It was always getfirefox.com for many years. Was someone simply squatting on the firefox.com domain and asking some exorbitant price from Mozilla to relinquish it?
xaerise · 2h ago
It was owned by a UK company called Firefox.
They actually linked to both Mozilla and Get Firefox for many years as a landing page.
When the company shut down, the owner owned it and redirected it to getfirefox.com instead of making a profit from it.
Traubenfuchs · 2h ago
That‘s… commendable… or foolish?
I would have rented or sold it to the highest bidder.
bryanlarsen · 2h ago
Whoever you sold it to would have to have a valid Firefox trademark in a different field like the original owner did, or Firefox would be to snag it via a trademark lawsuit.
Or you could sell it to a malware site, who would lose it fairly quickly but might be able to make some cash in the meantime. I can't imagine they'd earn much though. The old firefox.com didn't have Google juice until after the transition.
The only value in the firefox.com domain is the ability to shake down Mozilla for a sum less than the cost of filing a trademark lawsuit. Which is significant, but not extremely so.
rafark · 5m ago
But Firefox is a for profit company worth millions? Why would you just donate it like that to a corporation? For the longest time I thought Mozilla was a non profit org but it doesn’t seem to be the case and they have millions in the bank? I would sell it for a fair price for both parties.
jjmarr · 2m ago
Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit entity wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation. That's why they can keep lots of cash on hand and reinvest it into the business.
Now just has a memorial page for him. Not sure if it'd qualify as an Internet version of a "spite house" but it doesn't seem that far off.
cAtte_ · 1h ago
would be pretty difficult to sell out while dead
ajkjk · 2h ago
In this day and age anyone going against profit motive is commendable. the default is "fuck people over but not care because you're abstracted away from them". It's the tragedy of our times. Big respect for anyone who's willing to fight it.
imjonse · 2h ago
many times it is rationalized as "fuck people over because even if I don't, someone else will, so I might as well be the one to profit". An attitude that scales well from individuals to big corporations.
nicce · 1h ago
I think you don’t find many billionaires with opposite ideology.
yogorenapan · 2h ago
And what, have it serve as malware/phishing?
Thankfully most people still seem to have morals and not fallen prey to pure capitalism
Daviey · 2h ago
Pretty good place to download Chrome or IE, depending who bought it.
nicce · 1h ago
Looking for Firefox? Sorry, it has been officially discontinued. Here is something better.
ToucanLoucan · 2h ago
It's my experience that people who look for a way to profit off of every situation they encounter are usually both wealthier than me and also generally quite miserable, lonely folks. Also ironically, they usually are only as wealthy as they are due to generosity given to them earlier in life they would never give to others.
Not said with judgement, just observing.
jacobgkau · 2h ago
> Not said with judgement, just observing.
Seems more like speculating than observing. Unless you can elaborate on what proof you have that each of the individuals you've "observed" (which doesn't include GP) were lonely and had handouts.
firefax · 1h ago
>I would have rented or sold it to the highest bidder.
Do you also steal from the library? Mozilla isn't some big bad corporation.
Personally, I'd be a little wary of pissing off the hackers who are fans of that browser using my meatspace name, but hey, you do you. Maybe when you're done you can stroll on down to the local motorcycle bar and kick over some Harleys and see how far that takes you in life.
Gud · 1h ago
Relax dude, it’s just a domain name
mwcz · 1h ago
Am I the only one with deja vu? I distinctly remember a story, shortly after Firefox's initial launch, of a firefox.com domain owner gifting it to Mozilla. Maybe it was getfirefox.com and I'm just getting old and confused.
geor9e · 1h ago
People will still search "firefox" and click the first Bing Search Paid Ad to install it
globular-toast · 3h ago
Where was it before? Been using Firefox non stop for 20 years but last time I went to the website was probably when I still used Windows XP.
I hear that they don’t embed tracking metadata in those builds on the FTP, but I haven’t confirmed that.
The normal download page embeds a unique tracking alphanumeric string in your build that is reported to the organization on a regular basis when the telemetry phones home unless you disable this manually and clear the values.
HelloUsername · 2h ago
> I hear that they don’t embed tracking metadata in those builds on the FTP, but I haven’t confirmed that.
Is Firefox a honeypot? I can’t see how this serves the user. All telemetry should be opt-in, not opt-out.
We want failsafe, not faildeadly.
jchw · 3h ago
I believe it was getfirefox.com, which I remember primarily from adding banners to websites I ran back in the day. I forgot who previously owned firefox.com but I recall them adding a link to getfirefox.com on it back in the day.
And mozilla-europe.org in Europe for some reason, a long time ago at least.
At a time when you'd also install spybot and ccleaner.
Insanity · 3h ago
Yeah same.. I have no clue where it was hosted and been using it for 2 decades too.
TheLML · 3h ago
Last time I downloaded it it must've been the mozilla website
pmdr · 2h ago
So now we can finally expect marketshare to explode all the way up to 3%?
bobsoap · 3h ago
Finally! No more "You know, you should really get Firefox, it's super easy. First you need to go to this other website though. Yes, I know, I know. Just trust me, okay?"
everfree · 2h ago
Chrome = Google.com
Edge = Microsoft.com
Safari = Apple.com
Seems like Firefox is now the outlier, not the other way around.
Now Firefox is the only browser with a home page domain the same as its common name.
(Note: I’m not saying that I think it’s a bad thing.)
bobsoap · 2h ago
That may be, but mozilla.org isn't exactly a brand like google.com. Most people have never heard of it.
If you're trying to get non-technical people to try an underdog browser, simplicity helps. A single, straightforward brand name is better.
1718627440 · 1h ago
It's in the window title in desktop shortcuts and gets appended to every tab in the task bar: -- Mozilla Firefox
joshmanders · 2h ago
Literally everyone I know who isn't technical calls Firefox "mozilla". Including older people.
jacobgkau · 2h ago
It includes older people because Mozilla had previous work before Firefox, so they heard that name first. I've never heard anyone my age (27) or younger call it that, including non-technical people who somehow still have a nostalgic and/or ideological affinity for Firefox.
Timwi · 55m ago
When the Mozilla foundation took over the Netscape codebase, it was initially called Mozilla, or Mozilla Browser. There was also a Mozilla email client that came from Netscape Communicator.
Then they made a trimmed-down version of the browser with only essential features. That was initially called Phoenix, then Firebird, then Firefox. They did the same with the email client and called it Thunderbird. These existed alongside Mozilla Browser for a while until it was discontinued.
latexr · 1h ago
> I've never heard anyone my age (27) or younger call it that
Anecdotally, I’ve heard both people older and younger than you calling it Mozilla. And not tech-illiterate people, either.
itintheory · 42m ago
I prefer "Mozzarella Foxfire".
hatthew · 1h ago
anecdotally, I have never heard anybody call the browser software "mozilla" alone
latexr · 1h ago
And Acrobat “Adobe”. I wonder if those mistakes are less prevalent in cultures where the family name comes first.
jraph · 1h ago
I once heard Mozzarella.
Can you imagine the cheesy user-agent strings we'd have?
jacobgkau · 2h ago
Opera had opera.com back when they were an actual browser (they still have it now, too). Vivaldi has vivaldi.com and Brave has brave.com.
ImJamal · 2h ago
Opera, Vivaldi and Brave are the names of the companies that own the browser though?
gertlex · 1h ago
Sure, but not relevant to a post countering
> Now Firefox is the only browser with a home page domain the same as its common name.
Medea · 2h ago
chrome.com redirects to www.google.com/chrome/
No one has to download Edge or Safari.
tech234a · 2h ago
Technically Edge can also be installed on macOS/Linux/iOS/Android.
I know you're making a joke, but I enjoyed having Safari installed when Apple made it for Windows too, and would still want to download it today if it was available. You can't, though.
katrinarrlyn · 1h ago
hahaha, indeed. but i always can't remember mozilla (i don't even know i spelled it right), the other is really to remember, and automatically you know google has a chrome browser, etc.
I mean, doesn't everybody just google the thing they want and click the first result? I don't think I've heard of people just guessing "<some brand name>.com" since back in the days before the browser address bar doubled as a search bar.
1718627440 · 1h ago
I do, but I also disabled the URL bar doubling as a search bar. When I want to find the official site, I'm using apt show though.
See
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279788
If firefox.com is where I get Ubuntu now then do I go to ubuntu.com to get firefox now? /s
https://web.archive.org/web/20250201000000*/firefox.com
When the company shut down, the owner owned it and redirected it to getfirefox.com instead of making a profit from it.
I would have rented or sold it to the highest bidder.
Or you could sell it to a malware site, who would lose it fairly quickly but might be able to make some cash in the meantime. I can't imagine they'd earn much though. The old firefox.com didn't have Google juice until after the transition.
The only value in the firefox.com domain is the ability to shake down Mozilla for a sum less than the cost of filing a trademark lawsuit. Which is significant, but not extremely so.
Not said with judgement, just observing.
Seems more like speculating than observing. Unless you can elaborate on what proof you have that each of the individuals you've "observed" (which doesn't include GP) were lonely and had handouts.
Do you also steal from the library? Mozilla isn't some big bad corporation.
Personally, I'd be a little wary of pissing off the hackers who are fans of that browser using my meatspace name, but hey, you do you. Maybe when you're done you can stroll on down to the local motorcycle bar and kick over some Harleys and see how far that takes you in life.
The normal download page embeds a unique tracking alphanumeric string in your build that is reported to the organization on a regular basis when the telemetry phones home unless you disable this manually and clear the values.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1677497#c0
Is Firefox a honeypot? I can’t see how this serves the user. All telemetry should be opt-in, not opt-out.
We want failsafe, not faildeadly.
At a time when you'd also install spybot and ccleaner.
Edge = Microsoft.com
Safari = Apple.com
Seems like Firefox is now the outlier, not the other way around.
Now Firefox is the only browser with a home page domain the same as its common name.
(Note: I’m not saying that I think it’s a bad thing.)
If you're trying to get non-technical people to try an underdog browser, simplicity helps. A single, straightforward brand name is better.
Then they made a trimmed-down version of the browser with only essential features. That was initially called Phoenix, then Firebird, then Firefox. They did the same with the email client and called it Thunderbird. These existed alongside Mozilla Browser for a while until it was discontinued.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard both people older and younger than you calling it Mozilla. And not tech-illiterate people, either.
Can you imagine the cheesy user-agent strings we'd have?
> Now Firefox is the only browser with a home page domain the same as its common name.
No one has to download Edge or Safari.
FTFY