Firefox has three APIs: XUL, Jetpack, and WebExtensions. XUL has been on the way out for years, and never worked in mobile Firefox anyway. (Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much.)

Jetpack was introduced in 2013, and by 2014, it was actually usable. It's not clear when and whether Jetpack add-ons will stop working. Mozilla's developer documentation is so confused that you can't tell. WebExtensions and Jetpack are essentially the same functionality with different names.[1]

The trouble with Firefox chasing Google Chrome compatibility is that, once they get there, Google will probably change something so some Google service is essential to an add-on. Like Google did with Android. Then compatible add-ons stop working on Firefox. Nobody runs add-ons on Chrome much, anyway; I have the same add-on on both platforms and its 50:1 Firefox over Chrome. But usage is declining, along with Firefox.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Co...

zerocrates

> The trouble with Firefox chasing Google Chrome compatibility is that, once they get there, Google will probably change something so some Google service is essential to an add-on.

I'd be more concerned that, once they get to Chrome compatibility, they've simply sacrificed one of the key things that differentiates them from Chrome. Firefox's die-hard adherents use extensions heavily, and many of the most popular, particularly those that are on Firefox and not elsewhere, depend on the old XUL layer or other APIs that have no replacement.

I don't think users are going to see it as a great improvement that they have access to Chrome extensions they didn't want in the first place. Instead they're going to focus on the fact that they're losing the functionality that's been keeping them using Firefox.

I don't think you'll need Google to act maliciously or really do anything at all to have this end poorly for Mozilla.

leeoniya

the fact that they have no replacement for removed [and much-used] functionality seems completely nuts to me. their market share will plummet. i understand that old stacks must be removed at some point for security/performance/ergonomic reasons but leaving so many extension devs and users out in the cold with no alternatives is unthinkable.

i really believe they are signing their own death certificate. neither google nor yahoo will pay much for search traffic of a browser no one uses. i say this as a long-time fan, nightly firefox user and bug submitter (since v1.5). everything since Australis has been an unmitigated trainwreck :/. When Classic Theme Restorer [1] stops working, i'm sorry but i'm out....probably to https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium for the time being.

my hope is that someone builds out a nice cross-platform browser around servo, or at least i can hack on https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml

http://electron.atom.io/ is an option, too

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...