just as the iPod and iTunes Store were Step 2 for Apple.
The build to the leap
The next step for Apple, as we all know, was the iPhone. It was the true game-changer, but it came after Step 1 and Step 2. It didn’t leap into being whole-cloth like Athena from Zeus’ head (which is kind of an icky myth, now that I think about it). It was the iterative result of the most fantastic turnaround in corporate history. Each step led to the next, and each depended on the work done before.
The playbook for the iPhone was similar to the iPod path: the cell phone market was fragmented, with several competitors vying for dominance. There was space for Apple to elbow in with something that had an entirely different form factor, jump-starting a smartphone revolution.
We’re still using phones that look essentially like that first iPhone from 2007. It was a great design. It was a world-class design. And people flocked to it in droves.
So, that’s a playbook Mozilla theoretically could follow:
Step 1: a browser release that makes a new and compelling statement.
Step 2: a foray into a greenfield market that matches unmet needs of customers in that market.
Step 3: a foray into a different market that’s growing at lightning speed and has space for a new competitor with a game-changing product.
It’s a hard task. Maybe impossible, or maybe not. It depends on Mozilla’s will, desire, and daring to break the mold with something so good it draws users like fireflies—not just once, but again and again.
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Extra, Extra!
Tangential extras for curious readers:
1. The brain undergoes a great ‘rewiring’ after age 40 - by Ross Pomeroy in Big Think - but there’s hope for raging against dying light. This change can be staved off!
2. Real Democracy Now - by Nick Coccoma in The Similitude - thinking different about democratic governance.
3. Why Men Are Hard to Help - by Richard Reeves in National Affairs - experts say they don’t know why, but subsidies and training don’t work. New approaches needed.
Very interesting. I can attest to how Chrome is dominating everything that I do. Firefox is still there but for me there's no compelling use case to abandon Chrome.
Stephanie -- This was thoughtful. As a former owner of Apple products, they set a very high bar for a curated, walled garden experience. Theirs is a difficult model to replicate.