5 ms·

> So having Google as the default search engine is the right approach for privacy? That's not their entire approach to privacy. How would you have them exist?

> So having Google as the default search engine is the right approach for privacy? That's not their entire approach to privacy. How would you have them exist? There aren't enough people willing to pay for a web browser in 2020. There aren't enough unpaid volunteers to work for free and outcompete Chrome. What would you have Mozilla do? They're trying to develop other services that can actually make them money so they don't need Google's money to exist, and people here are shitting on them left and right for this. Could Mozilla be managed better? Yes of course. Is there some obvious grand strategy that would save them if only they didn't miss it? No, I don't think so. "Just focus on the browser", say people who haven't paid for a browser since Opera, if ever. Ha. Mozilla are not in a good strategic position. Public trust and technical expertise are the only major assets they have, and those are not directly monetizable to the tune of $100M. I do hope very much that they figure out how to leverage these assets into more neutral, more grassroots profit streams before the next renewal of google's deal. But let's not demonize them unnecessarily, they have it hard enough as it is. In web technologies they're the last ones on "our side", pretty much.

Ygg2 6y ago
> There aren't enough people willing to pay for a web browser in 2020. As one said, their problems didn't start in 2020. Honestly, Firefox should have fought tooth and nail to be THE embeddable browser. We should not be embedding Blink/WebKit but Gecko or Servo. It should have fought Google in EU, but kinda hard to do that when you depend on them. The reason they got checkmated weren't made now, but several years before.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  People are willing to pay for antivirus, which promises to protect you from the dangers of the open internet, just like what a good web browser can do. I would pay $5 a month for a browser where I'm in control. I mean my company also pays a lot every year just to upgrade us to Windows Enterprise. And to me, going from Chrome to an unpleasant-surprise-free alternative would be similar.
manquer 6y ago
It is may look like the reasonable compromise on the surface but it really isn't. Manifestos are about principles not pragmatic approaches, taking a stance is not free or easy, look at the stance RMS takes on open source and GPL for example. Had RMS and other pioneers in the open source movement did not take such ideologically driven stance at the expense of pragmatism , we may have parts of BSD maybe today but not the GPL driven open source ecosystem that all of us benefit from, even now it costs open source a lot look at linux and zFS . You can apply the same argument with Google early on, they were hugely influential in reducing the amount and type of ads we were forced to see. They have developed great open source projects and provided a lot of good quality free services all funded by ad revenue, how is it really different from Mozilla then ? so should I see only those contributions and ignore what Google really does on privacy ? Being uncompromising in the face of great difficulty is the only way of real, sustainable change and revolutionize how things work, had Google stuck to "Do no Evil"(whatever that meant to them) no one would worry about using Chrome, if organizations loose focus they only really exist to make money for employees/ shareholders/ management. Also this is not sustainable model, that search revenue is going to keep dropping as they keep loosing market share, inevitably they are either going to drop Firefox altogether or going to base it of Chrome and shelve most of the team. If Microsoft cannot afford to develop Edge as separate browser, how long Firefox will last in this structure ? We are better off forking off in a community funded model before the inevitable happens and try to build a sustainable project around that. There are enough companies who can donate few million dollars a year each to make sure Google is not the only player in town. Wikipedia raises more than $120 M / year, it is not inconceivable, that Moz foundation can raise a reasonable amount to fund the development of the key projects.
- nikitaga 6y ago
  I've never heard any person outside of tech forums complain about Firefox's default search engine being Google. Even those people who are privacy conscious who complain about google and facebook privacy all the time. Not once in so many years have they complained about Firefox privacy, in fact the opposite sentiment is prevailing among those people. I don't think Firefox is failing to retain market share because their values are compromised. I think it's because Google is outspending them in technical work. And doing all they can to promote Chrome. And optimizing their own products for Chrome only. I really do not think that refusing $400M/year, and trying to raise a fraction of that from companies and people that so far have not contributed significant funding will somehow improve Firefox's appeal to end users. Firefox is a consumer product, unlike BSD. I know this is disagreeable on this forum, but RMS' values although certainly commendable are not super useful in building popular consumer products. As evidenced by absolutely negligible proportion of consumer software created with values as uncompromising as RMS (measured by the number of users who actually choose the software, not people who use it without knowing, because that has nothing to do with consumer products or values). > We are better off forking off in a community funded model before the inevitable happens and try to build a sustainable project around that. By all means, go ahead, see how much momentum you can get. I will be positively surprised if such an initiative takes off, although I would still not expect that to improve the fate of Firefox or its new fork. Google needs antitrust action at this point.
kgraves 6y ago
> What would you have Mozilla do? They're trying to develop other services that can actually make them money so they don't need Google's money to exist, and people here are shitting on them left and right for this. charge businesses for Firefox Enterprise Edition, that way businesses are paying for support and funds development towards Firefox.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  Fully agree. Charge for compatibility with Windows Enterprise because you know that those people already are willing to pay for privacy improvements.
- makapuf 6y ago
  Do entreprises get charged more for edge or chrome similar business options? Competing with free is hard.
  - kgraves 6y ago
    Google Chrome Enterprise exists for this purpose [0]. [0] https://chromeenterprise.google/ https://chromeenterprise.google/
freshsqueeze 6y ago
They are more concerned with their public image than innovating. Hence why there are so many defenders of them because their marketing works so well to the tech crowd (just spam "privacy", "freedom", "open source"). There's no grand strategy one can come up with instantly, but their corporate leadership stifled any chance Mozilla could discover the right angles to innovate. With $500M a year, they could've had a sea of strike teams clawing its way towards the right answer. But alas, any such group would suffocate under a top-heavy culture more interested in their image.
ekianjo 6y ago
> There aren't enough people willing to pay for a web browser in 2020. Interesting claim, since no browser out there was ever made available for payment in recent history. So if I follow you correctly, there are people willing to support projects on Patreon and shell money on software they find important and worth supporting, but for some reason for a much more sophisticated piece of software like a browser suddenly no such market would exist? I'd like to see Mozilla seriously try instead of accepting a check from Google every single year while pretending they care about their users' privacy.

Ygg2 6y ago

> There aren't enough people willing to pay for a web browser in 2020. As one said, their problems didn't start in 2020. Honestly, Firefox should have fought tooth and nail to be THE embeddable browser. We should not be embedding Blink/WebKit but Gecko or Servo. It should have fought Google in EU, but kinda hard to do that when you depend on them. The reason they got checkmated weren't made now, but several years before.

fxtentacle 6y ago
People are willing to pay for antivirus, which promises to protect you from the dangers of the open internet, just like what a good web browser can do. I would pay $5 a month for a browser where I'm in control. I mean my company also pays a lot every year just to upgrade us to Windows Enterprise. And to me, going from Chrome to an unpleasant-surprise-free alternative would be similar.

manquer 6y ago

It is may look like the reasonable compromise on the surface but it really isn't. Manifestos are about principles not pragmatic approaches, taking a stance is not free or easy, look at the stance RMS takes on open source and GPL for example. Had RMS and other pioneers in the open source movement did not take such ideologically driven stance at the expense of pragmatism , we may have parts of BSD maybe today but not the GPL driven open source ecosystem that all of us benefit from, even now it costs open source a lot look at linux and zFS . You can apply the same argument with Google early on, they were hugely influential in reducing the amount and type of ads we were forced to see. They have developed great open source projects and provided a lot of good quality free services all funded by ad revenue, how is it really different from Mozilla then ? so should I see only those contributions and ignore what Google really does on privacy ? Being uncompromising in the face of great difficulty is the only way of real, sustainable change and revolutionize how things work, had Google stuck to "Do no Evil"(whatever that meant to them) no one would worry about using Chrome, if organizations loose focus they only really exist to make money for employees/ shareholders/ management. Also this is not sustainable model, that search revenue is going to keep dropping as they keep loosing market share, inevitably they are either going to drop Firefox altogether or going to base it of Chrome and shelve most of the team. If Microsoft cannot afford to develop Edge as separate browser, how long Firefox will last in this structure ? We are better off forking off in a community funded model before the inevitable happens and try to build a sustainable project around that. There are enough companies who can donate few million dollars a year each to make sure Google is not the only player in town. Wikipedia raises more than $120 M / year, it is not inconceivable, that Moz foundation can raise a reasonable amount to fund the development of the key projects.

nikitaga 6y ago
I've never heard any person outside of tech forums complain about Firefox's default search engine being Google. Even those people who are privacy conscious who complain about google and facebook privacy all the time. Not once in so many years have they complained about Firefox privacy, in fact the opposite sentiment is prevailing among those people. I don't think Firefox is failing to retain market share because their values are compromised. I think it's because Google is outspending them in technical work. And doing all they can to promote Chrome. And optimizing their own products for Chrome only. I really do not think that refusing $400M/year, and trying to raise a fraction of that from companies and people that so far have not contributed significant funding will somehow improve Firefox's appeal to end users. Firefox is a consumer product, unlike BSD. I know this is disagreeable on this forum, but RMS' values although certainly commendable are not super useful in building popular consumer products. As evidenced by absolutely negligible proportion of consumer software created with values as uncompromising as RMS (measured by the number of users who actually choose the software, not people who use it without knowing, because that has nothing to do with consumer products or values). > We are better off forking off in a community funded model before the inevitable happens and try to build a sustainable project around that. By all means, go ahead, see how much momentum you can get. I will be positively surprised if such an initiative takes off, although I would still not expect that to improve the fate of Firefox or its new fork. Google needs antitrust action at this point.

kgraves 6y ago

> What would you have Mozilla do? They're trying to develop other services that can actually make them money so they don't need Google's money to exist, and people here are shitting on them left and right for this. charge businesses for Firefox Enterprise Edition, that way businesses are paying for support and funds development towards Firefox.

fxtentacle 6y ago
Fully agree. Charge for compatibility with Windows Enterprise because you know that those people already are willing to pay for privacy improvements.
makapuf 6y ago
Do entreprises get charged more for edge or chrome similar business options? Competing with free is hard.
- kgraves 6y ago
  Google Chrome Enterprise exists for this purpose [0]. [0] https://chromeenterprise.google/ https://chromeenterprise.google/

freshsqueeze 6y ago

They are more concerned with their public image than innovating. Hence why there are so many defenders of them because their marketing works so well to the tech crowd (just spam "privacy", "freedom", "open source"). There's no grand strategy one can come up with instantly, but their corporate leadership stifled any chance Mozilla could discover the right angles to innovate. With $500M a year, they could've had a sea of strike teams clawing its way towards the right answer. But alas, any such group would suffocate under a top-heavy culture more interested in their image.

ekianjo 6y ago

> There aren't enough people willing to pay for a web browser in 2020. Interesting claim, since no browser out there was ever made available for payment in recent history. So if I follow you correctly, there are people willing to support projects on Patreon and shell money on software they find important and worth supporting, but for some reason for a much more sophisticated piece of software like a browser suddenly no such market would exist? I'd like to see Mozilla seriously try instead of accepting a check from Google every single year while pretending they care about their users' privacy.