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> While I understand that they have to make money somehow I don't. I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in

> While I understand that they have to make money somehow I don't. I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. With that kind of money, Firefox should be absolutely dominating the browser space. They shouldn't be making Firefox worse with advertising in order to subsidize their flailing around trying to find traction in mobile or VR. It actually reminds me of Wikipedia, especially with the donation links littered throughout the experience. They're both growing out of control, spending mountains of cash in order to justify spending previous mountains of cash on ventures that nobody asked for or wanted. The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird.

klingonopera 7y ago
Those 500 million are easily eclipsed if you compare it to what Google's revenue is... EDIT: It was 136 billion in 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-global-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl...
- manojlds 7y ago
  And Google builds only a browser? What's the budget of the Google Chrome team?
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    Mozilla doesn't build only a browser either and as a Rust user, am glad they don't.
    - blub 7y ago
      The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their relationship is pointed out, but now Rust is suddenly a major beneficiary of those 500 million? They do build only a browser.
      - AsyncAwait 7y ago
        > The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their relationship is pointed out In terms of decision making, Rust is definitely a community oriented project, but there's not denying reality and at present practically all of Rust core devs who work on it full-time are paid by Mozilla. Were Mozilla to pull out support, development would likely continue, but at a much, much reduced pace. > a major beneficiary of those 500 million I agree with you that the vast majority of it is not going to Rust and I do wish they'd increase the share of their revenue that goes to engineering from 45% to something closer to 85%.
  - dymk 7y ago
    If you’re wondering who spends more on their browser team, Google does
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Even though Google is 250 times or so bigger, the point is still valid. Where the hell money gets spent? That kind of revenues are huge for any software company, especially for a one that is just making a browser.
  - klingonopera 7y ago
    Just making a browser? It's the piece of software I'd least be willing to touch. Even Microsoft gave up and switched their core to Chromium. Considering that, it's quite amazing that Mozilla is capable of not just making a browser, but also an email client, with a budget of 500 million.
    - blub 7y ago
      MS didn't give up, their new strategy is similar to Google's, so they teamed up with Google to make Chrome an even better spying machine. They just have to change the telemetry URL in the source and replace the Google log in with their own.
    - brianpgordon 7y ago
      Microsoft still makes a browser; they just don't make their own rendering engine anymore. Which makes sense because it's hard and Blink works just fine. I wouldn't mind if Mozilla did the same thing. The Vivaldi folks are using that strategy and managing to make the best web browser out there with what I assume must be a microscopic fraction of $500 million/yr. And I don't share your opinion of how far a $500 million budget goes. They're not rewriting the entire thing every year.
      - AsyncAwait 7y ago
        > I wouldn't mind if Mozilla did the same thing. Then there would literally be no point to Firefox existing as a counterbalance to Google deciding the web's future.
        brianpgordon 7y ago
- Kostic 7y ago
  But Google's revenue isn't only generated by Chrome. And even if it was, Mozilla shouldn't try to chase that revenue. It should generate only enough revenue to sustain and futher develop web technologies which allow people to stay free on the web.
  - tomxor 7y ago
    > But Google's revenue isn't only generated by Chrome. It has been driven by chrome though (by having improved web standards in general - note the past-tense). However the future is looking far more murky, now on top they are making changes that benefit only google (crippling ad blockers for one).
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    The majority of Google's revenue is generated through websites accessed via browsers. I don't know how much Google spends on controlling the browser market with Chrome, but I have little doubt that Google would spend a billion per year on it if they had to.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
csdreamer7 7y ago
> I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. Mostly agree. > The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird. I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ddtaylor 7y ago
  > I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface. I agree, but it seems problematic they aren't monetizing that. They're making money doing the things users don't really like while not making a dime of good things like fostering a legitimate free and open web.
  - tinco 7y ago
    Firefox has been making great strides on the performance and reliability side with a rendering engine and other things that they claim they could not have been done without Rust. If that is true, the investment probably already has paid for itself.
  - csdreamer7 7y ago
    Directly monetizing programming tools is quite difficult. And, as other have said, Rust has already paid off for them with the vastly improved performance of FF Quantum. I think a better avenue for Mozilla would be offering an equivalent to Chrome Enterprise and GSuite. A paid set of services and managed functionality for Firefox. Last I heard, the performance issues for GMail and GSuite was due to them using an outdated draft version of an internet standard that Chrome implemented, but no one else did. Offering a paid 'Mozilla Mail' may bring some needed competition.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  I'm not sure it's possible to put a price on Rust (probably in single-digit millions so far), but that Godot grant was $50k. That's pocket money for a $500m org.
jsinai 7y ago
> The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird And the whole point of Google is search? I think it makes sense that Mozilla would expand into more than just Firefox and Thunderbird. They’re a software foundation so limit themselves to a browser or mail client? I like the fact that they’ve becomes champions of privacy and internet safety. Agreed though. What they’re doing is technically hard but you would expect Mozilla to do more.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Yeah, when FF and TB are perfect they can move on to other stuff! >they’ve becomes champions of privacy and internet safety // Two years or so ago I'd have agreed.
- anthony_doan 7y ago
  Well... they did tried firefox mobile. Which failed but somehow found a new lease in life in 3rd world countries now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I hear this a lot but here in the USA I never saw a phone with the OS for sale that worked on my carrier. I still wish they had done FirefoxOS laptops.
danis1 7y ago
This is the downside of what happens when a corporation is not forced to report to someone from outside the corporation, i.e. shareholders, and does not have a direct relationship with their customers. Usually public corporations are shaped in order to maximize profit and market share. But Mozilla doesn't have to report to someone else, so no one forces them to spend money economically, especially as the Corporation is being controlled by the Foundation who hasn't primarily economics in mind, either. Additionally, Mozilla has grown exponentially between 2007 and 2014 not only due to a superior product but also because IE was bad, and the web grew exponentially and thus browser usage grew exponentially, too. Mozilla has inherited a large userbase, and they are in an extremely comfortable position where they can be lazy and do not experience any immediate consequences. Employees earn a lot at Mozilla. Mozilla's own post-mortem of the extension-outage has also hinted at a systemic mismangagement inside what is nowadays a pretty complex entanglement of different groups working on similar stuff while not communicating efficiently. Mozilla has a leadership problem. Their business-relationship is not with the users, but the search engines who want to monetize the user base, and due to the exclusive deal with Yahoo for 2015-2019, losing 80 million monthly users within 2 years did not translate to a loss in revenue, revenue actually continued to increase despite user loss. So why care? I suspect the CEO just resigned because he knows that 2020+ will be extremely difficult for Mozilla, as the Yahoo deal is running out, and for the first time ever mozilla will have to spend more money than they recieve. Lack of money will also be the only real motivation for Mozilla to change fundamentally.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lhotkins 7y ago
> They shouldn't be making Firefox worse with advertising in order to subsidize their flailing around trying to find traction in mobile or VR. Ofc no one likes adds, but you have to see why they’d like to diversify their sources of income rather than being almost completely dependent on Google, who also (whoops!) happens to be their biggest competitor.
buboard 7y ago
IIRC 90% of that revenue comes from google. It's essentially a grant to stop innovating maybe?
kilburn 7y ago
> The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla dropped Thunderbird years ago. It is now an independent project, financed through independent donations. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Half-true. Thunderbird is still a Mozilla project, relying on Mozilla to own its trademarks and other legal issues, as well as for all of the infrastructure (source code hosting, issue tracking, continuous integration, etc.).
jamienicol 7y ago
No, the whole point of Mozilla is to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ Firefox, Thunderbird, and other projects are a means to that end.
- bromuro 7y ago
  Well I was there when Firefox was born (i even sent a donation and got the CD). To me these “corporate missions” are just marketing fluff. Just give me the browser.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  to be fair, looking at their product page (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products) firefox (different spins) and thunderbird appears to be about it at this point. I'm glad for the work they do but I also find the entire size of the operation staggering.
  - sinker 7y ago
    This isn't a jab at Mozilla, but it's actually kind of amazing that throughout this whole time Mozilla has had only two (arguably one) large, successful, consumer-facing projects. I think this says something about Mozilla or large organizations in general.
PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
If that's true, then they're at least 50% failing. Thunderbird absolutely blows, to the extent that I've chosen to use Apple Mail instead. That's saying something.
ori_b 7y ago
> I don't. I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. With that kind of money, Firefox should be absolutely dominating the browser space. What's Chrome's budget?
meed 7y ago
> I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees The figure is pretty much correct. To put things in perspective, though, only a fraction of those thousand people work on the actual browser. And, of that fraction, an even tinier number work on the rendering engine. The Chrome team, on the other hand, has pretty much the same number of people of the entire Mozilla (or MoCo, to be specific) but almost all of them work on the browser/rendering.

klingonopera 7y ago

Those 500 million are easily eclipsed if you compare it to what Google's revenue is... EDIT: It was 136 billion in 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-global-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl...

manojlds 7y ago
And Google builds only a browser? What's the budget of the Google Chrome team?
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  Mozilla doesn't build only a browser either and as a Rust user, am glad they don't.
  - blub 7y ago
    The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their relationship is pointed out, but now Rust is suddenly a major beneficiary of those 500 million? They do build only a browser.
    - AsyncAwait 7y ago
      > The Rust community prides itself on being independent from Mozilla, when their relationship is pointed out In terms of decision making, Rust is definitely a community oriented project, but there's not denying reality and at present practically all of Rust core devs who work on it full-time are paid by Mozilla. Were Mozilla to pull out support, development would likely continue, but at a much, much reduced pace. > a major beneficiary of those 500 million I agree with you that the vast majority of it is not going to Rust and I do wish they'd increase the share of their revenue that goes to engineering from 45% to something closer to 85%.
- dymk 7y ago
  If you’re wondering who spends more on their browser team, Google does
cosmodisk 7y ago
Even though Google is 250 times or so bigger, the point is still valid. Where the hell money gets spent? That kind of revenues are huge for any software company, especially for a one that is just making a browser.
- klingonopera 7y ago
  Just making a browser? It's the piece of software I'd least be willing to touch. Even Microsoft gave up and switched their core to Chromium. Considering that, it's quite amazing that Mozilla is capable of not just making a browser, but also an email client, with a budget of 500 million.
  - blub 7y ago
    MS didn't give up, their new strategy is similar to Google's, so they teamed up with Google to make Chrome an even better spying machine. They just have to change the telemetry URL in the source and replace the Google log in with their own.
  - brianpgordon 7y ago
    Microsoft still makes a browser; they just don't make their own rendering engine anymore. Which makes sense because it's hard and Blink works just fine. I wouldn't mind if Mozilla did the same thing. The Vivaldi folks are using that strategy and managing to make the best web browser out there with what I assume must be a microscopic fraction of $500 million/yr. And I don't share your opinion of how far a $500 million budget goes. They're not rewriting the entire thing every year.
    - AsyncAwait 7y ago
      > I wouldn't mind if Mozilla did the same thing. Then there would literally be no point to Firefox existing as a counterbalance to Google deciding the web's future.
      - brianpgordon 7y ago
Kostic 7y ago
But Google's revenue isn't only generated by Chrome. And even if it was, Mozilla shouldn't try to chase that revenue. It should generate only enough revenue to sustain and futher develop web technologies which allow people to stay free on the web.
- tomxor 7y ago
  > But Google's revenue isn't only generated by Chrome. It has been driven by chrome though (by having improved web standards in general - note the past-tense). However the future is looking far more murky, now on top they are making changes that benefit only google (crippling ad blockers for one).
- wongarsu 7y ago
  The majority of Google's revenue is generated through websites accessed via browsers. I don't know how much Google spends on controlling the browser market with Chrome, but I have little doubt that Google would spend a billion per year on it if they had to.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

csdreamer7 7y ago

> I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. Mostly agree. > The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird. I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ddtaylor 7y ago
> I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface. I agree, but it seems problematic they aren't monetizing that. They're making money doing the things users don't really like while not making a dime of good things like fostering a legitimate free and open web.
- tinco 7y ago
  Firefox has been making great strides on the performance and reliability side with a rendering engine and other things that they claim they could not have been done without Rust. If that is true, the investment probably already has paid for itself.
- csdreamer7 7y ago
  Directly monetizing programming tools is quite difficult. And, as other have said, Rust has already paid off for them with the vastly improved performance of FF Quantum. I think a better avenue for Mozilla would be offering an equivalent to Chrome Enterprise and GSuite. A paid set of services and managed functionality for Firefox. Last I heard, the performance issues for GMail and GSuite was due to them using an outdated draft version of an internet standard that Chrome implemented, but no one else did. Offering a paid 'Mozilla Mail' may bring some needed competition.
ricardobeat 7y ago
I'm not sure it's possible to put a price on Rust (probably in single-digit millions so far), but that Godot grant was $50k. That's pocket money for a $500m org.

jsinai 7y ago

> The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird And the whole point of Google is search? I think it makes sense that Mozilla would expand into more than just Firefox and Thunderbird. They’re a software foundation so limit themselves to a browser or mail client? I like the fact that they’ve becomes champions of privacy and internet safety. Agreed though. What they’re doing is technically hard but you would expect Mozilla to do more.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Yeah, when FF and TB are perfect they can move on to other stuff! >they’ve becomes champions of privacy and internet safety // Two years or so ago I'd have agreed.
anthony_doan 7y ago
Well... they did tried firefox mobile. Which failed but somehow found a new lease in life in 3rd world countries now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I hear this a lot but here in the USA I never saw a phone with the OS for sale that worked on my carrier. I still wish they had done FirefoxOS laptops.

danis1 7y ago

This is the downside of what happens when a corporation is not forced to report to someone from outside the corporation, i.e. shareholders, and does not have a direct relationship with their customers. Usually public corporations are shaped in order to maximize profit and market share. But Mozilla doesn't have to report to someone else, so no one forces them to spend money economically, especially as the Corporation is being controlled by the Foundation who hasn't primarily economics in mind, either. Additionally, Mozilla has grown exponentially between 2007 and 2014 not only due to a superior product but also because IE was bad, and the web grew exponentially and thus browser usage grew exponentially, too. Mozilla has inherited a large userbase, and they are in an extremely comfortable position where they can be lazy and do not experience any immediate consequences. Employees earn a lot at Mozilla. Mozilla's own post-mortem of the extension-outage has also hinted at a systemic mismangagement inside what is nowadays a pretty complex entanglement of different groups working on similar stuff while not communicating efficiently. Mozilla has a leadership problem. Their business-relationship is not with the users, but the search engines who want to monetize the user base, and due to the exclusive deal with Yahoo for 2015-2019, losing 80 million monthly users within 2 years did not translate to a loss in revenue, revenue actually continued to increase despite user loss. So why care? I suspect the CEO just resigned because he knows that 2020+ will be extremely difficult for Mozilla, as the Yahoo deal is running out, and for the first time ever mozilla will have to spend more money than they recieve. Lack of money will also be the only real motivation for Mozilla to change fundamentally.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lhotkins 7y ago

> They shouldn't be making Firefox worse with advertising in order to subsidize their flailing around trying to find traction in mobile or VR. Ofc no one likes adds, but you have to see why they’d like to diversify their sources of income rather than being almost completely dependent on Google, who also (whoops!) happens to be their biggest competitor.

buboard 7y ago

IIRC 90% of that revenue comes from google. It's essentially a grant to stop innovating maybe?

kilburn 7y ago

> The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla dropped Thunderbird years ago. It is now an independent project, financed through independent donations. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/about/

jcranmer 7y ago
Half-true. Thunderbird is still a Mozilla project, relying on Mozilla to own its trademarks and other legal issues, as well as for all of the infrastructure (source code hosting, issue tracking, continuous integration, etc.).

jamienicol 7y ago

No, the whole point of Mozilla is to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ Firefox, Thunderbird, and other projects are a means to that end.

bromuro 7y ago
Well I was there when Firefox was born (i even sent a donation and got the CD). To me these “corporate missions” are just marketing fluff. Just give me the browser.
Barrin92 7y ago
to be fair, looking at their product page (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products) firefox (different spins) and thunderbird appears to be about it at this point. I'm glad for the work they do but I also find the entire size of the operation staggering.
- sinker 7y ago
  This isn't a jab at Mozilla, but it's actually kind of amazing that throughout this whole time Mozilla has had only two (arguably one) large, successful, consumer-facing projects. I think this says something about Mozilla or large organizations in general.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago

If that's true, then they're at least 50% failing. Thunderbird absolutely blows, to the extent that I've chosen to use Apple Mail instead. That's saying something.

ori_b 7y ago

> I don't. I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. With that kind of money, Firefox should be absolutely dominating the browser space. What's Chrome's budget?

meed 7y ago

> I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees The figure is pretty much correct. To put things in perspective, though, only a fraction of those thousand people work on the actual browser. And, of that fraction, an even tinier number work on the rendering engine. The Chrome team, on the other hand, has pretty much the same number of people of the entire Mozilla (or MoCo, to be specific) but almost all of them work on the browser/rendering.