5 ms·

Reducing reliance on Google by partnering up with a different ad company instead. What good does that do? I don't want ads anywhere near my browser. Here's wha

Reducing reliance on Google by partnering up with a different ad company instead. What good does that do? I don't want ads anywhere near my browser. Here's what I'd really like them to do: * Stop paying out millions to execs * Focus more on Firefox instead of other side projects * Let me pay for Firefox development directly

pizza234 5y ago
The Opera browser used to do this, from v5. It lasted a few years (it seem 5, based on Wikipedia), and they ultimately ended up switching to the default engine business model.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Opera was / is cool and advanced in many regards. But Firefox is open source. This is very important for many reasons.
- Certhas 5y ago
  There is so much wishful thinking around this... "me and five other people want to pay, if you just cater to my specific tastes, than the me and these 5 people will happily bankroll your massive engineering effort!" Maybe people would be happier if they had to pay to switch off the ads instead of it just being a setting (/switching default search engine)??
  - nine_k 5y ago
    (1) Too many ad networks involved; who do you pay for not seeing their ads? (2) You would be unpleasantly surprised by the amount to pay.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      (2) is in big part because people who're willing to spend money to get rid of ads are exactly the people advertisers are trying to get to - people with plenty of disposable income.
  - y4mi 5y ago
    It's not as clear cut as you seem to think. A lot of people just think that Mozilla should be a nonprofit and not aim to primarily enrich it's CEO and leadership. This isn't the case at the moment, which is clear if you paid any attention to what they've been doing for the last few years. Little of the money that's going to be raised by this will end up paying for engineers to improve or maintain the Firefox code base and the vast majority of it will end in the pockets of said leadership, and this is kinda displeasing.
    - Hnrobert42 5y ago
      Do you have a source showing the vast majority of revenue goes to leadership? In 2018, the CEO’s salary equaled 0.64% of revenue. Before we discuss whether that is right or wrong, we should at least agree on a set of facts. https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
      - y4mi 5y ago
        they generally get more then 400 million yearly revenue, though there was one outlier with over 800 million. this is money they generally don't have to pay taxes on because of their status as a non-profit. mozilla employs at the moment around 800 people. according to their FAQ > https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2015/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2015/f... > More than 75% of Mozilla spending is on people-related investments to produce the products and programs that support our mission: keeping the web open, free, and accessible. this would mean they had around 300 million to spend on these 800 employees, averaging around 375 000 per employee. Sr. Software Engineers get <$200 000, so IF all of their 800 employees were senior software engineers (extremely unlikely), their salary would be around 160 million, which is slightly more then 50% of what was available. a more realistic calculation would be around 20-30%, because not everyone will be getting SV wages. They've got global presence after all with offices SF, Toronto, Berlin, Beijin etc. you'd have to verify in which unrelated projects by third parties mozilla invests and generally follow the money to figure out anything more, but that is simply out of scope of a hn comment.
  - Swenrekcah 5y ago
    If you get 5000 people paying $5/month for every person working on a truly private browser, you have $25,000/month per teammate. I'm sure you could find 50,000 people in the world willing to pay this. I'm one of them. The problem is how you get started while building reputation, but I'm sure that it's possible.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > The problem is how you get started while building reputation, but I'm sure that it's possible. In case of Mozilla/Firefox: do this while you still have some reputation left. It's literally the one party on the Internet that would have a chance of pulling it off.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        I approve of this traditional usage of the term "literally". It's literally correct, but possibly too late - they've been burning bridges for five years.
    - samhw 5y ago
      There's some remarkable sleight of hand in "for every person working on [it]". That's a lot of people required to build a browser. Are you suggesting each of those 5000 users pays $5 multiplied by $NUM_OF_DEVELOPERS, or that you'll need [5000 multiplied by $NUM_OF_DEVELOPERS] users?
      - Swenrekcah 5y ago
        The latter. The numbers are not precise, it's just to show that you really don't need a lot of paying people and they really don't need to pay a lot each.
  - whoisthemachine 5y ago
    I agree. I think they would find use in having a "Firefox Enterprise" that catered to businesses directly - basically a version of Firefox that they will tailor to an organization's crazy security requirements. Basically anywhere I've worked has wanted to lock down internet browsing in some way or other, and they now pay for expensive products to do so externally. I think it would be very appealing to just pay for a product that did so out of the box...
GeckoEidechse 5y ago
> Let me pay for Firefox development directly Same. I already donate to the Mozilla Foundation but I'd love to fund Firefox more directly.

pizza234 5y ago

The Opera browser used to do this, from v5. It lasted a few years (it seem 5, based on Wikipedia), and they ultimately ended up switching to the default engine business model.

nine_k 5y ago
Opera was / is cool and advanced in many regards. But Firefox is open source. This is very important for many reasons.
Certhas 5y ago
There is so much wishful thinking around this... "me and five other people want to pay, if you just cater to my specific tastes, than the me and these 5 people will happily bankroll your massive engineering effort!" Maybe people would be happier if they had to pay to switch off the ads instead of it just being a setting (/switching default search engine)??
- nine_k 5y ago
  (1) Too many ad networks involved; who do you pay for not seeing their ads? (2) You would be unpleasantly surprised by the amount to pay.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    (2) is in big part because people who're willing to spend money to get rid of ads are exactly the people advertisers are trying to get to - people with plenty of disposable income.
- y4mi 5y ago
  It's not as clear cut as you seem to think. A lot of people just think that Mozilla should be a nonprofit and not aim to primarily enrich it's CEO and leadership. This isn't the case at the moment, which is clear if you paid any attention to what they've been doing for the last few years. Little of the money that's going to be raised by this will end up paying for engineers to improve or maintain the Firefox code base and the vast majority of it will end in the pockets of said leadership, and this is kinda displeasing.
  - Hnrobert42 5y ago
    Do you have a source showing the vast majority of revenue goes to leadership? In 2018, the CEO’s salary equaled 0.64% of revenue. Before we discuss whether that is right or wrong, we should at least agree on a set of facts. https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
    - y4mi 5y ago
      they generally get more then 400 million yearly revenue, though there was one outlier with over 800 million. this is money they generally don't have to pay taxes on because of their status as a non-profit. mozilla employs at the moment around 800 people. according to their FAQ > https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2015/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2015/f... > More than 75% of Mozilla spending is on people-related investments to produce the products and programs that support our mission: keeping the web open, free, and accessible. this would mean they had around 300 million to spend on these 800 employees, averaging around 375 000 per employee. Sr. Software Engineers get <$200 000, so IF all of their 800 employees were senior software engineers (extremely unlikely), their salary would be around 160 million, which is slightly more then 50% of what was available. a more realistic calculation would be around 20-30%, because not everyone will be getting SV wages. They've got global presence after all with offices SF, Toronto, Berlin, Beijin etc. you'd have to verify in which unrelated projects by third parties mozilla invests and generally follow the money to figure out anything more, but that is simply out of scope of a hn comment.
- Swenrekcah 5y ago
  If you get 5000 people paying $5/month for every person working on a truly private browser, you have $25,000/month per teammate. I'm sure you could find 50,000 people in the world willing to pay this. I'm one of them. The problem is how you get started while building reputation, but I'm sure that it's possible.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > The problem is how you get started while building reputation, but I'm sure that it's possible. In case of Mozilla/Firefox: do this while you still have some reputation left. It's literally the one party on the Internet that would have a chance of pulling it off.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      I approve of this traditional usage of the term "literally". It's literally correct, but possibly too late - they've been burning bridges for five years.
  - samhw 5y ago
    There's some remarkable sleight of hand in "for every person working on [it]". That's a lot of people required to build a browser. Are you suggesting each of those 5000 users pays $5 multiplied by $NUM_OF_DEVELOPERS, or that you'll need [5000 multiplied by $NUM_OF_DEVELOPERS] users?
    - Swenrekcah 5y ago
      The latter. The numbers are not precise, it's just to show that you really don't need a lot of paying people and they really don't need to pay a lot each.
- whoisthemachine 5y ago
  I agree. I think they would find use in having a "Firefox Enterprise" that catered to businesses directly - basically a version of Firefox that they will tailor to an organization's crazy security requirements. Basically anywhere I've worked has wanted to lock down internet browsing in some way or other, and they now pay for expensive products to do so externally. I think it would be very appealing to just pay for a product that did so out of the box...

GeckoEidechse 5y ago

> Let me pay for Firefox development directly Same. I already donate to the Mozilla Foundation but I'd love to fund Firefox more directly.