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> If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. I don't think that's obvio

> If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose. I don't think that's obvious at all. JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), even though there are free IDEs (one of them sponsored by Microsoft no less). Theirs are just that much better. You're right that hobby developers are cheap, but the professional market is quite different, and even more so when you sell to enterprises. $100/yr is nothing compared to developer salaries and for all web developers, designers etc, the Browser is the major tool. > For Firefox to remain relevant it needs marketshare. My impression is that developers are pretty much the remaining users of Firefox. And they're kicking them out.

CarelessExpert 6y ago
> JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), JetBrains isn't up against a monopolist who's willing to offer the same features for free to any comers. Also, worth noting, the now-cancelled Google deal was worth $375M to their bottom line. So even if they could hit JetBrains' numbers (which I highly doubt), it still wouldn't fill the hole left behind. If anything, what this says to me is that Mozilla shedding staff makes sense. If JetBrains can be profitable producing a complex IDE with half the spend (Mozilla 2018 spend was $451M), it makes me wonder just how efficient Mozilla is with their staffing.