4 ms·

That's news to me. Their contract has been consistently renewed for years, and I'd imagine that would give Google some pretty bad PR if they didn't.

giomasce 6y ago
Possibly. But Google gets the bad PR and stays in the dominant position anyway, while Firefox more or less disappears. I don't say Google necessarily wants to be evil towards Firefox, but in their position it is enough to not care. Also, even if the contract is renewed, the number could be smaller.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  Google isn't afraid of bad PR of larger caliber. No normal user cares whether Mozilla is getting money from Google and people who care find it questionable that Google is the default search engine instead of something like DuckDuckGo (that would fit the Firefox brand so much better). Whenever the day comes it'll be a small notice on the normie-tech websites ("An era has come to an end") and a short discussion in freedom-concerned tech circles. Who doesn't deep down already consider Mozilla dead at this point? I'm just hoping for a good rebirth.
rvz 6y ago
Well after all these years they were soley sitting on Google's contract money and are yet to create a very competitive and revenue-generating product that users will pay for. Firefox VPN is essentially Mullvad with Firefox branding so there is no comparison with either of them. Most of all of the products Mozilla has is either free (mostly) or not competitive enough to the point of redundancy. For the typical end-user (who really doesn't see open-source as an advantage) Pocket can be replaced with Chrome Bookmarks and ultimately, Firefox can be replaced with Chrome.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  Add to that that for the freedom-concerned user Pocket has to be replaced (Wallabag is good), as do most of their other "privacy respecting" services. There's no advantage with them over any of the propriatary alternatives other than a fallen-out-of-favor-dwindling-financially foundation-corporation hybrid healf heartedly developing an important browser saying they won't sell your data.

giomasce 6y ago

Possibly. But Google gets the bad PR and stays in the dominant position anyway, while Firefox more or less disappears. I don't say Google necessarily wants to be evil towards Firefox, but in their position it is enough to not care. Also, even if the contract is renewed, the number could be smaller.

solarkraft 6y ago
Google isn't afraid of bad PR of larger caliber. No normal user cares whether Mozilla is getting money from Google and people who care find it questionable that Google is the default search engine instead of something like DuckDuckGo (that would fit the Firefox brand so much better). Whenever the day comes it'll be a small notice on the normie-tech websites ("An era has come to an end") and a short discussion in freedom-concerned tech circles. Who doesn't deep down already consider Mozilla dead at this point? I'm just hoping for a good rebirth.

rvz 6y ago

Well after all these years they were soley sitting on Google's contract money and are yet to create a very competitive and revenue-generating product that users will pay for. Firefox VPN is essentially Mullvad with Firefox branding so there is no comparison with either of them. Most of all of the products Mozilla has is either free (mostly) or not competitive enough to the point of redundancy. For the typical end-user (who really doesn't see open-source as an advantage) Pocket can be replaced with Chrome Bookmarks and ultimately, Firefox can be replaced with Chrome.

solarkraft 6y ago
Add to that that for the freedom-concerned user Pocket has to be replaced (Wallabag is good), as do most of their other "privacy respecting" services. There's no advantage with them over any of the propriatary alternatives other than a fallen-out-of-favor-dwindling-financially foundation-corporation hybrid healf heartedly developing an important browser saying they won't sell your data.