46 ms·

Mozilla signs fresh Google search deal

365 points by teraku 6y ago

gmb2k1 6y ago
So was it really necessary to lay-off the servo and wasm and security teams?
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Yes, they need the money to build stuff that will provide them with a steady stream of income from other sources, like online collaborative code editors, a VPN solution, a new diesel powered truck, a Firefox branded amusement park and an adult streaming service. I love you Mozilla, but please stop. Find a way to make money on what you do best: Firefox.
  - stevehawk 6y ago
    I know would pay for Firefox if it helped keep them afloat. I doubt I'm alone. But, I also doubt there's enough of us to keep them afloat.
    - gmb2k1 6y ago
      Actually, I would too, if that money is guaranteed to be used only for Firefox development. And only that. Not to pocket, not to an inept C-Suite, not to their political activism. Not to any experiments outside of the core browser. But that's not even possible. You can only donate to the Mozilla Foundation, which uses the money for whatever they like.
      - manquer 6y ago
        there is always patreon, you could contribute to external developers who contribute to mainline , if they make enough money on patreon they could do it full time.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      It won't because people that currently use firefox would definitely switch over to chrome/chrome-based browsers then.
  - TheCraiggers 6y ago
    How? Their three main competitors: Chrome, Edge (if that even counts, being Chromium based), and Safari are completely free AND installed by default on their respective operating system(s). "Not being installed by default" is already a very high hurdle for mainstream acceptance. If you tack on some sort of cost, I can't see that working well for adoption. Personally, I think they're on the right track with the VPN service. VPN services are already something people are used to paying for, and one of the biggest issues with VPN services are trying to figure out who you can trust out of all the nameless shell companies out there. Mozilla is a trusted brand.
    - mrweasel 6y ago
      I have no idea, but I'm also not head of Mozilla. If they can't make money on Firefox in the future, why even bother to build and maintain it. Then they just become a VPN resell who for some unknown reason keeps building a browser. That doesn't make any sense business wise. If the management of Mozilla can't find a way to profit from Firefox, other than leaching on the goodwill and branding, then I don't think they're sufficiently competent to full fill their roles.
    - gmb2k1 6y ago
      What I don't get about the VPN thing is, that they're just a reseller of mullvad VPN. So, even if I trust Mozilla, that isn't of any help, if I don't trust mullvad. And if I do trust mullvad, why wouldn't I buy access from them directly? The only reason to get the Mozilla VPN is, to help them to a little commission for ideological reasons.
      - dorchadas 6y ago
        I don't think the VPN is targeted to people like you or me, who know about them already and know how to research and trust them. It's targeted towards a more "everyday" user, which might not think to go to Mullvad to buy it, or necessarily worry about the privacy implications (personally, I've heard good things about Mullvad and switched over after PIA sold), and just like the ease of integration through buying it with Firefox.
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    How do you suggest they do that? As far as I can see, to make money from Firefox they need to either charge for the browser, start selling user data, or integrate 3rd party products. The first isn't commercially viable, the second fundamentally clashes with their principles and the third they have tried but gotten a lot of backlash and little success.
    - mrweasel 6y ago
      I have no idea how that would work. Two ideas: * Let us pay for Firefox development. I'm not sure how much that would bring in. * Partnerships with news sites. You pay Mozilla, they keep 30% and use the rest to pay the news sites to not paywall Firefox. Currently Firefox is basically funded by Google, how does that not clash with their principles? It's okay for take money from a company that directly profit from collection user data, just don't collect the data yourself?
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      I mean, they currently make ~$450 million per year from Firefox due to their search deals (mainly Google but others in other countries). In the past I think they had Bing bidding for the deal as well. No reason for that to not continue if they maintain Firefox marketshare.
      - olejorgenb 6y ago
        Exactly. While it's not ideal to be dependent on a competitor like that it has been a very robust stream on income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio... $300M+ for 8 years (and now 3 more years)
        marcinzm 6y ago
        Had Mozilla invested 75% of it rather than spending 75% they would have probably had a guaranteed $100 million/year from their investments alone for the next century.
  - calcifer 6y ago
    > Find a way to make money on what you do best: Firefox. They tried. Pocket and cliqz were attempts at that. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you weren't supportive of those efforts either.
  - roca 6y ago
    Here we see Mozilla's dilemma: half the Internet calling for Mozilla to focus on Firefox, the other half calling for Mozilla to diversity away from Firefox (which is implicitly what people are calling for when they call for Mozilla to diversify revenue).
  - zerocrates 6y ago
    Well, they already make nearly all their money on Firefox, hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Well a conspiracy theorist could assert that downsizing their development teams was part of the deal. :)
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  You probably won't like what I'm saying: WASM and Rust are completely irrelevant for the vast majority of people. It's only HN and a couple other places where folks are obsessed with it. Far more important is having a browser that can decipher that laughable piece of shit we're calling the web, and have unleashed upon the world. It would be cool if we could focus on fixing it.
  - chmln 6y ago
    That makes no sense. People might not know about WASM or Rust, but people like fast browsers. Rust is what powers Servo, which in turn made performance of Firefox somewhat acceptable. Gutting both teams is extremely short-sighted.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      I wasn't under the impression that Servo was completed or deployed fully in released Firefox. I believe only the CSS engine is?
      - paulrouget 6y ago
        And WebRender. And there were plans for more…
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    > You probably won't like what I'm saying: WASM and Rust are completely irrelevant for the vast majority of people Gears and valves are completely irrelevant to the vast majority of car users.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Were the layoffs a consideration for the new funding deal?
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    They clearly knew they were in the 11th hour for a big layoff before they would catch even more flack -after- the google deal because everyone would reading the news would also read the part about them still fire employee after a guaranteed 3 years of funding.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      Sorry, what?
- sp332 6y ago
  I'm not saying it was a good move, but they didn't let go all of the security people like that one tweet kinda implied. https://twitter.com/arroway53c/status/1293867434374569985 https://twitter.com/arroway53c/status/1293867434374569985 https://twitter.com/jvehent/status/1293511397649854464 https://twitter.com/jvehent/status/1293511397649854464
PaulHoule 6y ago
Was dispersing the MDN and Rust teams part of the deal?
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Google may want Mozilla around for anti-trust defense, but it's not like Google's particularly interested in how tightly Mozilla runs the ship.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    Well Google might want to get rid of the Servo team... but that would seem to be a really stupid deal to make in case it ever became public.
  - buran77 6y ago
    On PCs Chrome has ~70% market share with Firefox being a distant second with <8%. On mobile Firefox's market share is a negligible 0.7% compared to Google's 64%. If Google wants Firefox to stick around it's certainly not because it would give them any plausible defense in an antitrust lawsuit.
    - PaulHoule 6y ago
      If it gets any more lopsided than it is, Google will be in trouble.
- yodelshady 6y ago
  I'm not sure why they'd benefit from that, but it's interesting Microsoft has been going hard on evangelising Rust. For once I'm taking a not-conspiratorial line and think it's just all concerned parties wanting fewer bugs in software. But it does lead to an interesting line of thought for Mozilla...
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >but it's interesting Microsoft has been going hard on evangelising Rust. Microsoft put a report out a while ago that memory safety issues account for over 70% of security bugs in microsoft products[1] which they attribute to unsafe languages in the codebase so it seems natural that they're interested in Rust. [1]https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-se...
donkeyd 6y ago
I've been using FF for a while now and I like the privacy side of it. When I made the switch, I also tried to ditch Google for DDG, but I haven't been able to make it work. The results in DDG always seem to be pumped by SEO and are more often affiliate marketing blogs. Google often manages to bring me the right results right away.
- teraku 6y ago
  Not really related, but here goes. I use DDG as main engine and it works for 95% of my search queries, you just have to be a little more exact with what you type. So if I know what I'm looking for, DDG usually gives me the better results. And if it's a general thing, the result are usually the same between Google & DDG (i.e. Who was the 42nd president or whatever). When I specially search for something that is marketed/an ad, then Google yields better results. For example "that shop around the corner". But for that you can just use DDG's bangs: "g! shop around the corner" will redirect you to Google Search with that query.
- mc32 6y ago
  I used to feel that way too but now I feel google is full of results bloat. The serps are full of idiotic social media results and entertainment results than original content results (blogs, news sites, commercial, personal sites, etc). Search has become frustrating everywhere.
  - lrem 6y ago
    Can you provide some example queries? I work for Google, but nowhere near search. I'm just curious whether that's a difference in search bubbles, as I haven't noticed this problem.
    - mc32 6y ago
      I was looking for independent movie reviews (in this case red letter media -but without adding RLM as I’d forgotten the source) for Star Wars, but got flooded with to me irrelevant results. To be fair, it’s most pronounced when I’m looking for something I found in the past and then try searching for it in the present. Using custom date ranges help a bit but it’s still biased toward big entertainment and “brands”. So what it looks like to is that it doesn’t use historical rankings to show results but present rankings. So let’s say I was looking for something sports related that in 2005 was on a regional site, today that site is relatively obscure so even if you limit date range it would down rank the legacy site even if back then it would have been at the top.
rbecker 6y ago
> As a non-profit open-source operation, Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m I'd sleep easier if Mozilla saved some cash for a rainy day. Is there really no way to maintain a browser with less than a quarter billion dollars a year?
- teraku 6y ago
  In the comments of the article one person mentions that libre offices runs on a little less than a million a year. I'd argue that Mozilla has a few more repos that need mending (i.e. Rust, Servo, MDN, ...) but if you pay an average of 100k$ salary and have like 10 techpeople per team plus some management/community management/project management you could do a rough estimate of <10 core teams * 15 people * 100k$/year + 5m$ for infrastructure/rent == 20m$>. Even if you pay your CEO 2,5m$ afterwards, you'd still have loads of money left. Not sure where all of it goes. And I'm a bit reluctant to just say "bad management" in terms of money allocation. Although I do hate this cut in workforce and feel like it's the worst management decision in tech in recent history.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    They have somewhere around 750 employees still after the layoffs; it's hard to understand your comment that that both says they should have 150 employees but reducing their teams is a bad decision.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - xxs 6y ago
    single revenue stream gotta be the hallmark of bad magenement. Not just that, but tied to your direct competitor.
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    > In the comments of the article one person mentions that libre offices runs on a little less than a million a year. That's just the foundation budget. It doesn't include all the salaries of people working on the project employed by commercial companies (Collabora etc.)
thinkingkong 6y ago
The new browser wars are weird. Google seems to be weaponizing its stack / fleet of products to make firefox less desireable. Firefox might not have much leverage when this deal comes up for renewal. Really hope they find a way to build some sustainable alternative business models during this timeline. I think thats more of a motivating factor in the recent layoffs + their incubator-ish strategy.
- TheCraiggers 6y ago
  I really think Google simply keeps FF around just to help prevent anti-trust litigation. When viewed in that light, it's a bargain.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    It also means that you can’t de-google while supporting Firefox since it’s pretty much their only source of income other than donations.
    - liability 6y ago
      I don't give a damn, I degoogled anyway. As much as is technically possible without building Firefox myself anyway.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      Set a different default search engine on Firefox.
      - dogma1138 6y ago
        You are missing the point it’s not that you physically can’t do that but you can’t do that while supporting (as indirectly financially) Firefox, it also ensures that Firefox doesn’t go out of their way to push people to de-google.
      - sp332 6y ago
        This actually will hurt, because: "Firefox's revenue is subject to the overall trend of the search market and our product performance, versus a guaranteed payment." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef...
0xUser 6y ago
"mega-millions", so... "trillions" ?
- ffpip 6y ago
  No. kilo-billions
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    Microquintillions, surely?
  - hibbelig 6y ago
    Giga-kilos :-)
- jermier 6y ago
  That's your typical The Register hyperbolic headline for you. They're infamous for dressing up headlines with hyperbolic adjectives.
- dang 6y ago
  Thanks, I didn't notice that bit. I have de-megamillioned the title above.
The_rationalist 6y ago
How much % loss of revenue for the new deal?
- compsciphd 6y ago
  article says "However, our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year." so 400-450 million just from google. per google, in 2018, their entire revenue was only 450 million. https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=mozilla+revenue https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=moz... so if they are making more than 50 million from the rest of their country deals, it doesn't seem like revenue would have dropped that much
  - freshsqueeze 6y ago
    Revenue had never dropped for Mozilla. COVID had zero affect on their revenue stream as they lied in their layoff post. They get all their money from Google ad money to $500M a year guaranteed, with $500M in the bank, and $500M/yr upcoming. The layoffs were just to secure the execs' lifetime pensions.
cameron_b 6y ago
So what browser are you switching to?
compsciphd 6y ago
What does mozilla spend money on outside of personal costs? Mozilla had approximately 1000 employees. If they are grossing 450M a year in revenue and 50% of their expenses are personal costs, tht means on average they are spending 225K per employee. for a non profit (even if its a non profit in the tech field and has to compete with tech firms for employees), that seems high. i.e. if one would compare them to Series A or B startups in SV, those would be reasonably high compensation packages (albiet without the stock option upside, but most stock options aren't worth the paper they are printed on, even for series A companies perhaps a bit more likelihood with series B). Even if one says its 33%, that's still 150K per average employee expense. while that wouldn't result in a great SV salary, its would probably be competitive in most of the world. just trying to understand where all the money goes?
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  According to the article: > Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m with a headcount of about 1,000, or about $286,000 per person, on average. Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. Presumably there are large infrastructure fees for things like Firefox Sync, which by the way just introduced storage limits: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storage-sync-in-firefox-79/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storag... But come on, how about saving some for rainy days?
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    > Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-returns-and-financial-information https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-... has some of the information you seek; see the various "Audited financial statements" links. The 2019 one will presumably be available once the audit (which starts on the tax filing deadline, so in July this year) is done. > But come on, how about saving some for rainy days? The 2018 financials show ~$520 million in net assets (assets minus liabilities) at the end of the year. The vast majority if this is in "cash" and "investments".
- DangerousPie 6y ago
bogomipz 6y ago
>"Crucially, the organization vowed to double down and "ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams" – products like its bookmarking app Pocket, its virtual social meeting rooms Hubs, and its $4.99-a-month VPN subscription service. >“The people who are included in the reduction are both true Mozillians, and professionals with high degrees of skill and expertise and commitment," CEO Mitchell Baker said in a memo. "This action is not in any way – not, not, not – a reflection on personal or professional qualities.” >Mozilla's Servo team, which was working away on a new browser engine for Firefox in Rust, was closed down by the cuts. The group working on the Mozilla Developer Network – the essential bible for web devs and programmers – was hit hard, too, as were some of its security, policy, and tooling staffers. How exactly would folks working on things like browsers engines, Security, policy and tooling not be extremely valuable for working on "products like its bookmarking app Pocket, its virtual social meeting rooms Hubs, and its $4.99-a-month VPN subscription service."? Further the fact that $400-450 million dollars in new funding is announced days after large layoffs is says a lot about CEO Mitchell Baker's management and values. This CEO is the one who should be looking for a new job right now.
- StillBored 6y ago
  Teams that instead of fixing their main product, go off and create even larger products that don't have immediate revenue streams do little to "ship new products faster" or help the bottom line. This is going to be down voted, but if I were running a software dev team charged with producing X and they spent all their time doing Y because they "need" a new tool I would question their value. Particularly if all the competitors are kicking our butts, and don't seem to need said tool. So, rust is great and all, but is mozilla really the org that needs to ground up create a new langage/ecosystem? Outside of the tiny developer community using rust, what does it bring to the end users of firefox (you know the other few billion people on the planet who aren't developers) that couldn't have been done with just spending the time to fix compiler warnings/errors and enable some basic code analysis/linter functionality on the existing code base? (which yes, I've fixed some bugs in firefox, its a giant mess, every time a new GCC comes out, firefox needs to have bugs patched just to run).
  - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cashsterling 6y ago
FWIW... I work at a (~50 person) engineering design and fabrication firm. Our cost for Sr. scientist level folks is about ~300k USD fully burdened. At a big pharma company in the bay area... that number was more like ~400k USD for a principle engineer. So for Moz: ~286k USD per employee in the bay area is cheap, IMO... and I imagine their is a big distribution in that number across employee level and job descriptions.
- shuckles 6y ago
  Much of Mozilla was remote, at least based on the locations of laid off people on the Mozilla Lifeboat page shared yesterday.
- manquer 6y ago
  More than half of Mozilla staff are remote , there are very very few companies outside big tech that can support 1,000 strength office in Bay Area, and it would be inefficient to do so. It is true that for some skills Bay Area is the best and perhaps only available talent pool, even in high tech company like Mozilla that kind of talent is maybe 10-20 % of their overall workforce , for the rest there is cheaper and equally good alternatives available
- dleslie 6y ago
  Mozilla has a great many employees, engineers even, who are not in the bay area.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Do they have 1000 senior employees and no one who earns less? Because that’s what you need to make that the average.
- ttul 6y ago
  Mozilla has a gold-plated healthcare plan for its US team. No co-pay at all. They cover absolutely everything.
- MagnumOpus 6y ago
  You assume that every employee at Moz is a principal engineer or senior scientist. This is not the case.
chmln 6y ago
This is practically the end of Mozilla, a sad result of horrendous mismanagement. Instead of pouring all its resources to make a superior browser and thus attract more money by having bigger market share, they just stagnated. They bought pocket and gutted Servo for virtual reality. They invested in superficial political activism and paid exorbitant amount of money to execs. Firefox is inferior in all regards except privacy. People will claim it's just as fast as others, but even if it wasn't obviously false it wouldn't be enough. It should be undoubtedly better in all regards. With all the money of Mozilla they could've built a better, faster browser but they just didn't want to badly enough. And that's the tragedy.
walterbell 6y ago
Thunderbird is funded by users. There is currently no way to donate directly to Firefox separately of Mozilla general fund. Can initial steps be taken to financially firewall Firefox development from the rest of Mozilla, as Thunderbird has done successfully? Start by moving the web standards advocacy brain trust to the separate org. Ask users to donate/subscribe. Begin the transition now, don't wait for the next negotiation with Alphabet/Google. As donations grow, more Firefox teams can move to the independent legal org.
- nvr219 6y ago
  I use Firefox and Thunderbird all day, every day, and Thunderbird definitely feels like it's funded by users whereas Firefox feels like it is funded by an actual company lol. So.
  - walterbell 6y ago
    In 2020, desktop email clients are also a smaller market by several orders of magnitude.
    - notyourwork 6y ago
      For end users probably, for enterprise I doubt it.
      - freehunter 6y ago
        But enterprise is going to default something with an enterprise license and support agreement (like Outlook). You might have some users who prefer Thunderbird but they’re going to be a much smaller audience.
        giancarlostoro 6y ago
        Not always, we pay for a plugin for Thunderbird (ExQuilzilla) though. We're primarily working on Linux systems so it makes no sense to even have Outlook or Windows in our office. We don't make up a large demographic of our company (which is in the F500 range), but I wouldn't be surprised if there's other places that do the same. It's a shame Firefox doesn't sell a developer ready IDE, I'd subscribe to that myself if it means better MDN and that the dev tools team is better funded, and Firefox in addition to other donations from elsewhere, throw in a VPN subscription to sweeten it for most people. I'm ready to pay for anything that funds Firefox directly. I've even seen some in QA who do have Windows just installing Thunderbird.
wwwwwwwww 6y ago
Mozilla just exists so that Google can lie about there "existing competition" on the browser market.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Edge, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and new upstarts like Brave seems like a reasonably competitive market to me.
  - sethish 6y ago
    Except that edge, safari and chrome are all derived from the codebase that Google controls
    - seabrookmx 6y ago
      You mean Edge, Opera and Chrome. Safari runs on WebKit not blink, which has shared lineage but Google has no control over.
  - stu2b50 6y ago
    Maybe numerically, but Chrome alone has 70% marketshare. When you consider that edge runs off of the Chrome engine, Google controls like >80% of how the world sees the web essentially. If Chrome adds a new feature, everyone else must adapt as well.
    - missedthecue 6y ago
      For the average user, Chrome is just the best browser. There is nothing wrong with 70% of consumers liking them more than other browsers because the switching cost is free and there are plenty of alternatives.
      - gruez 6y ago
        On desktop, maybe. But on mobile? Firefox for Android (or fenix), or any other ad-blocking browser (eg. brave) is unequivocally better.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Now, this makes the reason for layoffs and the blame on COVID-19 much more suspicious. I thought Google had really shrunk the search engine deal, due to Ad revenue slow down[1] and may be the pandemic reason was indirectly true. I just hope that the 're-structure' wasn't dictated by the Google itself. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141592
surfsvammel 6y ago
I’m a Firefox user. I don’t use Google search. But I have no problem Mozilla getting money from Google as long as I can choose to use another search engine.
fritex 6y ago
Kind of a, each update for Mozilla Developer version f*cks up the working version before. More and more I have to change the settings "about:config". I am really thinking to switch from Mozilla Developer and Google search engine to something else. Any recommendations?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
greatgib 6y ago
I just had a look at the financial documents for Mozilla, and I have to say that, for an organisation that promote transparency, their financial info are quite opaque, minimally detailed, and secretive. https://foundation.mozilla.org/fr/about/public-records/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/fr/about/public-records/ Conveniently for them and curiously, they are only publishing the "consolidated" statements for the Moz Foundation. But, for example, it looks like that the individual statements for the Mozilla Corp are never published or disclosed. That is very annoying as it is the main "entity" of the organization. There is also no details about the split of costs and revenues associated with each main projects / services products / groups that are worked on for a given year. So, for example, no one can have a clear idea of how much money is spent on dev, marketing or administration of Firefox versus Pocket versus VPN versus charities versus fellowships, etc... If you look at the content of the limited financial documents, you can even have the impression that the foundation has no interest for the development of Firefox itself, and that they are just interested by it as a cash cow that generates (with the search deals) huge funds to give to whatever charities that Mozilla leaders are interested in.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  This is why I've switched to Chromium Edge on Macos and Windows 10. With Edge, I'm under no illusions with regard to what I'm getting myself into.
  - SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
    Seems like you're jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, no? Mozilla might be obscuring their financial details, but on balance they are one of the most ethical entities on the internet. Google and Microsoft both have the corporate predator instinct in their DNA.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      I'm already running Windows on three of the PCs I run, so I'm fucked there anyway.
  - 6y ago
jacquesm 6y ago
Cynical me sees a company that laid off 25% of their workforce knowing full well they had another 3 years of funding in the bag. There is no way those lay-offs could not have waited until after the Google deal was inked (which was extremely likely to happen). But of course it is a lot harder to fire people after stuffing your piggy bank at that level. People might ask some pointed questions.
- fzzzy 6y ago
  What makes you assume that the google deal will fund the previous burn rate for another 3 years?
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    A rough back of the envelope calculation. I could be off by a bit but regardless, you don't fire people in a situation like this. It is indecent. 400 to 450 million per year is what the article mentions. 400 million divided by the former 1000 employees leaves 400K / employee on average. That should be plenty.
    - fzzzy 6y ago
      Where do you think the article got that number? Hint: They just made it up.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        "However, our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year." It is possible they made it up but that's entirely in line with the past deals they made. If this was a factor in the lay-offs then it should have been mentioned. No evidence from you, article claims a source told them this, for now I'll go with the article until other evidence pops up, after all it looks like they were spot on with regards to the timing of the deal. Unless you are willing to tell us how much the deal is assuming you are privy to that info, then we'll use that figure instead.
dzamo_norton 6y ago
To someone who doesn't know better this looks a bit like: "We really like funding you but we don't like this project of yours that looks like it will eventually produce a fast browser without memory bugs and into which we cannot seamlessly introduce data collection, etc. If you can... make that go away then we'll just sign this cheque."

365 points by teraku 6y ago

gmb2k1 6y ago

So was it really necessary to lay-off the servo and wasm and security teams?

mrweasel 6y ago
Yes, they need the money to build stuff that will provide them with a steady stream of income from other sources, like online collaborative code editors, a VPN solution, a new diesel powered truck, a Firefox branded amusement park and an adult streaming service. I love you Mozilla, but please stop. Find a way to make money on what you do best: Firefox.
- stevehawk 6y ago
  I know would pay for Firefox if it helped keep them afloat. I doubt I'm alone. But, I also doubt there's enough of us to keep them afloat.
  - gmb2k1 6y ago
    Actually, I would too, if that money is guaranteed to be used only for Firefox development. And only that. Not to pocket, not to an inept C-Suite, not to their political activism. Not to any experiments outside of the core browser. But that's not even possible. You can only donate to the Mozilla Foundation, which uses the money for whatever they like.
    - manquer 6y ago
      there is always patreon, you could contribute to external developers who contribute to mainline , if they make enough money on patreon they could do it full time.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    It won't because people that currently use firefox would definitely switch over to chrome/chrome-based browsers then.
- TheCraiggers 6y ago
  How? Their three main competitors: Chrome, Edge (if that even counts, being Chromium based), and Safari are completely free AND installed by default on their respective operating system(s). "Not being installed by default" is already a very high hurdle for mainstream acceptance. If you tack on some sort of cost, I can't see that working well for adoption. Personally, I think they're on the right track with the VPN service. VPN services are already something people are used to paying for, and one of the biggest issues with VPN services are trying to figure out who you can trust out of all the nameless shell companies out there. Mozilla is a trusted brand.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    I have no idea, but I'm also not head of Mozilla. If they can't make money on Firefox in the future, why even bother to build and maintain it. Then they just become a VPN resell who for some unknown reason keeps building a browser. That doesn't make any sense business wise. If the management of Mozilla can't find a way to profit from Firefox, other than leaching on the goodwill and branding, then I don't think they're sufficiently competent to full fill their roles.
  - gmb2k1 6y ago
    What I don't get about the VPN thing is, that they're just a reseller of mullvad VPN. So, even if I trust Mozilla, that isn't of any help, if I don't trust mullvad. And if I do trust mullvad, why wouldn't I buy access from them directly? The only reason to get the Mozilla VPN is, to help them to a little commission for ideological reasons.
    - dorchadas 6y ago
      I don't think the VPN is targeted to people like you or me, who know about them already and know how to research and trust them. It's targeted towards a more "everyday" user, which might not think to go to Mullvad to buy it, or necessarily worry about the privacy implications (personally, I've heard good things about Mullvad and switched over after PIA sold), and just like the ease of integration through buying it with Firefox.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  How do you suggest they do that? As far as I can see, to make money from Firefox they need to either charge for the browser, start selling user data, or integrate 3rd party products. The first isn't commercially viable, the second fundamentally clashes with their principles and the third they have tried but gotten a lot of backlash and little success.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    I have no idea how that would work. Two ideas: * Let us pay for Firefox development. I'm not sure how much that would bring in. * Partnerships with news sites. You pay Mozilla, they keep 30% and use the rest to pay the news sites to not paywall Firefox. Currently Firefox is basically funded by Google, how does that not clash with their principles? It's okay for take money from a company that directly profit from collection user data, just don't collect the data yourself?
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    I mean, they currently make ~$450 million per year from Firefox due to their search deals (mainly Google but others in other countries). In the past I think they had Bing bidding for the deal as well. No reason for that to not continue if they maintain Firefox marketshare.
    - olejorgenb 6y ago
      Exactly. While it's not ideal to be dependent on a competitor like that it has been a very robust stream on income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio... $300M+ for 8 years (and now 3 more years)
      - marcinzm 6y ago
        Had Mozilla invested 75% of it rather than spending 75% they would have probably had a guaranteed $100 million/year from their investments alone for the next century.
- calcifer 6y ago
  > Find a way to make money on what you do best: Firefox. They tried. Pocket and cliqz were attempts at that. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you weren't supportive of those efforts either.
- roca 6y ago
  Here we see Mozilla's dilemma: half the Internet calling for Mozilla to focus on Firefox, the other half calling for Mozilla to diversity away from Firefox (which is implicitly what people are calling for when they call for Mozilla to diversify revenue).
- zerocrates 6y ago
  Well, they already make nearly all their money on Firefox, hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth.
pjmlp 6y ago
Well a conspiracy theorist could assert that downsizing their development teams was part of the deal. :)
tannhaeuser 6y ago
You probably won't like what I'm saying: WASM and Rust are completely irrelevant for the vast majority of people. It's only HN and a couple other places where folks are obsessed with it. Far more important is having a browser that can decipher that laughable piece of shit we're calling the web, and have unleashed upon the world. It would be cool if we could focus on fixing it.
- chmln 6y ago
  That makes no sense. People might not know about WASM or Rust, but people like fast browsers. Rust is what powers Servo, which in turn made performance of Firefox somewhat acceptable. Gutting both teams is extremely short-sighted.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    I wasn't under the impression that Servo was completed or deployed fully in released Firefox. I believe only the CSS engine is?
    - paulrouget 6y ago
      And WebRender. And there were plans for more…
- himinlomax 6y ago
  > You probably won't like what I'm saying: WASM and Rust are completely irrelevant for the vast majority of people Gears and valves are completely irrelevant to the vast majority of car users.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Were the layoffs a consideration for the new funding deal?
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  They clearly knew they were in the 11th hour for a big layoff before they would catch even more flack -after- the google deal because everyone would reading the news would also read the part about them still fire employee after a guaranteed 3 years of funding.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Sorry, what?
sp332 6y ago
I'm not saying it was a good move, but they didn't let go all of the security people like that one tweet kinda implied. https://twitter.com/arroway53c/status/1293867434374569985 https://twitter.com/arroway53c/status/1293867434374569985 https://twitter.com/jvehent/status/1293511397649854464 https://twitter.com/jvehent/status/1293511397649854464

PaulHoule 6y ago

Was dispersing the MDN and Rust teams part of the deal?

threatofrain 6y ago
Google may want Mozilla around for anti-trust defense, but it's not like Google's particularly interested in how tightly Mozilla runs the ship.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  Well Google might want to get rid of the Servo team... but that would seem to be a really stupid deal to make in case it ever became public.
- buran77 6y ago
  On PCs Chrome has ~70% market share with Firefox being a distant second with <8%. On mobile Firefox's market share is a negligible 0.7% compared to Google's 64%. If Google wants Firefox to stick around it's certainly not because it would give them any plausible defense in an antitrust lawsuit.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    If it gets any more lopsided than it is, Google will be in trouble.
yodelshady 6y ago
I'm not sure why they'd benefit from that, but it's interesting Microsoft has been going hard on evangelising Rust. For once I'm taking a not-conspiratorial line and think it's just all concerned parties wanting fewer bugs in software. But it does lead to an interesting line of thought for Mozilla...
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >but it's interesting Microsoft has been going hard on evangelising Rust. Microsoft put a report out a while ago that memory safety issues account for over 70% of security bugs in microsoft products[1] which they attribute to unsafe languages in the codebase so it seems natural that they're interested in Rust. [1]https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-se...

donkeyd 6y ago

I've been using FF for a while now and I like the privacy side of it. When I made the switch, I also tried to ditch Google for DDG, but I haven't been able to make it work. The results in DDG always seem to be pumped by SEO and are more often affiliate marketing blogs. Google often manages to bring me the right results right away.

teraku 6y ago
Not really related, but here goes. I use DDG as main engine and it works for 95% of my search queries, you just have to be a little more exact with what you type. So if I know what I'm looking for, DDG usually gives me the better results. And if it's a general thing, the result are usually the same between Google & DDG (i.e. Who was the 42nd president or whatever). When I specially search for something that is marketed/an ad, then Google yields better results. For example "that shop around the corner". But for that you can just use DDG's bangs: "g! shop around the corner" will redirect you to Google Search with that query.
mc32 6y ago
I used to feel that way too but now I feel google is full of results bloat. The serps are full of idiotic social media results and entertainment results than original content results (blogs, news sites, commercial, personal sites, etc). Search has become frustrating everywhere.
- lrem 6y ago
  Can you provide some example queries? I work for Google, but nowhere near search. I'm just curious whether that's a difference in search bubbles, as I haven't noticed this problem.
  - mc32 6y ago
    I was looking for independent movie reviews (in this case red letter media -but without adding RLM as I’d forgotten the source) for Star Wars, but got flooded with to me irrelevant results. To be fair, it’s most pronounced when I’m looking for something I found in the past and then try searching for it in the present. Using custom date ranges help a bit but it’s still biased toward big entertainment and “brands”. So what it looks like to is that it doesn’t use historical rankings to show results but present rankings. So let’s say I was looking for something sports related that in 2005 was on a regional site, today that site is relatively obscure so even if you limit date range it would down rank the legacy site even if back then it would have been at the top.

rbecker 6y ago

> As a non-profit open-source operation, Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m I'd sleep easier if Mozilla saved some cash for a rainy day. Is there really no way to maintain a browser with less than a quarter billion dollars a year?

teraku 6y ago
In the comments of the article one person mentions that libre offices runs on a little less than a million a year. I'd argue that Mozilla has a few more repos that need mending (i.e. Rust, Servo, MDN, ...) but if you pay an average of 100k$ salary and have like 10 techpeople per team plus some management/community management/project management you could do a rough estimate of <10 core teams * 15 people * 100k$/year + 5m$ for infrastructure/rent == 20m$>. Even if you pay your CEO 2,5m$ afterwards, you'd still have loads of money left. Not sure where all of it goes. And I'm a bit reluctant to just say "bad management" in terms of money allocation. Although I do hate this cut in workforce and feel like it's the worst management decision in tech in recent history.
- esrauch 6y ago
  They have somewhere around 750 employees still after the layoffs; it's hard to understand your comment that that both says they should have 150 employees but reducing their teams is a bad decision.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- xxs 6y ago
  single revenue stream gotta be the hallmark of bad magenement. Not just that, but tied to your direct competitor.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > In the comments of the article one person mentions that libre offices runs on a little less than a million a year. That's just the foundation budget. It doesn't include all the salaries of people working on the project employed by commercial companies (Collabora etc.)

thinkingkong 6y ago

The new browser wars are weird. Google seems to be weaponizing its stack / fleet of products to make firefox less desireable. Firefox might not have much leverage when this deal comes up for renewal. Really hope they find a way to build some sustainable alternative business models during this timeline. I think thats more of a motivating factor in the recent layoffs + their incubator-ish strategy.

TheCraiggers 6y ago
I really think Google simply keeps FF around just to help prevent anti-trust litigation. When viewed in that light, it's a bargain.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  It also means that you can’t de-google while supporting Firefox since it’s pretty much their only source of income other than donations.
  - liability 6y ago
    I don't give a damn, I degoogled anyway. As much as is technically possible without building Firefox myself anyway.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Set a different default search engine on Firefox.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      You are missing the point it’s not that you physically can’t do that but you can’t do that while supporting (as indirectly financially) Firefox, it also ensures that Firefox doesn’t go out of their way to push people to de-google.
    - sp332 6y ago
      This actually will hurt, because: "Firefox's revenue is subject to the overall trend of the search market and our product performance, versus a guaranteed payment." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef...

0xUser 6y ago

"mega-millions", so... "trillions" ?

ffpip 6y ago
No. kilo-billions
- DrBazza 6y ago
  Microquintillions, surely?
- hibbelig 6y ago
  Giga-kilos :-)
jermier 6y ago
That's your typical The Register hyperbolic headline for you. They're infamous for dressing up headlines with hyperbolic adjectives.
dang 6y ago
Thanks, I didn't notice that bit. I have de-megamillioned the title above.

The_rationalist 6y ago

How much % loss of revenue for the new deal?

compsciphd 6y ago
article says "However, our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year." so 400-450 million just from google. per google, in 2018, their entire revenue was only 450 million. https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=mozilla+revenue https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=moz... so if they are making more than 50 million from the rest of their country deals, it doesn't seem like revenue would have dropped that much
- freshsqueeze 6y ago
  Revenue had never dropped for Mozilla. COVID had zero affect on their revenue stream as they lied in their layoff post. They get all their money from Google ad money to $500M a year guaranteed, with $500M in the bank, and $500M/yr upcoming. The layoffs were just to secure the execs' lifetime pensions.

cameron_b 6y ago

So what browser are you switching to?

compsciphd 6y ago

What does mozilla spend money on outside of personal costs? Mozilla had approximately 1000 employees. If they are grossing 450M a year in revenue and 50% of their expenses are personal costs, tht means on average they are spending 225K per employee. for a non profit (even if its a non profit in the tech field and has to compete with tech firms for employees), that seems high. i.e. if one would compare them to Series A or B startups in SV, those would be reasonably high compensation packages (albiet without the stock option upside, but most stock options aren't worth the paper they are printed on, even for series A companies perhaps a bit more likelihood with series B). Even if one says its 33%, that's still 150K per average employee expense. while that wouldn't result in a great SV salary, its would probably be competitive in most of the world. just trying to understand where all the money goes?

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
According to the article: > Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m with a headcount of about 1,000, or about $286,000 per person, on average. Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. Presumably there are large infrastructure fees for things like Firefox Sync, which by the way just introduced storage limits: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storage-sync-in-firefox-79/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/07/09/changes-to-storag... But come on, how about saving some for rainy days?
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  > Still doesn’t explain what they do with the rest. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-returns-and-financial-information https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/#tax-... has some of the information you seek; see the various "Audited financial statements" links. The 2019 one will presumably be available once the audit (which starts on the tax filing deadline, so in July this year) is done. > But come on, how about saving some for rainy days? The 2018 financials show ~$520 million in net assets (assets minus liabilities) at the end of the year. The vast majority if this is in "cash" and "investments".
DangerousPie 6y ago

bogomipz 6y ago

>"Crucially, the organization vowed to double down and "ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams" – products like its bookmarking app Pocket, its virtual social meeting rooms Hubs, and its $4.99-a-month VPN subscription service. >“The people who are included in the reduction are both true Mozillians, and professionals with high degrees of skill and expertise and commitment," CEO Mitchell Baker said in a memo. "This action is not in any way – not, not, not – a reflection on personal or professional qualities.” >Mozilla's Servo team, which was working away on a new browser engine for Firefox in Rust, was closed down by the cuts. The group working on the Mozilla Developer Network – the essential bible for web devs and programmers – was hit hard, too, as were some of its security, policy, and tooling staffers. How exactly would folks working on things like browsers engines, Security, policy and tooling not be extremely valuable for working on "products like its bookmarking app Pocket, its virtual social meeting rooms Hubs, and its $4.99-a-month VPN subscription service."? Further the fact that $400-450 million dollars in new funding is announced days after large layoffs is says a lot about CEO Mitchell Baker's management and values. This CEO is the one who should be looking for a new job right now.

StillBored 6y ago
Teams that instead of fixing their main product, go off and create even larger products that don't have immediate revenue streams do little to "ship new products faster" or help the bottom line. This is going to be down voted, but if I were running a software dev team charged with producing X and they spent all their time doing Y because they "need" a new tool I would question their value. Particularly if all the competitors are kicking our butts, and don't seem to need said tool. So, rust is great and all, but is mozilla really the org that needs to ground up create a new langage/ecosystem? Outside of the tiny developer community using rust, what does it bring to the end users of firefox (you know the other few billion people on the planet who aren't developers) that couldn't have been done with just spending the time to fix compiler warnings/errors and enable some basic code analysis/linter functionality on the existing code base? (which yes, I've fixed some bugs in firefox, its a giant mess, every time a new GCC comes out, firefox needs to have bugs patched just to run).
- 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cashsterling 6y ago

FWIW... I work at a (~50 person) engineering design and fabrication firm. Our cost for Sr. scientist level folks is about ~300k USD fully burdened. At a big pharma company in the bay area... that number was more like ~400k USD for a principle engineer. So for Moz: ~286k USD per employee in the bay area is cheap, IMO... and I imagine their is a big distribution in that number across employee level and job descriptions.

shuckles 6y ago
Much of Mozilla was remote, at least based on the locations of laid off people on the Mozilla Lifeboat page shared yesterday.
manquer 6y ago
More than half of Mozilla staff are remote , there are very very few companies outside big tech that can support 1,000 strength office in Bay Area, and it would be inefficient to do so. It is true that for some skills Bay Area is the best and perhaps only available talent pool, even in high tech company like Mozilla that kind of talent is maybe 10-20 % of their overall workforce , for the rest there is cheaper and equally good alternatives available
dleslie 6y ago
Mozilla has a great many employees, engineers even, who are not in the bay area.
tinus_hn 6y ago
Do they have 1000 senior employees and no one who earns less? Because that’s what you need to make that the average.
ttul 6y ago
Mozilla has a gold-plated healthcare plan for its US team. No co-pay at all. They cover absolutely everything.
MagnumOpus 6y ago
You assume that every employee at Moz is a principal engineer or senior scientist. This is not the case.

chmln 6y ago

This is practically the end of Mozilla, a sad result of horrendous mismanagement. Instead of pouring all its resources to make a superior browser and thus attract more money by having bigger market share, they just stagnated. They bought pocket and gutted Servo for virtual reality. They invested in superficial political activism and paid exorbitant amount of money to execs. Firefox is inferior in all regards except privacy. People will claim it's just as fast as others, but even if it wasn't obviously false it wouldn't be enough. It should be undoubtedly better in all regards. With all the money of Mozilla they could've built a better, faster browser but they just didn't want to badly enough. And that's the tragedy.

walterbell 6y ago

Thunderbird is funded by users. There is currently no way to donate directly to Firefox separately of Mozilla general fund. Can initial steps be taken to financially firewall Firefox development from the rest of Mozilla, as Thunderbird has done successfully? Start by moving the web standards advocacy brain trust to the separate org. Ask users to donate/subscribe. Begin the transition now, don't wait for the next negotiation with Alphabet/Google. As donations grow, more Firefox teams can move to the independent legal org.

nvr219 6y ago
I use Firefox and Thunderbird all day, every day, and Thunderbird definitely feels like it's funded by users whereas Firefox feels like it is funded by an actual company lol. So.
- walterbell 6y ago
  In 2020, desktop email clients are also a smaller market by several orders of magnitude.
  - notyourwork 6y ago
    For end users probably, for enterprise I doubt it.
    - freehunter 6y ago
      But enterprise is going to default something with an enterprise license and support agreement (like Outlook). You might have some users who prefer Thunderbird but they’re going to be a much smaller audience.
      - giancarlostoro 6y ago
        Not always, we pay for a plugin for Thunderbird (ExQuilzilla) though. We're primarily working on Linux systems so it makes no sense to even have Outlook or Windows in our office. We don't make up a large demographic of our company (which is in the F500 range), but I wouldn't be surprised if there's other places that do the same. It's a shame Firefox doesn't sell a developer ready IDE, I'd subscribe to that myself if it means better MDN and that the dev tools team is better funded, and Firefox in addition to other donations from elsewhere, throw in a VPN subscription to sweeten it for most people. I'm ready to pay for anything that funds Firefox directly. I've even seen some in QA who do have Windows just installing Thunderbird.

wwwwwwwww 6y ago

Mozilla just exists so that Google can lie about there "existing competition" on the browser market.

missedthecue 6y ago
Edge, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and new upstarts like Brave seems like a reasonably competitive market to me.
- sethish 6y ago
  Except that edge, safari and chrome are all derived from the codebase that Google controls
  - seabrookmx 6y ago
    You mean Edge, Opera and Chrome. Safari runs on WebKit not blink, which has shared lineage but Google has no control over.
- stu2b50 6y ago
  Maybe numerically, but Chrome alone has 70% marketshare. When you consider that edge runs off of the Chrome engine, Google controls like >80% of how the world sees the web essentially. If Chrome adds a new feature, everyone else must adapt as well.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    For the average user, Chrome is just the best browser. There is nothing wrong with 70% of consumers liking them more than other browsers because the switching cost is free and there are plenty of alternatives.
    - gruez 6y ago
      On desktop, maybe. But on mobile? Firefox for Android (or fenix), or any other ad-blocking browser (eg. brave) is unequivocally better.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Now, this makes the reason for layoffs and the blame on COVID-19 much more suspicious. I thought Google had really shrunk the search engine deal, due to Ad revenue slow down[1] and may be the pandemic reason was indirectly true. I just hope that the 're-structure' wasn't dictated by the Google itself. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141592

surfsvammel 6y ago

I’m a Firefox user. I don’t use Google search. But I have no problem Mozilla getting money from Google as long as I can choose to use another search engine.

fritex 6y ago

Kind of a, each update for Mozilla Developer version f*cks up the working version before. More and more I have to change the settings "about:config". I am really thinking to switch from Mozilla Developer and Google search engine to something else. Any recommendations?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

greatgib 6y ago

I just had a look at the financial documents for Mozilla, and I have to say that, for an organisation that promote transparency, their financial info are quite opaque, minimally detailed, and secretive. https://foundation.mozilla.org/fr/about/public-records/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/fr/about/public-records/ Conveniently for them and curiously, they are only publishing the "consolidated" statements for the Moz Foundation. But, for example, it looks like that the individual statements for the Mozilla Corp are never published or disclosed. That is very annoying as it is the main "entity" of the organization. There is also no details about the split of costs and revenues associated with each main projects / services products / groups that are worked on for a given year. So, for example, no one can have a clear idea of how much money is spent on dev, marketing or administration of Firefox versus Pocket versus VPN versus charities versus fellowships, etc... If you look at the content of the limited financial documents, you can even have the impression that the foundation has no interest for the development of Firefox itself, and that they are just interested by it as a cash cow that generates (with the search deals) huge funds to give to whatever charities that Mozilla leaders are interested in.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
This is why I've switched to Chromium Edge on Macos and Windows 10. With Edge, I'm under no illusions with regard to what I'm getting myself into.
- SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
  Seems like you're jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, no? Mozilla might be obscuring their financial details, but on balance they are one of the most ethical entities on the internet. Google and Microsoft both have the corporate predator instinct in their DNA.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    I'm already running Windows on three of the PCs I run, so I'm fucked there anyway.
- 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

Cynical me sees a company that laid off 25% of their workforce knowing full well they had another 3 years of funding in the bag. There is no way those lay-offs could not have waited until after the Google deal was inked (which was extremely likely to happen). But of course it is a lot harder to fire people after stuffing your piggy bank at that level. People might ask some pointed questions.

fzzzy 6y ago
What makes you assume that the google deal will fund the previous burn rate for another 3 years?
- jacquesm 6y ago
  A rough back of the envelope calculation. I could be off by a bit but regardless, you don't fire people in a situation like this. It is indecent. 400 to 450 million per year is what the article mentions. 400 million divided by the former 1000 employees leaves 400K / employee on average. That should be plenty.
  - fzzzy 6y ago
    Where do you think the article got that number? Hint: They just made it up.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      "However, our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year." It is possible they made it up but that's entirely in line with the past deals they made. If this was a factor in the lay-offs then it should have been mentioned. No evidence from you, article claims a source told them this, for now I'll go with the article until other evidence pops up, after all it looks like they were spot on with regards to the timing of the deal. Unless you are willing to tell us how much the deal is assuming you are privy to that info, then we'll use that figure instead.

dzamo_norton 6y ago

To someone who doesn't know better this looks a bit like: "We really like funding you but we don't like this project of yours that looks like it will eventually produce a fast browser without memory bugs and into which we cannot seamlessly introduce data collection, etc. If you can... make that go away then we'll just sign this cheque."