3 ms·

With more than 30% of employees laid off this year, it is going to be extremely difficult for Mozilla to get back market share from other browsers. If they were

With more than 30% of employees laid off this year, it is going to be extremely difficult for Mozilla to get back market share from other browsers. If they were not able to do it before, how can they do it now with fewer people? And without market share, there will not be enough alternative revenue streams to have a google-free future. Firefox will continue to slowly lose users, at around the current 10% a year, until it becomes too small for google to even pay them anything anymore. Sad but that’s the reality. Trying to compete in extremely competitive areas like VPN services is not going to work.

bad_user 6y ago
They did not fire employees working on Firefox. The questionable layoffs were the Servo devs, which were arguably working on next-gen stuff. But the Gecko team remained intact. It’s actually not bad for orgs to trim expenses. Given Mozilla still has solid revenue, we could view these layoffs as refocusing on stuff that matters (Firefox, plus revenue diversification via services), while ensuring they stay in business for years to come. Everyone knows that they are too reliant on Google’s revenue stream. Now that they are taking steps to diversify and to be leaner, everyone jumps on them. Well I for one am optimistic about Mozilla and Firefox’s future.
- DocTomoe 6y ago
  They also laid off the Rust guys, and the mozdev folks. Both of which were pretty essential for the mission. I now consider Firefox to be a failed, and quickly sinking project. It's time to give up on them.
  - kungato 6y ago
    They strayed too far from the core product and had to be cut. I consider it a sensible decision from a budget perspective? How much does it make sense for a nonprofit to fund a growing language? Now corps can spend their money on Rush instead directly
    - wyclif 6y ago
      Wait, Mozilla gives money to Rush? I thought they retired the band after the death of Neil Peart.
- gsnedders 6y ago
  > They did not fire employees working on Firefox. They did, and some pretty notable ones at that. Filtering https://talentdirectory.mozilla.org/ https://talentdirectory.mozilla.org/ to the "Engineering" department is largely people who worked on Firefox. The loss of David Baron for one has got to be felt: he's one of the few people who had a good high-level view of all layout and style work in Gecko and its integration with the rest of the engine. And he's not the only pretty senior engineer who was let go: there's definitely some dubious lay-offs there. The Servo team was pretty small (around half a dozen people by the end, I think), and many would've been fantastic people to keep within Mozilla, even if refocused to Gecko. And it must be said that Mozilla have been trying to diversify for years, largely to little success. Losing Mozilla entirely would unquestionably be a loss for the web, and it would be a real shame to lose another browser engine.

bad_user 6y ago

They did not fire employees working on Firefox. The questionable layoffs were the Servo devs, which were arguably working on next-gen stuff. But the Gecko team remained intact. It’s actually not bad for orgs to trim expenses. Given Mozilla still has solid revenue, we could view these layoffs as refocusing on stuff that matters (Firefox, plus revenue diversification via services), while ensuring they stay in business for years to come. Everyone knows that they are too reliant on Google’s revenue stream. Now that they are taking steps to diversify and to be leaner, everyone jumps on them. Well I for one am optimistic about Mozilla and Firefox’s future.

DocTomoe 6y ago
They also laid off the Rust guys, and the mozdev folks. Both of which were pretty essential for the mission. I now consider Firefox to be a failed, and quickly sinking project. It's time to give up on them.
- kungato 6y ago
  They strayed too far from the core product and had to be cut. I consider it a sensible decision from a budget perspective? How much does it make sense for a nonprofit to fund a growing language? Now corps can spend their money on Rush instead directly
  - wyclif 6y ago
    Wait, Mozilla gives money to Rush? I thought they retired the band after the death of Neil Peart.
gsnedders 6y ago
> They did not fire employees working on Firefox. They did, and some pretty notable ones at that. Filtering https://talentdirectory.mozilla.org/ https://talentdirectory.mozilla.org/ to the "Engineering" department is largely people who worked on Firefox. The loss of David Baron for one has got to be felt: he's one of the few people who had a good high-level view of all layout and style work in Gecko and its integration with the rest of the engine. And he's not the only pretty senior engineer who was let go: there's definitely some dubious lay-offs there. The Servo team was pretty small (around half a dozen people by the end, I think), and many would've been fantastic people to keep within Mozilla, even if refocused to Gecko. And it must be said that Mozilla have been trying to diversify for years, largely to little success. Losing Mozilla entirely would unquestionably be a loss for the web, and it would be a real shame to lose another browser engine.