We already have "no compromises" forks / side-versions of Firefox. FF cannot pull a Steam because they don't have a big enough userbase, and the userbase won't grow if they are too purists, sadly. Firefox lost the battle to Chrome over 10 years ago, partly due to its faults (it was heavy and slower to load that back in the day Chrome) and also because Google shoved Chrome down its users' throat (I perfectly remember the Chrome banner in Google's home page, not even SERP).

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jchw an hour ago | parent [-]

They can't pull it now because they don't have big enough marketshare.

Gee I wonder why that didn't work out.

	▲	darkwater 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Surely not because they weren't pure enough. The browser market was always so big that pure alternatives were never with any advantage: on the contrary, they had more issue because they catered to a loud minority that can always push for a "you are not pure enough" narrative. Because who push for that just doesn't care (rightfully) to be mainstream. Thinking back at the actual history (and I lived it, having used Netscape Navigator, the Mozilla Suite and Phoenix 0.1), my view is that when Firefox was winning marketshare in Windows-land over IE, the release of Chrome and Google behind it basically killed (slowly) its momentum [1]. Even if the momentum was surely paid for by Google who was the default search engine in Firefox and paid millions to Mozilla for it. So, to answer your question: Google is the reason it didn't work out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...