4 ms·

$400 million looks like a lot until you remember that Apple have $267 billion in cash reserves. The Mozilla Foundation's entire annual revenue isn't even a fift

by chc 9y ago

$400 million looks like a lot until you remember that Apple have $267 billion in cash reserves. The Mozilla Foundation's entire annual revenue isn't even a fifth of a percent of what Apple have just sitting around because they can't find a better use for it. The fact that Mozilla are able to punch even this far above their weight is kind of impressive.

SeoxyS 9y ago
1) Apple's cash assets aren't actually cash or just a bank account. It's accounting speak for liquid assets. Any investments that they could divest fairly quickly and easily and repurpose to finance other capital expenditures. The money isn't sitting around doing nothing; in the meantime it's invested in a safe portfolio which attempts to grow it. Imagine a hedge fund for just one LP. 2) Apple is a mega-company which has a bajillion lines of business and produces hardware. The WebKit team is a tiny tiny tiny sliver of what Apple does and cares about; so its budget is probably a lot closer to Mozilla's.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  > The money isn't sitting around doing nothing; in the meantime it's invested in a safe portfolio which attempts to grow it. Imagine a hedge fund for just one LP. Right... how does that make it any different? Apple's not a finance company, or at least they weren't until they wound up with so much cash they had no actual present business needs for. If you're a hardware/software company that has so much extra money (billions) that you become your own 'hedge fund' to have something to do with it... yeah, you've got a lot of extra money. How much extra money? More than 500x the annual budget of Mozilla, yup.
vosper 9y ago
But Mozilla really only has one big thing they make, which is Firefox. Apple's software portfolio on just one of their multiple hardware platforms (let's not forget that they make that hardware, too, including designing their own processors) completely dwarfs Mozilla. I agree with jonas21 - for $400m a year you ought to be able to build an amazing browser.
- jononor 9y ago
  And they do build a good browser. Firefox is mostly as usable as Safari, Chrome and IE.

by chc 9y ago

SeoxyS 9y ago

1) Apple's cash assets aren't actually cash or just a bank account. It's accounting speak for liquid assets. Any investments that they could divest fairly quickly and easily and repurpose to finance other capital expenditures. The money isn't sitting around doing nothing; in the meantime it's invested in a safe portfolio which attempts to grow it. Imagine a hedge fund for just one LP. 2) Apple is a mega-company which has a bajillion lines of business and produces hardware. The WebKit team is a tiny tiny tiny sliver of what Apple does and cares about; so its budget is probably a lot closer to Mozilla's.

jrochkind1 9y ago
> The money isn't sitting around doing nothing; in the meantime it's invested in a safe portfolio which attempts to grow it. Imagine a hedge fund for just one LP. Right... how does that make it any different? Apple's not a finance company, or at least they weren't until they wound up with so much cash they had no actual present business needs for. If you're a hardware/software company that has so much extra money (billions) that you become your own 'hedge fund' to have something to do with it... yeah, you've got a lot of extra money. How much extra money? More than 500x the annual budget of Mozilla, yup.

vosper 9y ago

But Mozilla really only has one big thing they make, which is Firefox. Apple's software portfolio on just one of their multiple hardware platforms (let's not forget that they make that hardware, too, including designing their own processors) completely dwarfs Mozilla. I agree with jonas21 - for $400m a year you ought to be able to build an amazing browser.

jononor 9y ago
And they do build a good browser. Firefox is mostly as usable as Safari, Chrome and IE.