6 ms·

Two hundred million computers actively using Firefox each month. How is it possible we cannot make it sustainable without the money from Google?

ape4 5y ago
But how to monetize? Place ads somewhere in the application?
- lucideer 5y ago
  Any option whatsoever to donate to Firefox (specifically as a project, not to Mozilla) would at least be a start. I'd happily sign up to a monthly subscription. Would it bring in equivalent sums to search deals: of course not. But I think it would be at least a not-insignificant addition.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mtmail 5y ago
    There is a monthly donation option for Mozilla https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ I don't understand why "any option whatoever to donate" must exclude non-Firefox projects. In my opinion that is the start, available right now.
    - lucideer 5y ago
      Mozilla Foundation donations do not go toward Firefox development.
      - coldpie 5y ago
        Suppose at some point hypothetically, Moz Foundation donations exceeded Google's payments. Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. While Firefox is the most important thing Mozilla does in my eyes, I also like their non-Firefox work, so I'm happy to fund them. If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available. So I donate. How they spend the money in the meantime is up to them.
        lucideer 5y ago
        > Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. What makes you presume this? > If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). > I also like their non-Firefox work I also like some of their non-Firefox work, but none of it is unique/essential. If Mozilla stopped all their other work tomorrow, and only developed Firefox, there would still be good alternatives out their to their other works (e.g. Lockbox->Bitwarden, MozVPN->Mullvad). Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer, and most truly open alternatives are incredibly small niche projects like Dillo or Otter Browser that aren't really very mainstream-usage-ready.
        coldpie 5y ago
        > The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). I don't disagree, but I also don't think this discussion is related to whether or not folks should be donating to Mozilla right now. My giving them a donation doesn't restrict them exploring other funding options, which they do seem to be doing, with Pocket and their VPN services and the like. > Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer Right. So my thinking is: suppose Google funding dries up some day. From there we have two possible universes: Mozilla looks at their incomes and sees 80% of the missing funding is coming from donations. Or they see 10% is coming from donations. In the first case, they could scale down their non-core features and continue Firefox development on that donations revenue. In the second case, they would have to find some alternative income stream, which is difficult and full of uncertainty, or shut down and Firefox dies. Personally I favor the first universe, where Firefox is funded through voluntary donations. So I donate to make the first universe more likely. And there's no downside to me donating now, since it's totally cool with me if they use my money to fund their non-Firefox work in the meantime.
      - zaarn 5y ago
        So, rather, you'd want to see Mozilla fail and Firefox die?
        lucideer 5y ago
        I want to see Firefox succeed. Mozilla doesn't seem to be making the best moves to ensure that right now.
        zaarn 5y ago
        It's either donating or contributing work hours to the FF codebase, otherwise it's not really conducive towards ensuring FF succeeds.
        lucideer 5y ago
        I'm not sure what you're saying exactly? Many people from the community contribute freely to the FF codebase, and the Firefox project also employs paid engineers to work on the codebase. Funding to pay those engineers comes from Google. Donations to Mozilla do not go toward paying those engineers. I think it would be great if individuals who aren't in a position to write code for FF could contribute donations to a fund that pays FF engineers.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  That didn't go over well when Opera did it
- konaraddi 5y ago
  By default, there are ads in Firefox on the new tab page: sponsored top sites tiles and sponsored content from Pocket.
thmzlt 5y ago
From Mitchell Baker's Wikipedia page: "In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."[15] By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic." There is no incentive to do so.
- tux3 5y ago
  Could someone clarify whether donations to Mozilla are earmarked for Firefox specifically? Or is it for unrelated initiatives, and Firefox is only funded through Google? I assume the donation money can't legally reach Mitchell Baker, since it goes through the Mozilla non-profit, but the whole Mozilla Corp vs Mozilla non-profit structure and the handling of funds is still very confusing to me.
  - Vinnl 5y ago
    Firefox is developed by the Corp, and you can only donate to the Foundation - so no, donations don't go to Firefox directly. Also I do believe Baker is president of both, though the big paycheck comes from the Corp IIRC.
woofcat 5y ago
I sometimes wonder if there is a market for paid browsers. As in software you pay for. I know it used to be a thing many moons ago, however I think I'd pay $20 or whatever to have a good browser that doesn't have anyone besides it's user base in it's mind. * Out of the box adblocker * Out of the box anti-tracking * Decent sync options between devices * etc.
- TheCapn 5y ago
  I'd eat my shoe if they came out with a one time purchase for anything of the sort. I'd put $20 or $30 to a browser with those guarantees no problem, but they'd likely be subscription model which is why I'm so skeptical of such a thing.
- picklebutter 5y ago
  The problem is that there are various browsers that do this already, for free. Brave, Vivaldi, etc You might be able to get some people to pay, but the value has to really be there for it, imho.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Yeah, you won't convince people to pay based on features. Leveraging Google's loss-leader work on Blink/Chromium and building slick features cheaply on top of that will always be an easy way to undercut any efforts there. The only way to monetise an audience like FF's is via ethos, and it's questionable whether that's enough. Wikimedia Foundation do this quite successfully, but I believe their revenue is a bit smaller than Firefox's. The problem may be that the Google deals are too generous, which traps Firefox into an overspend, crippling their ability to build alternative revenue streams that meet the same income level (why cut costs when you have enough income). Is it possible to maintain a browser of Firefox's scale at a WikiFoundation-level income of ~$120million?
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      Doesn’t Wiki Foundation income and expenses go up every year? There was the trending post earlier showing the numbers. I think expenses doubled in the last five years. So can Wiki Foundation likely can’t maintain an expense level of $120M unless they’ve stopped spending more this year. Edit: found the link. There’s discussions on HN, reddit, and other sites too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...
jedimastert 5y ago
An audience does not a monetization strategy make. It can ONLY ever be a piece
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pornel 5y ago
It's a free product, and a commodity. Development is expensive, especially when the main competitor can make it so by playing Fire And Motion (see Joel's article) and treats their browser as a loss leader for their trillion-dollar business.
slightwinder 5y ago
Because B2C is a pain, while B2B is easy money. Business 2 Business means you work with professionels, people of your own kind, and with a small number. In B2C you work with huge number of unreliable customers, catering more to their individual whims. And you must invest more money for money transactions, legal procedures, chargebacks and whatever you are selling to those customers. That's just a bigger risk and pain as a company.

ape4 5y ago

But how to monetize? Place ads somewhere in the application?

lucideer 5y ago
Any option whatsoever to donate to Firefox (specifically as a project, not to Mozilla) would at least be a start. I'd happily sign up to a monthly subscription. Would it bring in equivalent sums to search deals: of course not. But I think it would be at least a not-insignificant addition.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mtmail 5y ago
  There is a monthly donation option for Mozilla https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ I don't understand why "any option whatoever to donate" must exclude non-Firefox projects. In my opinion that is the start, available right now.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Mozilla Foundation donations do not go toward Firefox development.
    - coldpie 5y ago
      Suppose at some point hypothetically, Moz Foundation donations exceeded Google's payments. Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. While Firefox is the most important thing Mozilla does in my eyes, I also like their non-Firefox work, so I'm happy to fund them. If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available. So I donate. How they spend the money in the meantime is up to them.
      - lucideer 5y ago
        > Presumably they would reshuffle things in order to fund Firefox's development, too. What makes you presume this? > If at some point those donations outpaced Google, or the stability of Google's funding comes into question for some reason, then I'd like to show there are other funding models available The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). > I also like their non-Firefox work I also like some of their non-Firefox work, but none of it is unique/essential. If Mozilla stopped all their other work tomorrow, and only developed Firefox, there would still be good alternatives out their to their other works (e.g. Lockbox->Bitwarden, MozVPN->Mullvad). Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer, and most truly open alternatives are incredibly small niche projects like Dillo or Otter Browser that aren't really very mainstream-usage-ready.
        coldpie 5y ago
        > The problem with this is timeline. If the donations naturaly outpaced Google's funding that'd be great, but it seems unlikely. On the other hand, if the stability of Google's funding came into question, how long would it take to ramp up alternative income sources? This isn't something that could be done overnight: it needs to be called out and contingencies considered early (now). I don't disagree, but I also don't think this discussion is related to whether or not folks should be donating to Mozilla right now. My giving them a donation doesn't restrict them exploring other funding options, which they do seem to be doing, with Pocket and their VPN services and the like. > Good alternatives to Firefox are much rarer Right. So my thinking is: suppose Google funding dries up some day. From there we have two possible universes: Mozilla looks at their incomes and sees 80% of the missing funding is coming from donations. Or they see 10% is coming from donations. In the first case, they could scale down their non-core features and continue Firefox development on that donations revenue. In the second case, they would have to find some alternative income stream, which is difficult and full of uncertainty, or shut down and Firefox dies. Personally I favor the first universe, where Firefox is funded through voluntary donations. So I donate to make the first universe more likely. And there's no downside to me donating now, since it's totally cool with me if they use my money to fund their non-Firefox work in the meantime.
    - zaarn 5y ago
      So, rather, you'd want to see Mozilla fail and Firefox die?
      - lucideer 5y ago
        I want to see Firefox succeed. Mozilla doesn't seem to be making the best moves to ensure that right now.
        zaarn 5y ago
        It's either donating or contributing work hours to the FF codebase, otherwise it's not really conducive towards ensuring FF succeeds.
        lucideer 5y ago
        I'm not sure what you're saying exactly? Many people from the community contribute freely to the FF codebase, and the Firefox project also employs paid engineers to work on the codebase. Funding to pay those engineers comes from Google. Donations to Mozilla do not go toward paying those engineers. I think it would be great if individuals who aren't in a position to write code for FF could contribute donations to a fund that pays FF engineers.
wongarsu 5y ago
That didn't go over well when Opera did it
konaraddi 5y ago
By default, there are ads in Firefox on the new tab page: sponsored top sites tiles and sponsored content from Pocket.

thmzlt 5y ago

From Mitchell Baker's Wikipedia page: "In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."[15] By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic." There is no incentive to do so.

tux3 5y ago
Could someone clarify whether donations to Mozilla are earmarked for Firefox specifically? Or is it for unrelated initiatives, and Firefox is only funded through Google? I assume the donation money can't legally reach Mitchell Baker, since it goes through the Mozilla non-profit, but the whole Mozilla Corp vs Mozilla non-profit structure and the handling of funds is still very confusing to me.
- Vinnl 5y ago
  Firefox is developed by the Corp, and you can only donate to the Foundation - so no, donations don't go to Firefox directly. Also I do believe Baker is president of both, though the big paycheck comes from the Corp IIRC.

woofcat 5y ago

I sometimes wonder if there is a market for paid browsers. As in software you pay for. I know it used to be a thing many moons ago, however I think I'd pay $20 or whatever to have a good browser that doesn't have anyone besides it's user base in it's mind. * Out of the box adblocker * Out of the box anti-tracking * Decent sync options between devices * etc.

TheCapn 5y ago
I'd eat my shoe if they came out with a one time purchase for anything of the sort. I'd put $20 or $30 to a browser with those guarantees no problem, but they'd likely be subscription model which is why I'm so skeptical of such a thing.
picklebutter 5y ago
The problem is that there are various browsers that do this already, for free. Brave, Vivaldi, etc You might be able to get some people to pay, but the value has to really be there for it, imho.
- lucideer 5y ago
  Yeah, you won't convince people to pay based on features. Leveraging Google's loss-leader work on Blink/Chromium and building slick features cheaply on top of that will always be an easy way to undercut any efforts there. The only way to monetise an audience like FF's is via ethos, and it's questionable whether that's enough. Wikimedia Foundation do this quite successfully, but I believe their revenue is a bit smaller than Firefox's. The problem may be that the Google deals are too generous, which traps Firefox into an overspend, crippling their ability to build alternative revenue streams that meet the same income level (why cut costs when you have enough income). Is it possible to maintain a browser of Firefox's scale at a WikiFoundation-level income of ~$120million?
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Doesn’t Wiki Foundation income and expenses go up every year? There was the trending post earlier showing the numbers. I think expenses doubled in the last five years. So can Wiki Foundation likely can’t maintain an expense level of $120M unless they’ve stopped spending more this year. Edit: found the link. There’s discussions on HN, reddit, and other sites too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...

jedimastert 5y ago

An audience does not a monetization strategy make. It can ONLY ever be a piece

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pornel 5y ago

It's a free product, and a commodity. Development is expensive, especially when the main competitor can make it so by playing Fire And Motion (see Joel's article) and treats their browser as a loss leader for their trillion-dollar business.

slightwinder 5y ago

Because B2C is a pain, while B2B is easy money. Business 2 Business means you work with professionels, people of your own kind, and with a small number. In B2C you work with huge number of unreliable customers, catering more to their individual whims. And you must invest more money for money transactions, legal procedures, chargebacks and whatever you are selling to those customers. That's just a bigger risk and pain as a company.