Firefox Needs Focus

I think the reason open-source projects aren't great at churning out products
(or "finishing" them, as you so astutely word it—in the sense of "polishing")
is that the things that are interesting to work on are orthogonal to the
things that make a good product.

The advantage a hierarchal organization brings to product creation is focus.
It's what I enjoy about Apple: sometimes their products aren't for me, but
they're always *coherent*. I can see what they were going for. The Apple suite
of apps are clearly the best browser, calendar, and mailer for Steve Jobs.

Likewise, Safari has one focus. It is the browser most at home on the Mac.

Chrome has one focus. It is the best way to consume Google services.

Firefox is all over the place right now. Do we provide the best privacy? The
best dev tools? The most ambitious web standards? The best integration with
our phone? What? We're smart people, each in our area. But being an open
source project at heart predisposes us to being a collection of each smart
person's favorite features, duct-taped together and given a version number.
It's what MS Word was around version 6 (and may still be for all I know): MS
managed that project by having each developer come up with and be responsible
for his or her own pet feature.

Don't get me wrong—I love and use a lot of FF features—but it seems like we're
throwing things at the wall lately: a Hello button, Panorama, F1, a Social
API. Now, I love Hello; I use it all the time. And I think better browser
integration with Facebook is a motivating feature that could really net us
some users. But I look at Firefox today, and I don't see focus. Who does
Firefox want to be the Best Browser for? I have no idea. A Single Guiding
Principle would both (1) prioritize our efforts so we can actually complete,
polish, ship and support things rather than tossing them behind a toolbar
button and forgetting about them and (2) unify our messaging so people know
why, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to choose Firefox.

As for messaging, the "Doing good is part of our code" campaign made me proud
to work for Mozilla, but it also took me back to Apple's darkest days, when
they were putting up billboards saying "Give your dreams a chance." "Please,
guys, don't leave us! Give us another chance!" Emotional appeals work for soft
drinks where there is no product differentiation. But we're not there with
browsers yet; there are important differences. In Apple's case, they brought
Chiat/Day back onboard, started running some messaging that had teeth, started
attacking their competitors directly, and sold themselves to Steve for -$400M,
who promptly focused them by cancelling half their product line and doing
ballsy things like eliminating floppy drives. The rest is history. They added
good UI to music players. Maybe we add privacy to phones. I don't know. But we
need to figure it out.