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Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web, severely cramped by their complete economic dependency on Google and their inability to allocate their funds intellig

by ppfrc 7y ago

Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web, severely cramped by their complete economic dependency on Google and their inability to allocate their funds intelligently

phatfish 7y ago
But they get shouted down whenever they try to monetise independently, can't have it both ways. Either more users start donating $5-10 a month (seems worth it to me given the time I spend with their product) or they take the Google money and deal with the conflict of interest best they can. A Shuttelworth style billionaire benefactor would work as well, but I doubt one will come from the tech community as Firefox is working against the anti-privacy data collection model that made them (or their friends) rich.
- rpastuszak 7y ago
  This. Bear in mind that Mozilla is experimenting with different monetisation models, be it subs, donations, relying on Google for search as well as partnerships with companies such as Scroll (publisher content monetisation platforms). Also, if you follow the discourse on anything published by Mozilla in the past 2-3 years—there's been a shift when it comes to how they speak about Googe. It's a marketing move, of course, but I think it's also a sign of the direction they are following. I believe something will change here, for better, in the next couple of years. I'd sign for a Mozilla subscription if it included services such as better VPN, supporting those who cannot afford to pay directly, but pay with they data instead. The move towards paid vs. non-paid services creates a risk that we'd end up with two types of internet users, with privacy being the currency of those who cannot afford an expensive mobile phone or a browser not trying to sell you things whether you want it or not. The history of Guardian (in the past 5 years or so) shows that people are happy to pay for a valuable service just to allow the others to have access to it. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic here, but I shudder every time I think about the alternatives.
  - just_observing 7y ago
    The Guardian has gone downhill in the last few years, just like the rest of UK mainstream news reporting. They have rolled over to do whatever the Government wants not reporting - take Assange for example. Their coverage is practically non-existent. I used to buy The Guardian every day, then I subscribed digitally. And then when their reporting slid downhill, I stopped subscribing. I still read it - but block their data scraping scripts and all ads. They are not worth supporting IMO.
    - dageshi 7y ago
      The more likely explanation is that people got tired of Assange's story and so the articles didn't get the clicks to justify covering them any more. The Guardian can get more clicks with a steady drip of vegan opinion pieces, stories laughing at Tories and the dreadfulness of brexit so that's what they'll do. Same as the Telegraph will feed its readers "the glory of Boris", "forwards unto brexit" and "Good lord look what Corbyn said today, he's a dreadful little man isn't he?" News organisations are slaves to their audiences and will just produce what their audiences want.
      - k1m 7y ago
        That's not a likely explanation when it comes to Assange. The Guardian has been terrible, and even its previous star reporter Glenn Greenwald (who won them a Pulitzer on the Snowden reporting) has been extremely critical. See for example https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-guardians-viral-blockbuster-assangemanafort-scoop-no-evidence-has-emerged-just-stonewalling/ https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua... Brought up again earlier this month: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1191681248453943296 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1191681248453943296 That piece of fake news from the Guardian has been shared more than 25,000 times on Facebook. I don't agree that honest reporting on Assange simply won't get clicks. But sensational fake news certainly does.
        foldr 7y ago
        What makes you so sure it's fake news? No-one really knows for sure whether or not that meeting took place.
- jeltz 7y ago
  The reason that they get shouted down is because every time they have tried to make money in other ways it has been done in shady ways. Like giving away the browsing data of their German users to Cliqz (would probably have been illegal post-GDPR) or running guerilla marketing for Mr Robot in Shield Studies (which reduces the trust from people who enabled Shield to help Mozilla with studies). Almost nobody complains about the them taking money from Yahoo and Google for higher placement in the search engine list. And if their other revenue streams had been as transparent I think people had been fine.
  - ppfrc 7y ago
    You can't call yourself a champion of privacy and then sell the browsing history of your users to a marketing company. It simply doesn't work that way.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Someone else said it already some time ago, but if Mozilla had just put the money they get from Google into a fund, they'd be able to develop browsers till the end of time. But they try to "innovate" and "re-invent the web" with WASM and also other completely unrelated ventures such as Rust, as nice as it may be (Rust not WASM that is). Another aspect of the Mozilla Foundation is that they're basically acting as a fig leaf for the monopolist web Google has created in this decade, with Google financing them to prevent anti-trust investigations, and Mozilla also playing along with Google-financed WHATWG to white-wash "web standards" and prevent real and obvious innovations such as third-party script blocking, serving only Google's interests. FF indeed does work against anti-privacy, and I'm applauding them for that, but OTOH FF also enables ad blockers. I've used uBlock just like most of you here, but ad blocking is also a factor turning the web into a privacy minefield. Eg. if you're indiscriminately block all ads whether targetted or not, there is no possible way to finance web content production; yet people also don't want to pay for content. So what people get is polarizing click-bait, propaganda, and low-quality content while content creators (other than some high-profile YouTubers maybe) can't earn a living. We really should stop with "fighting for the future of the web" articles when the reality is that the web locks people into addictive behaviour, fake social interaction, and crap web frontends for oligopolist cloud-hosted services (completely antithetical to personal computing and site autonomy principles), and results into cultural loss due to the expectation that everything must always be available for free, all the time, a model only creating monopolies.
  - carapace 7y ago
    Muy this. I wish I could upvote this comment twice. I just want to add, part of the problem is that it now takes millions of dollars to make/maintain a web browser. Oh, and also, how relevant is the "future of the web" in a world where 1/3 of humanity thinks Facebook is the web?
  - the8472 7y ago
    > Eg. if you're indiscriminately block all ads whether targetted or not If the ad industry got together to design the most benign ad technology they can come up with (isolate from host site, no cookies, no js, no video, enforced by iframe security directives) then perhaps adblocking extensions could add an exception for this kind of ad, based on technological criteria, not a manually managed whitelist. But such a thing does not exist and ads are so intransparent and deeply integrated into pages that one cannot tell, thus blunt hammers need to be applied until no ad is left standing.
hoptank 7y ago
What do you suggest Mozilla do instead? Mozilla don't just fund the development of their own products they also fund research [1] and other projects [2]. [1] https://research.mozilla.org/research-grants/ https://research.mozilla.org/research-grants/ [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/grants/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/grants/ In a perfect world Mozilla would be funded by donations. I donate to Mozilla but it's a pittance compared to what they get from Google.
- input_sh 7y ago
  I wouldn't suggest an alternative funding model as much as guess what will it be maybe a year or two from now. Key quote from the article: > Mozilla has launched Monitor, a data-breach reporting service; Lockwise, a password manager; and Send, a privacy-focused alternative to services such as WeSendit. It’s also beta-testing a VPN (virtual private network) service, which it hopes to market to privacy-conscious users. Once these web apps mature a bit, I expect to see them in a free tier + a premium behind the subscription (with the core browser of course remaining free). My hunch tells me that's why you'll see this front-and-centered if you open mozilla.org: > Firefox is more than a browser. Meet our family of privacy-first products
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I guess they can also add a messenger, news client, a calendar, and an address book and call it Firefox Communicator....
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      As long as it starts in less than 2 minutes and don't push Windows machine into trashing, why not?
  - john_minsk 7y ago
    I wouldn't mind switching to Mozilla VPN.
- ppfrc 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mapgrep 7y ago
The idea that Google would cut off Mozilla to advance Chrome seems to me at least rooted in a deep misunderstanding of how Google makes money. Something like 75% or more of their revenue comes from AdWords - ads run against search. This is one of the most attractive streams for advertisers ever built. You have a prospect ready to buy (often) who is literally telling you in written software processable words what they want. AdWords dwarfs all of Facebook in revenue, for context. It is the very foundation of Google. In a way, everything else they do is either support for AdWords or a side project. The money they give to Firefox is not charity. It is to feed this cash cow. They have a similar arrangement with Apple for iPhone default search engine in mobile Safari. I would argue it is far far more valuable for Google to support Firefox in order to ensure search dominance than to waste that money to advance Chrome. Chrome exists to support AdWords not the other way around.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  That money means that Firefox and Safari won't ship ad blocking by default because as soon as they do it, their users are worthless to Google, and Google will stop paying. It also means that their tracking prevention doesn't affect usage of first party cookies on other sites, increasing Google's and Facebook's advertising dominance.
  - mapgrep 7y ago
    Blocking AdWords — sponsored search results — is very different from blocking display ads. I would be surprised if most users found that sort of blocking desirable in the first place. Some might, and I would not be surprised if it were an option, but also very surprised if proportion of Firefox users blocking AdWords ever approached even 50%. Anyone who doesn’t block is still valuable to Google.

by ppfrc 7y ago

Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web, severely cramped by their complete economic dependency on Google and their inability to allocate their funds intelligently

phatfish 7y ago

But they get shouted down whenever they try to monetise independently, can't have it both ways. Either more users start donating $5-10 a month (seems worth it to me given the time I spend with their product) or they take the Google money and deal with the conflict of interest best they can. A Shuttelworth style billionaire benefactor would work as well, but I doubt one will come from the tech community as Firefox is working against the anti-privacy data collection model that made them (or their friends) rich.

rpastuszak 7y ago
This. Bear in mind that Mozilla is experimenting with different monetisation models, be it subs, donations, relying on Google for search as well as partnerships with companies such as Scroll (publisher content monetisation platforms). Also, if you follow the discourse on anything published by Mozilla in the past 2-3 years—there's been a shift when it comes to how they speak about Googe. It's a marketing move, of course, but I think it's also a sign of the direction they are following. I believe something will change here, for better, in the next couple of years. I'd sign for a Mozilla subscription if it included services such as better VPN, supporting those who cannot afford to pay directly, but pay with they data instead. The move towards paid vs. non-paid services creates a risk that we'd end up with two types of internet users, with privacy being the currency of those who cannot afford an expensive mobile phone or a browser not trying to sell you things whether you want it or not. The history of Guardian (in the past 5 years or so) shows that people are happy to pay for a valuable service just to allow the others to have access to it. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic here, but I shudder every time I think about the alternatives.
- just_observing 7y ago
  The Guardian has gone downhill in the last few years, just like the rest of UK mainstream news reporting. They have rolled over to do whatever the Government wants not reporting - take Assange for example. Their coverage is practically non-existent. I used to buy The Guardian every day, then I subscribed digitally. And then when their reporting slid downhill, I stopped subscribing. I still read it - but block their data scraping scripts and all ads. They are not worth supporting IMO.
  - dageshi 7y ago
    The more likely explanation is that people got tired of Assange's story and so the articles didn't get the clicks to justify covering them any more. The Guardian can get more clicks with a steady drip of vegan opinion pieces, stories laughing at Tories and the dreadfulness of brexit so that's what they'll do. Same as the Telegraph will feed its readers "the glory of Boris", "forwards unto brexit" and "Good lord look what Corbyn said today, he's a dreadful little man isn't he?" News organisations are slaves to their audiences and will just produce what their audiences want.
    - k1m 7y ago
      That's not a likely explanation when it comes to Assange. The Guardian has been terrible, and even its previous star reporter Glenn Greenwald (who won them a Pulitzer on the Snowden reporting) has been extremely critical. See for example https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-guardians-viral-blockbuster-assangemanafort-scoop-no-evidence-has-emerged-just-stonewalling/ https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua... Brought up again earlier this month: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1191681248453943296 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1191681248453943296 That piece of fake news from the Guardian has been shared more than 25,000 times on Facebook. I don't agree that honest reporting on Assange simply won't get clicks. But sensational fake news certainly does.
      - foldr 7y ago
        What makes you so sure it's fake news? No-one really knows for sure whether or not that meeting took place.
jeltz 7y ago
The reason that they get shouted down is because every time they have tried to make money in other ways it has been done in shady ways. Like giving away the browsing data of their German users to Cliqz (would probably have been illegal post-GDPR) or running guerilla marketing for Mr Robot in Shield Studies (which reduces the trust from people who enabled Shield to help Mozilla with studies). Almost nobody complains about the them taking money from Yahoo and Google for higher placement in the search engine list. And if their other revenue streams had been as transparent I think people had been fine.
- ppfrc 7y ago
  You can't call yourself a champion of privacy and then sell the browsing history of your users to a marketing company. It simply doesn't work that way.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Someone else said it already some time ago, but if Mozilla had just put the money they get from Google into a fund, they'd be able to develop browsers till the end of time. But they try to "innovate" and "re-invent the web" with WASM and also other completely unrelated ventures such as Rust, as nice as it may be (Rust not WASM that is). Another aspect of the Mozilla Foundation is that they're basically acting as a fig leaf for the monopolist web Google has created in this decade, with Google financing them to prevent anti-trust investigations, and Mozilla also playing along with Google-financed WHATWG to white-wash "web standards" and prevent real and obvious innovations such as third-party script blocking, serving only Google's interests. FF indeed does work against anti-privacy, and I'm applauding them for that, but OTOH FF also enables ad blockers. I've used uBlock just like most of you here, but ad blocking is also a factor turning the web into a privacy minefield. Eg. if you're indiscriminately block all ads whether targetted or not, there is no possible way to finance web content production; yet people also don't want to pay for content. So what people get is polarizing click-bait, propaganda, and low-quality content while content creators (other than some high-profile YouTubers maybe) can't earn a living. We really should stop with "fighting for the future of the web" articles when the reality is that the web locks people into addictive behaviour, fake social interaction, and crap web frontends for oligopolist cloud-hosted services (completely antithetical to personal computing and site autonomy principles), and results into cultural loss due to the expectation that everything must always be available for free, all the time, a model only creating monopolies.
- carapace 7y ago
  Muy this. I wish I could upvote this comment twice. I just want to add, part of the problem is that it now takes millions of dollars to make/maintain a web browser. Oh, and also, how relevant is the "future of the web" in a world where 1/3 of humanity thinks Facebook is the web?
- the8472 7y ago
  > Eg. if you're indiscriminately block all ads whether targetted or not If the ad industry got together to design the most benign ad technology they can come up with (isolate from host site, no cookies, no js, no video, enforced by iframe security directives) then perhaps adblocking extensions could add an exception for this kind of ad, based on technological criteria, not a manually managed whitelist. But such a thing does not exist and ads are so intransparent and deeply integrated into pages that one cannot tell, thus blunt hammers need to be applied until no ad is left standing.

hoptank 7y ago

What do you suggest Mozilla do instead? Mozilla don't just fund the development of their own products they also fund research [1] and other projects [2]. [1] https://research.mozilla.org/research-grants/ https://research.mozilla.org/research-grants/ [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/grants/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/grants/ In a perfect world Mozilla would be funded by donations. I donate to Mozilla but it's a pittance compared to what they get from Google.

input_sh 7y ago
I wouldn't suggest an alternative funding model as much as guess what will it be maybe a year or two from now. Key quote from the article: > Mozilla has launched Monitor, a data-breach reporting service; Lockwise, a password manager; and Send, a privacy-focused alternative to services such as WeSendit. It’s also beta-testing a VPN (virtual private network) service, which it hopes to market to privacy-conscious users. Once these web apps mature a bit, I expect to see them in a free tier + a premium behind the subscription (with the core browser of course remaining free). My hunch tells me that's why you'll see this front-and-centered if you open mozilla.org: > Firefox is more than a browser. Meet our family of privacy-first products
- scarface74 7y ago
  I guess they can also add a messenger, news client, a calendar, and an address book and call it Firefox Communicator....
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    As long as it starts in less than 2 minutes and don't push Windows machine into trashing, why not?
- john_minsk 7y ago
  I wouldn't mind switching to Mozilla VPN.
ppfrc 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mapgrep 7y ago

The idea that Google would cut off Mozilla to advance Chrome seems to me at least rooted in a deep misunderstanding of how Google makes money. Something like 75% or more of their revenue comes from AdWords - ads run against search. This is one of the most attractive streams for advertisers ever built. You have a prospect ready to buy (often) who is literally telling you in written software processable words what they want. AdWords dwarfs all of Facebook in revenue, for context. It is the very foundation of Google. In a way, everything else they do is either support for AdWords or a side project. The money they give to Firefox is not charity. It is to feed this cash cow. They have a similar arrangement with Apple for iPhone default search engine in mobile Safari. I would argue it is far far more valuable for Google to support Firefox in order to ensure search dominance than to waste that money to advance Chrome. Chrome exists to support AdWords not the other way around.

lern_too_spel 7y ago
That money means that Firefox and Safari won't ship ad blocking by default because as soon as they do it, their users are worthless to Google, and Google will stop paying. It also means that their tracking prevention doesn't affect usage of first party cookies on other sites, increasing Google's and Facebook's advertising dominance.
- mapgrep 7y ago
  Blocking AdWords — sponsored search results — is very different from blocking display ads. I would be surprised if most users found that sort of blocking desirable in the first place. Some might, and I would not be surprised if it were an option, but also very surprised if proportion of Firefox users blocking AdWords ever approached even 50%. Anyone who doesn’t block is still valuable to Google.