4 ms·

> Without Google's ad business Firefox wouldn't exist Really? My recollection of events 15 years ago is a little hazy, but wasnt FF a browser-only release of M

by rusk 7y ago

> Without Google's ad business Firefox wouldn't exist Really? My recollection of events 15 years ago is a little hazy, but wasnt FF a browser-only release of Mozilla, itself Netscape which has been around as long as time itself (~25 years?) What are we talking about here? There was very definitely a push around 2003 to get FF adopted en masse, and I guess Google probably were a big factor in this ... Bit of a stretch to say FF wouldn’t have existed otherwise though. There was very definitely some dissatisfaction across the board with IE dominance and its not hard to imagine something like FF being inevitable.

metalliqaz 7y ago
Most of Mozilla's funding came from Google in exchange for making Google the default search page.
- rusk 7y ago
  Right ... It really isn’t inconceivable that they wouldn’t have got funding from somewhere else. It was a marketing opportunity for Google, them being the David to Microsoft’s Goliath. Remember that whole ”don’t be evil” thing? Turns out it was jusy a ruse to be abandoned once the market had consolidated.
  - Majestic121 7y ago
    The triple negative in your sentence makes it confusing. I expected that you wanted to say : It is conceivable that they would have got funding from somewhere else
    - frogpelt 7y ago
      I don't disagree. You're not wrong.
    - rusk 7y ago
      it's not inconceivable is a common enough phrase. You could say this might be more parsimoniously expressed as "it is conceivable", but the colloquial phrasing intones that the premise proceeds specifically from the supposition that it may be inconceivable.
  - Lio 7y ago
    There is also an argument that back in the day Firefox saved Google rather than the other way around. Why? Because when Microsoft had 90% browser share, gained through tying IE directly into Windows, there was a very real chance that they could have adapted IE so that it was harder to use Google than a default MS Bing search engine. Having a better, cross-platform alternative to IE allowed Google to stay in the game and make use of FF's cutting edge features. Remember the old Microsoft was quite happy to cripple Windows to kill it's competitors. For example "Windows ain't done until WordPerfect won't run" and the weird "errors" you saw if you tried running Windows on top of DR DOS.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mkl 7y ago
      I'm not sure that adds up. When Bing was introduced in mid-2009, IE had about 60% of the market, and it was dropping fast as Chrome's popularity exploded [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-200901-201905.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...
      - Lio 7y ago
        I believe that Microsoft’s interest in Google’s business predates the launch of Bing. You can replace the brand name “Bing” with “some kind of search/advertising/internet gateway” business. Remember Microsoft used to be a very competitive outfit with a history of using their dominance of desktop OSs to enter new markets. It’s easy to forget that Microsoft of old were able to keep bankrolling loss leaders to “cut off the oxygen”[1] of any market that they saw as threatening Windows. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/04/98/microsoft/198390.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/04/98/microso...
    - tylerhou 7y ago
      > "Windows ain't done until WordPerfect won't run" Source? All I can find is http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done....
- tyingq 7y ago
  And Yahoo! for a time.
  - branon 7y ago
    I remember this. It was terrible. There was a (bug|user error) I experienced during this time which prevented me from changing the default search engine. It was _terrible_.
burtonator 7y ago
I wasn't necessarily talking about the origin but the current state. But to answer your question I believe AOL gave FF about $5M USD to get started off...
pmoriarty 7y ago
Yeah, I have to ask what percentage of Firefox developers are paid for by Google's money? I was somehow under the impression that Firefox was developed mostly by volunteers, and so Firefox development would be largely unaffected if Google was out of the picture.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  It would be pretty bad if volunteers did most of the work and they spent the literally hundreds of millions in annual revenue on cigars and caviar. Most of Linux and Firefox development is paid for professional work.
neltnerb 7y ago
My memory is also that FF was originally a decoupled version of Netscape and I think they also simplified the code base a lot back then to remove bloat. I remember a motivation being that Netscape was just too slow and big and couldn't compete with Internet Explorer very well. I am not sure it's fair to say that Mozilla "supports ads" by making Google the default search engine in exchange for a bunch of funding. It's a default, you can change it, they need money, I'm glad they took it. I'm sure that even if it didn't enable Firefox's existence I am sure it made the developer's lives a lot better and increased the number of research projects they could afford to do. Edit: But the point that Google makes money from ads and so Mozilla would have less funding without Google making money from ads is I guess true. I think Google just wanted to push an alternative to IE. I don't mind ads existing (well, I get that they're a necessary evil) but tracking is something I very much mind.
Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
Google's payments are not charity. FF has users and could have routed traffic generated by them to the highest bidder. It just happened that the highest bidder is Google. And they do it for profit: ad revenue generated by those users likely significantly surpasses traffic acquisition cost.
michaelmrose 7y ago
Mozilla has made 100s of millions from Google without which it would have had to make due with volunteers instead of hundreds of paid employees.
nebulous1 7y ago
OP overstated his case, but the fact is that the Mozilla Foundation does derive the majority of its revenue from deals with advertising based companies. Whether or not it would exist (or if it existed, in what form?) without these deals is a critical but unanswered question. Critical in the sense that it goes to the heart of whether we can be both ad-free and have free stuff like Firefox.
throw0101a 7y ago
> ... but wasnt FF a browser-only release of Mozilla ... Basically. Netscape Navigator was a large suite of functionality, including mail and NNTP. FF, originally "Phoenix", started off as a browser only. It was light enough that I compiled it from source via Ports on my FreeBSD 4 (?) machine, and don't recall it taking too long.

by rusk 7y ago

metalliqaz 7y ago

Most of Mozilla's funding came from Google in exchange for making Google the default search page.

rusk 7y ago
Right ... It really isn’t inconceivable that they wouldn’t have got funding from somewhere else. It was a marketing opportunity for Google, them being the David to Microsoft’s Goliath. Remember that whole ”don’t be evil” thing? Turns out it was jusy a ruse to be abandoned once the market had consolidated.
- Majestic121 7y ago
  The triple negative in your sentence makes it confusing. I expected that you wanted to say : It is conceivable that they would have got funding from somewhere else
  - frogpelt 7y ago
    I don't disagree. You're not wrong.
  - rusk 7y ago
    it's not inconceivable is a common enough phrase. You could say this might be more parsimoniously expressed as "it is conceivable", but the colloquial phrasing intones that the premise proceeds specifically from the supposition that it may be inconceivable.
- Lio 7y ago
  There is also an argument that back in the day Firefox saved Google rather than the other way around. Why? Because when Microsoft had 90% browser share, gained through tying IE directly into Windows, there was a very real chance that they could have adapted IE so that it was harder to use Google than a default MS Bing search engine. Having a better, cross-platform alternative to IE allowed Google to stay in the game and make use of FF's cutting edge features. Remember the old Microsoft was quite happy to cripple Windows to kill it's competitors. For example "Windows ain't done until WordPerfect won't run" and the weird "errors" you saw if you tried running Windows on top of DR DOS.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkl 7y ago
    I'm not sure that adds up. When Bing was introduced in mid-2009, IE had about 60% of the market, and it was dropping fast as Chrome's popularity exploded [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-200901-201905.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...
    - Lio 7y ago
      I believe that Microsoft’s interest in Google’s business predates the launch of Bing. You can replace the brand name “Bing” with “some kind of search/advertising/internet gateway” business. Remember Microsoft used to be a very competitive outfit with a history of using their dominance of desktop OSs to enter new markets. It’s easy to forget that Microsoft of old were able to keep bankrolling loss leaders to “cut off the oxygen”[1] of any market that they saw as threatening Windows. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/04/98/microsoft/198390.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/04/98/microso...
  - tylerhou 7y ago
    > "Windows ain't done until WordPerfect won't run" Source? All I can find is http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done....
tyingq 7y ago
And Yahoo! for a time.
- branon 7y ago
  I remember this. It was terrible. There was a (bug|user error) I experienced during this time which prevented me from changing the default search engine. It was _terrible_.

burtonator 7y ago

I wasn't necessarily talking about the origin but the current state. But to answer your question I believe AOL gave FF about $5M USD to get started off...

pmoriarty 7y ago

Yeah, I have to ask what percentage of Firefox developers are paid for by Google's money? I was somehow under the impression that Firefox was developed mostly by volunteers, and so Firefox development would be largely unaffected if Google was out of the picture.

michaelmrose 7y ago
It would be pretty bad if volunteers did most of the work and they spent the literally hundreds of millions in annual revenue on cigars and caviar. Most of Linux and Firefox development is paid for professional work.

neltnerb 7y ago

My memory is also that FF was originally a decoupled version of Netscape and I think they also simplified the code base a lot back then to remove bloat. I remember a motivation being that Netscape was just too slow and big and couldn't compete with Internet Explorer very well. I am not sure it's fair to say that Mozilla "supports ads" by making Google the default search engine in exchange for a bunch of funding. It's a default, you can change it, they need money, I'm glad they took it. I'm sure that even if it didn't enable Firefox's existence I am sure it made the developer's lives a lot better and increased the number of research projects they could afford to do. Edit: But the point that Google makes money from ads and so Mozilla would have less funding without Google making money from ads is I guess true. I think Google just wanted to push an alternative to IE. I don't mind ads existing (well, I get that they're a necessary evil) but tracking is something I very much mind.

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago

Google's payments are not charity. FF has users and could have routed traffic generated by them to the highest bidder. It just happened that the highest bidder is Google. And they do it for profit: ad revenue generated by those users likely significantly surpasses traffic acquisition cost.

michaelmrose 7y ago

Mozilla has made 100s of millions from Google without which it would have had to make due with volunteers instead of hundreds of paid employees.

nebulous1 7y ago

OP overstated his case, but the fact is that the Mozilla Foundation does derive the majority of its revenue from deals with advertising based companies. Whether or not it would exist (or if it existed, in what form?) without these deals is a critical but unanswered question. Critical in the sense that it goes to the heart of whether we can be both ad-free and have free stuff like Firefox.

throw0101a 7y ago

> ... but wasnt FF a browser-only release of Mozilla ... Basically. Netscape Navigator was a large suite of functionality, including mail and NNTP. FF, originally "Phoenix", started off as a browser only. It was light enough that I compiled it from source via Ports on my FreeBSD 4 (?) machine, and don't recall it taking too long.