3 ms·

Brave runs their own ad network. So does Edge. Firefox makes their money through search engine placement and donations. I don't think these browsers being less

Brave runs their own ad network. So does Edge. Firefox makes their money through search engine placement and donations. I don't think these browsers being less valued on another company's ad network is actually a loss for them.

jimmydorry 6y ago
>Firefox makes their money through search engine placement and donations I have to assume you wrote this in good faith, however, this is a circuitous way of describing how Mozilla / Firefox makes its money. It comes directly from Google! One can easily imagine a future where Firefox must implement FLoC to continue receiving that money.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  While it has largely come from Google they have at times and in some markets had other search defaults.
  - freebuju 6y ago
    Probably won't be able to afford their top-dollar CEO if Google ever pulled the rug. Mozilla is totally dependent on this search deal.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > One can easily imagine a future where Firefox must implement FLoC to continue receiving that money. I can see them getting a good offer from Bing... Does Mozilla have an endowment? I would hope that they’d keep at least $10m in endowment so that they can sustainably continue to fund minimal development to keep the engine and browser up-to-date w.r.t. security and W3C spec changes.
  - freebuju 6y ago
    > I can see them getting a good offer from Bing MS has no incentive to make any such deal. FF marketshare numbers having been tanking so bad, even the newer Edge browser might overtake them in a few years. Assuming they would still make Firefox an offer, good would be far from an apt description of it.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Microsoft’s as network isn’t really relevant nor a significant driver of business decisions at Microsoft. Disclaimer: former FTE SE, and I worked on Internet Explorer briefly in 2015. Chromium-Edge was forked after I left MS, but from what I gathered the higher-ups were aware of how far-behind MSHTML+EdgeHTML was, and it was getting worse with each Chrome release. One major problem was the rise in the popularity of NodeJS and Electron: both of which trounced Windows’ Chakra engine and legacy HTA platform (and no-one was building for “Windows Store HTML” for obvious reasons), especially on ARM (IIRC, Chakra didn’t JIT on ARM). Anyway, Microsoft’s problem is they don’t want to lose the web to Google because they recognise the web is now “the platform”, including desktop “web” apps running in Electron. Any business knows it’s a liability to have dependencies on your competitors. The plan, originally, was to base Edge on Chromium, then built it into the OS, so desktop apps can use modern Chromium features in a build optimised for Windows and the user’s computer without needing 200MB+ Electron packages and 400MB RAM and dozens of separate processes for what should be a trusted application. ...however that still hasn’t panned-out yet. Which I find concerning because I thought Microsoft would treat Chromium the way Apple treats Safari: a browser that puts the user - and their privacy - first, because Microsoft isn’t Google and doesn’t significantly benefit from tracking users over the web. ...but they have been. Edge’s privacy stats are almost as bad as Chrome’s. I’m guessing some GP or VP from the Bing org had a word with OSG’s VPs and convinced them to compromise Edge to benefit Bing despite the overall damage to the Microsoft brand and eliminating possibly the most important advantage Edge had over Chrome.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  typo: "Microsoft's as network" should be "Microsoft's ad network". HN isn't letting me edit my post for some reason.
  - mkl 6y ago
    You can only edit comments for two hours.

jimmydorry 6y ago

>Firefox makes their money through search engine placement and donations I have to assume you wrote this in good faith, however, this is a circuitous way of describing how Mozilla / Firefox makes its money. It comes directly from Google! One can easily imagine a future where Firefox must implement FLoC to continue receiving that money.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
While it has largely come from Google they have at times and in some markets had other search defaults.
- freebuju 6y ago
  Probably won't be able to afford their top-dollar CEO if Google ever pulled the rug. Mozilla is totally dependent on this search deal.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> One can easily imagine a future where Firefox must implement FLoC to continue receiving that money. I can see them getting a good offer from Bing... Does Mozilla have an endowment? I would hope that they’d keep at least $10m in endowment so that they can sustainably continue to fund minimal development to keep the engine and browser up-to-date w.r.t. security and W3C spec changes.
- freebuju 6y ago
  > I can see them getting a good offer from Bing MS has no incentive to make any such deal. FF marketshare numbers having been tanking so bad, even the newer Edge browser might overtake them in a few years. Assuming they would still make Firefox an offer, good would be far from an apt description of it.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

Microsoft’s as network isn’t really relevant nor a significant driver of business decisions at Microsoft. Disclaimer: former FTE SE, and I worked on Internet Explorer briefly in 2015. Chromium-Edge was forked after I left MS, but from what I gathered the higher-ups were aware of how far-behind MSHTML+EdgeHTML was, and it was getting worse with each Chrome release. One major problem was the rise in the popularity of NodeJS and Electron: both of which trounced Windows’ Chakra engine and legacy HTA platform (and no-one was building for “Windows Store HTML” for obvious reasons), especially on ARM (IIRC, Chakra didn’t JIT on ARM). Anyway, Microsoft’s problem is they don’t want to lose the web to Google because they recognise the web is now “the platform”, including desktop “web” apps running in Electron. Any business knows it’s a liability to have dependencies on your competitors. The plan, originally, was to base Edge on Chromium, then built it into the OS, so desktop apps can use modern Chromium features in a build optimised for Windows and the user’s computer without needing 200MB+ Electron packages and 400MB RAM and dozens of separate processes for what should be a trusted application. ...however that still hasn’t panned-out yet. Which I find concerning because I thought Microsoft would treat Chromium the way Apple treats Safari: a browser that puts the user - and their privacy - first, because Microsoft isn’t Google and doesn’t significantly benefit from tracking users over the web. ...but they have been. Edge’s privacy stats are almost as bad as Chrome’s. I’m guessing some GP or VP from the Bing org had a word with OSG’s VPs and convinced them to compromise Edge to benefit Bing despite the overall damage to the Microsoft brand and eliminating possibly the most important advantage Edge had over Chrome.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
typo: "Microsoft's as network" should be "Microsoft's ad network". HN isn't letting me edit my post for some reason.
- mkl 6y ago
  You can only edit comments for two hours.