6 ms·

While I definitely think Mozilla is great for the internet, their main product is terrible from a business perspective. Trying to monitize a piece of free softw

While I definitely think Mozilla is great for the internet, their main product is terrible from a business perspective. Trying to monitize a piece of free software that you are selling on this privacy benifits is a loosing battle. The reason free software is free is _because_ it can sell more valuable ads by using your data. Products that you pay directly for don't need to worry about selling ads so they don't have to do tracking and such. A paid browser at this point is realistically impossible to sell at any sort of scale because chrome is free. IMO Firefox Mozilla needs to make a new product that is paid. Someone on HN suggested email and/or other services that compete with Google's user product suite? At that point you are selling server space so its easier to get people to pay for it.

mulmen 6y ago
It's especially a losing battle when you offer no way to pay for the product.
coffeefirst 6y ago
That's a funny idea. Suppose there were a Firefox Pro option? It's the sort of thing a lot of people here might pay for regardless of what's in it just because they believe Firefox is essential to the open web. But what could it be? What if all it was to start was bundling their existing VPN service, Scroll, and Pocket Premium for a single price, and even if technically you can use them in Chrome or as iOS apps, it's marketed as a better browser. And then the door is open to add new things, maybe pinboard-style bookmark archiving would make sense? Is it a hit? Hard to say. But it feels like a better bet as a feature set that ALSO supports the open web than marketing each of those services individually.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]