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I fear that Mozilla is going the way of Opera. They can't keep up with the juggernauts with full time staff (Google, MS, Apple) so they are caving in and slowl

I fear that Mozilla is going the way of Opera. They can't keep up with the juggernauts with full time staff (Google, MS, Apple) so they are caving in and slowly going "me too".

alphapapa 10y ago
Don't they pull in several hundred million dollars a year? Shouldn't they be able to hire enough staff to develop Firefox with that money?
- Sylos 10y ago
  Well, Google, Microsoft and Apple pull in several billion per year... And in 2014, Mozilla had expenses of 212 million for software development, so they definitely do invest most of their budget there. https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2014.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...
  - _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
    Sadly that report doesn't tell us where the 212 million went into, I would suspect not mainly in Firefox. Also it would be interesting what the 212 million of sofware development include from a payroll perspective, e.g. is it mostly developers, how much they are paid etc.
  - alphapapa 10y ago
    > Well, Google, Microsoft and Apple pull in several billion per year... Yes, but Mozilla doesn't also maintain the world's largest search engine, sell an operating system and office suite and gaming systems, or make computers, laptops, tablets, phones, and develop chips to run them on. All Mozilla does is make software. And they only have one primary product. If x hundred million dollars per year is not enough for them to do that, I don't think the problem is that they don't have enough money.
jeswin 10y ago
>Mozilla is going the way of Opera Nope, that's not happening. Instead, it seems Mozilla is investing more of their relatively smaller resources on the most important two things that actually matter: a) Browser engine and b) JavaScript. This is exactly what they should do. Produce the fastest, leanest, safest browser core. After playing with Servo, I feel it will be as big a release as the original Firefox was in the early 2000s.
gsnedders 10y ago
With regards to Opera: they were pulling in record profits, quarter after quarter, while falling further and further behind Google and Mozilla. There was money to be spent on the browser if management wanted to.
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
I might underestimate the complexity of modern browser development, but they had income of >$300.000.000 in 2014, naively one would assume it could be possible to build a browser with that money.

I fear that Mozilla is going the way of Opera. They can't keep up with the juggernauts with full time staff (Google, MS, Apple) so they are caving in and slowly going "me too".

alphapapa 10y ago

Don't they pull in several hundred million dollars a year? Shouldn't they be able to hire enough staff to develop Firefox with that money?

Sylos 10y ago
Well, Google, Microsoft and Apple pull in several billion per year... And in 2014, Mozilla had expenses of 212 million for software development, so they definitely do invest most of their budget there. https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2014.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...
- _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
  Sadly that report doesn't tell us where the 212 million went into, I would suspect not mainly in Firefox. Also it would be interesting what the 212 million of sofware development include from a payroll perspective, e.g. is it mostly developers, how much they are paid etc.
- alphapapa 10y ago
  > Well, Google, Microsoft and Apple pull in several billion per year... Yes, but Mozilla doesn't also maintain the world's largest search engine, sell an operating system and office suite and gaming systems, or make computers, laptops, tablets, phones, and develop chips to run them on. All Mozilla does is make software. And they only have one primary product. If x hundred million dollars per year is not enough for them to do that, I don't think the problem is that they don't have enough money.

jeswin 10y ago

>Mozilla is going the way of Opera Nope, that's not happening. Instead, it seems Mozilla is investing more of their relatively smaller resources on the most important two things that actually matter: a) Browser engine and b) JavaScript. This is exactly what they should do. Produce the fastest, leanest, safest browser core. After playing with Servo, I feel it will be as big a release as the original Firefox was in the early 2000s.

gsnedders 10y ago

With regards to Opera: they were pulling in record profits, quarter after quarter, while falling further and further behind Google and Mozilla. There was money to be spent on the browser if management wanted to.

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

I might underestimate the complexity of modern browser development, but they had income of >$300.000.000 in 2014, naively one would assume it could be possible to build a browser with that money.