7 ms·

I wonder who's funding Mozilla in this proxy fight? They seem to be struggling just to stay alive with their core product, Firefox. I can't see how they can jus

I wonder who's funding Mozilla in this proxy fight? They seem to be struggling just to stay alive with their core product, Firefox. I can't see how they can justify fighting expensive legal battles on a whim to shareholders.

petyrflytrap 9y ago
Mozilla is a non-profit, there are no shareholders. Firefox isn't struggling either. Both of these points lead me to believe you have no idea what you're talking about.
staplers 9y ago
Are you joking? "-- Mozilla booked $323 million in royalties in 2014, up about 7% from the year earlier."
- chapill 9y ago
  Are you? 2014 is the year they signed a big deal with Yahoo. Of course they did well that year.
  - staplers 9y ago
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ Better? "Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation and all subsidiaries) for CY 2016 was $520M (US), as compared to $421M in 2015."
    - chapill 9y ago
      You're still missing the point. FF is free. Where is the revenue coming from? I think I found my answer on your page though, https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as-default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go... Mozilla is acting as a Google puppet. I'm sure they didn't risk breaking a 5 year deal with Yahoo for nothing.
      - civilitty 9y ago
        Do you not understand the idea behind the basic exchange of value that all of our economic systems are based on? Firefox has a lot of users (because it's free and a good product, duh), so Google pays Mozilla a lot of money to be the default search engine upon first download - something that literally anyone and their grandmother can immediately change to their preference. Oh and Mozilla had a contract with Google before they switched to Yahoo so how about taking your conspiratorial nonsense to r/T_D where it belongs.
        wtf_is_up 9y ago
        Everyone I disagree with is a reddit boogeyman
      - actionscripted 9y ago
        It's not like it's a secret that Mozilla Corp. makes their money from search. It's been that way for a very long time and they spell it out right in the State of Mozilla link: "The majority of Mozilla Corporation’s revenue is from royalties earned through Firefox web browser search partnerships and distribution deals around the world." Their revenue is up more than $100 million from last year so they're not exactly dying. How do you figure they're barely surviving? How does that make them a Google puppet? What exactly is your point through this thread? If you think it's news that they take Google's money I'm not sure you're qualified to be making these sorts of claims.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bzbarsky 9y ago
The only shareholder the Mozilla Corporation has is the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation does not have shareholders. It does have a board that it presumably needs to justify their actions to. Those actions presumably need to align with https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ and https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ better than other uses of the same money to be justified. So the real question is whether there is something that Mozilla be doing to achieve the goals those two documents described that would be a better investment of money and that it's not already doing. Do you know of something offhand? [Disclaimer: I work for the Mozilla Corporation, on Firefox, and was not involved in the decision to file this lawsuit in any way.]
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I would much rather Mozilla be investing money in breaking the global Google monopoly than bothering with some regional peasantry like the carriers. Particularly with initiatives like AMP (and now AMP4Email), we are in a very serious place where one company is dictating the standards by which the Internet works... while simultaneously refusing to make them open standards with governance outside of Google. Obviously, they're using their Search and Mail monopolies to push those formats, and speaking of search, we've been talking a lot about where our information comes from online and how accurate it is. A better Internet means we need to do better at that, and we need alternatives than a global centralized search engine operated by a corporation with a significant political agenda.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    "I would much rather Mozilla be investing money in breaking the global Google monopoly than bothering with some regional peasantry like the carriers." Considering that the carriers are the ones who actually control the gate, they should be focusing on them.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      This is an incorrect notion: There are hundreds and hundreds of gates at the ISP level. From a realistic standpoint, ISPs do not and cannot control information. They may be able to get involved in a limited geographic area, in some fashions, but they're already far more heavily regulated than the nearly free reign Google has, and it's far easier to circumvent their control. Almost all information travels through and is monitored, filtered, and censored by Google. At multiple levels, including the browser, the operating system, email services, search/discovery, and more. And as Google moves into pushing companies to migrate their data about you to Google, you no longer even have the choice to look for alternatives. For example, RCS messaging is moving text messaging systems over to Google servers, and there's nothing you can do about it, because it's a carrier-level decision. Google has recently bragged to advertisers it gets 70% of all credit and debit card transaction data in the US. Even if you don't do business with Google or use any Google services, everything ends up feeding back to them through one way or another. Meanwhile, apart from areas which aren't very profitable to be an ISP, most people have at least some options for ISPs, even if they aren't good options, and most ISP conduct can either be opted out of or circumvented with ease. If you are worried about censorship, privacy, and fairness on the Internet, and you're worried about ISPs, you're being sorely misled. And guess who's been paying for all the marketing about how bad the ISPs are? https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html
Sylos 9y ago
Firefox could certainly have more market share, but Mozilla is certainly not short on money right now either.

petyrflytrap 9y ago

Mozilla is a non-profit, there are no shareholders. Firefox isn't struggling either. Both of these points lead me to believe you have no idea what you're talking about.

staplers 9y ago

Are you joking? "-- Mozilla booked $323 million in royalties in 2014, up about 7% from the year earlier."

chapill 9y ago
Are you? 2014 is the year they signed a big deal with Yahoo. Of course they did well that year.
- staplers 9y ago
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ Better? "Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation and all subsidiaries) for CY 2016 was $520M (US), as compared to $421M in 2015."
  - chapill 9y ago
    You're still missing the point. FF is free. Where is the revenue coming from? I think I found my answer on your page though, https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as-default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go... Mozilla is acting as a Google puppet. I'm sure they didn't risk breaking a 5 year deal with Yahoo for nothing.
    - civilitty 9y ago
      Do you not understand the idea behind the basic exchange of value that all of our economic systems are based on? Firefox has a lot of users (because it's free and a good product, duh), so Google pays Mozilla a lot of money to be the default search engine upon first download - something that literally anyone and their grandmother can immediately change to their preference. Oh and Mozilla had a contract with Google before they switched to Yahoo so how about taking your conspiratorial nonsense to r/T_D where it belongs.
      - wtf_is_up 9y ago
        Everyone I disagree with is a reddit boogeyman
    - actionscripted 9y ago
      It's not like it's a secret that Mozilla Corp. makes their money from search. It's been that way for a very long time and they spell it out right in the State of Mozilla link: "The majority of Mozilla Corporation’s revenue is from royalties earned through Firefox web browser search partnerships and distribution deals around the world." Their revenue is up more than $100 million from last year so they're not exactly dying. How do you figure they're barely surviving? How does that make them a Google puppet? What exactly is your point through this thread? If you think it's news that they take Google's money I'm not sure you're qualified to be making these sorts of claims.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

bzbarsky 9y ago

The only shareholder the Mozilla Corporation has is the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation does not have shareholders. It does have a board that it presumably needs to justify their actions to. Those actions presumably need to align with https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ and https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ better than other uses of the same money to be justified. So the real question is whether there is something that Mozilla be doing to achieve the goals those two documents described that would be a better investment of money and that it's not already doing. Do you know of something offhand? [Disclaimer: I work for the Mozilla Corporation, on Firefox, and was not involved in the decision to file this lawsuit in any way.]

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I would much rather Mozilla be investing money in breaking the global Google monopoly than bothering with some regional peasantry like the carriers. Particularly with initiatives like AMP (and now AMP4Email), we are in a very serious place where one company is dictating the standards by which the Internet works... while simultaneously refusing to make them open standards with governance outside of Google. Obviously, they're using their Search and Mail monopolies to push those formats, and speaking of search, we've been talking a lot about where our information comes from online and how accurate it is. A better Internet means we need to do better at that, and we need alternatives than a global centralized search engine operated by a corporation with a significant political agenda.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  "I would much rather Mozilla be investing money in breaking the global Google monopoly than bothering with some regional peasantry like the carriers." Considering that the carriers are the ones who actually control the gate, they should be focusing on them.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    This is an incorrect notion: There are hundreds and hundreds of gates at the ISP level. From a realistic standpoint, ISPs do not and cannot control information. They may be able to get involved in a limited geographic area, in some fashions, but they're already far more heavily regulated than the nearly free reign Google has, and it's far easier to circumvent their control. Almost all information travels through and is monitored, filtered, and censored by Google. At multiple levels, including the browser, the operating system, email services, search/discovery, and more. And as Google moves into pushing companies to migrate their data about you to Google, you no longer even have the choice to look for alternatives. For example, RCS messaging is moving text messaging systems over to Google servers, and there's nothing you can do about it, because it's a carrier-level decision. Google has recently bragged to advertisers it gets 70% of all credit and debit card transaction data in the US. Even if you don't do business with Google or use any Google services, everything ends up feeding back to them through one way or another. Meanwhile, apart from areas which aren't very profitable to be an ISP, most people have at least some options for ISPs, even if they aren't good options, and most ISP conduct can either be opted out of or circumvented with ease. If you are worried about censorship, privacy, and fairness on the Internet, and you're worried about ISPs, you're being sorely misled. And guess who's been paying for all the marketing about how bad the ISPs are? https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html

Sylos 9y ago

Firefox could certainly have more market share, but Mozilla is certainly not short on money right now either.