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I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in th

I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place. I'm also surprised they haven't tried to create commercial mail and communications products. Thunderbird used to be one of the best options out there, and they could easily spin this off into a SaaS and self-host product on the server component. As much as I hated Lotus Notes, something between Lotus Notes, Outlook and MS Teams could be something great and that the Mozilla org would be in a good position to create. I know they may have good reach with the VPN service as well... I'm unsure how they can reduce security, qa and release management people when orchestration, automation and verification are such huge needs. They get enough income from search (for now) that they could concentrate on best of breed tech, build mindshare from that, then re-introduce marketing for critical mass.

agumonkey 7y ago
Totally, I'd be a lot happier if they cut efforts on the branding side of things and strengthen the technical one.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  I kinda disagree, as a huge Mozilla fan. I think their technical development is fine, if not fantastic (especially for all they're doing with WebRender/Servo). Personally I'd like to see them roll out paid privacy products. Like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1. I currently pay for that, and if Mozilla rolled out a similar service across the Firefox ecosystem I'd gladly pay for that too.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I'm not saying their development isn't fine, but they're laying off the people that support development... which will make it worse, when they're spending far in excess of that cost in marketing and imho not even getting the best value out of that space.
Sammi 7y ago
The world today is different. Can't skimp on marketing any more, as the competition is extremely heavy on marketing.
- _-david-_ 7y ago
  I don't think I have seen any marketing material from Mozilla. I have seen some Chrome marketing though.
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    They pour a ton of money into events like SXSW. They had huge displays of their new branding up and down Congress Ave a couple of years ago, with several other "brand awareness" things going on throughout the conference.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I don't want to second-guess the marketing team, as I clearly don't know all of the things I'd need to know to do that. But let me second-guess the marketing team: wouldn't all that money be better spent marketing to potential customers rather than things like SXSW?
      - bsder 7y ago
        Actually, given the current demographics of SXSW, that probably IS good marketing to potential customers. SXSW now costs quite a bit and is often a hipster corporate management perk. That sounds like a good demographic for Mozilla to market to. Lone gone are the days where SXSW was a bunch of grubby hippies listening to a bunch of crappy bands. Now it's a bunch of hipster drones listening to a bunch of crappy mainstream pop artists.
        JohnFen 7y ago
        > That sounds like a good demographic for Mozilla to market to. Why does that sound like a good demographic? Sure, cover that group, but not at the expense of the much, much larger demographic of "ordinary people".
jorblumesea 7y ago
It's hard to say one way or another without the data. How big is the marketing team and budget/headcount/overhead? What's their ARR? How many QA people were laid off and at what salary ranges? How big was QA compared to other departments?
- tracker1 7y ago
  I seem to recall some article about their expenses a couple years ago, and that their marketing department and budget exceeded development and infrastructure combined.
vkou 7y ago
> I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place. Which worked because IE 6 was a dumpster fire for both users and developers. Developers were looking for any excuse to jump ship off it. The browser market in 2020 is 'good enough' for users and developers. It's like gasoline - nobody cares which refinery the gas in their tank comes from.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > The browser market in 2020 is 'good enough' for users and developers Sadly, I agree. I find it sad because I haven't personally found any modern browser that I'm happy using.
Nextgrid 7y ago
I see a big gap in the market when it comes to self-hosted Office 365 or G Suite alternatives. Microsoft Exchange is a beast both in terms of complexity as well as licensing cost, and I think most small/medium orgs don't actually need the complexity which is why they're going towards G Suite which is a less complex product to manage. I can see them succeeding with an open-core enterprise e-mail & calendar solution where the base features are free to use and an enterprise version with extra features, like the Gitlab model with self-hosting as the key selling point.
- thrower123 7y ago
  If this was easy to do, Office 365 and GSuite wouldn't have a lock on the market. IBM can't even be bothered to try anymore - they sold off the carcass of Lotus a while back.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Which is partly why Mozilla is in a better position than most, being mainly tech and open-source at their heart. They are making enough off of search that they could create a product then sell/saas it themselves.
afterburner 7y ago
Marketers are usually pretty good at selling themselves.
Vinnl 7y ago
> I'm not sure why they don't (...) concentrate on community outreach from the developer side. Unless e.g. Lin Clark was among those who were laid off, they've been doing some excellent developer-side community outreach through the Mozilla Hacks blog in the past couple of years.

agumonkey 7y ago

Totally, I'd be a lot happier if they cut efforts on the branding side of things and strengthen the technical one.

unlinked_dll 7y ago
I kinda disagree, as a huge Mozilla fan. I think their technical development is fine, if not fantastic (especially for all they're doing with WebRender/Servo). Personally I'd like to see them roll out paid privacy products. Like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1. I currently pay for that, and if Mozilla rolled out a similar service across the Firefox ecosystem I'd gladly pay for that too.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I'm not saying their development isn't fine, but they're laying off the people that support development... which will make it worse, when they're spending far in excess of that cost in marketing and imho not even getting the best value out of that space.

Sammi 7y ago

The world today is different. Can't skimp on marketing any more, as the competition is extremely heavy on marketing.

_-david-_ 7y ago
I don't think I have seen any marketing material from Mozilla. I have seen some Chrome marketing though.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  They pour a ton of money into events like SXSW. They had huge displays of their new branding up and down Congress Ave a couple of years ago, with several other "brand awareness" things going on throughout the conference.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    I don't want to second-guess the marketing team, as I clearly don't know all of the things I'd need to know to do that. But let me second-guess the marketing team: wouldn't all that money be better spent marketing to potential customers rather than things like SXSW?
    - bsder 7y ago
      Actually, given the current demographics of SXSW, that probably IS good marketing to potential customers. SXSW now costs quite a bit and is often a hipster corporate management perk. That sounds like a good demographic for Mozilla to market to. Lone gone are the days where SXSW was a bunch of grubby hippies listening to a bunch of crappy bands. Now it's a bunch of hipster drones listening to a bunch of crappy mainstream pop artists.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        > That sounds like a good demographic for Mozilla to market to. Why does that sound like a good demographic? Sure, cover that group, but not at the expense of the much, much larger demographic of "ordinary people".

jorblumesea 7y ago

It's hard to say one way or another without the data. How big is the marketing team and budget/headcount/overhead? What's their ARR? How many QA people were laid off and at what salary ranges? How big was QA compared to other departments?

tracker1 7y ago
I seem to recall some article about their expenses a couple years ago, and that their marketing department and budget exceeded development and infrastructure combined.

vkou 7y ago

> I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place. Which worked because IE 6 was a dumpster fire for both users and developers. Developers were looking for any excuse to jump ship off it. The browser market in 2020 is 'good enough' for users and developers. It's like gasoline - nobody cares which refinery the gas in their tank comes from.

JohnFen 7y ago
> The browser market in 2020 is 'good enough' for users and developers Sadly, I agree. I find it sad because I haven't personally found any modern browser that I'm happy using.

Nextgrid 7y ago

I see a big gap in the market when it comes to self-hosted Office 365 or G Suite alternatives. Microsoft Exchange is a beast both in terms of complexity as well as licensing cost, and I think most small/medium orgs don't actually need the complexity which is why they're going towards G Suite which is a less complex product to manage. I can see them succeeding with an open-core enterprise e-mail & calendar solution where the base features are free to use and an enterprise version with extra features, like the Gitlab model with self-hosting as the key selling point.

thrower123 7y ago
If this was easy to do, Office 365 and GSuite wouldn't have a lock on the market. IBM can't even be bothered to try anymore - they sold off the carcass of Lotus a while back.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Which is partly why Mozilla is in a better position than most, being mainly tech and open-source at their heart. They are making enough off of search that they could create a product then sell/saas it themselves.

afterburner 7y ago

Marketers are usually pretty good at selling themselves.

Vinnl 7y ago

> I'm not sure why they don't (...) concentrate on community outreach from the developer side. Unless e.g. Lin Clark was among those who were laid off, they've been doing some excellent developer-side community outreach through the Mozilla Hacks blog in the past couple of years.