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> I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring

> I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust. Why not just tell it like it is. "We need funding and are lining up deals with third parties to display their ads/messaging in the address bar search. We vet these third parties by holding them contractually to these standards [list standards to establish bar required for "trust"]." It's only my opinion, but spelling it out clearly - the need for funding and how/why "trusted partners" get to display their stuff - would make me far more likely to allow these suggestions. (Oh, and as for "relevance", FF should explain how that's intended to work, ie what data are being used etc.)

_wolfie_ 5y ago
> We need funding Yeah, I guess Baker needs a raise.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Counterpoint, I’d rather NGOs and benevolent societies be attractive for world-class leaders, rather than be the constant underdog. Of course those CEOs have to avoid implementing classic business schemes.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > world-class leaders Yes, the kind of leaders that forget the core of what they are doing and that make shady deals and decisions like this. "World-class leaders" are sharks and have no place in a company for common good.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    If Mozilla hired a better CEO with the money, I agree that’d justify paying the position more.
  - account42 5y ago
    Word class leaders? https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html I'd rather have people that care about the cause in charge of these NGOs.
    - soundnote 5y ago
      It's ironic that Brave is growing.
  - shakow 5y ago
    > world-class leaders ‶Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%″ -- https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
  - lucideer 5y ago
    > attractive for world-class leaders You're equating greed and competence. It's an oddly common mistake. NGOs and benevolent societies are attractive on the basis of their values. If monetary compensation were correlatory with quality products, we clearly wouldn't be in this position with Firefox: Mozilla's current leader is clearly world-class by your own definition (where world-class==well remunerated), and is yet demonstrably failing the company on every possible metric.
  - craftinator 5y ago
    It's ironic that the CEO is allowing ads in the search bar then.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Exactly. No excuses - when you use such a language, you do it on purpose - you know you're going to fuck people over, and the language is there to keep them unaware that they're being exploited. I second your opinion - I'd be willing to entertain, or even support, this way of them making money iff they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why. In details. Talk with me like two adults that respect each other.
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  +1 for "iff" (if and only if), which I wish were more broadly used and recognized in written English
  - deepbreath 5y ago
    Except it's not used correctly here. "A iff B" means "A implies B and B implies A". "I'd be willing to entertain, or even support, this way of them making money iff they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why" implies both of these: - "If they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why, I'd be willing to entertain [...]" - "If I'd be willing to entertain [..] then they will honestly spell what they're doing and why". The second of which doesn't make sense to me, unless I'm missing something? He should have used "only if" rather than "iff" here.
    - unbalancedevh 5y ago
      A iff B doesn't mean that B is because of A. It simply means that if A is true then B must be as well. > - "If I'd be willing to entertain [..] then they will honestly spell what they're doing and why". This is true, because if they won't, then you wouldn't be willing to entertain [..]
      - deepbreath 5y ago
        You're right, I guess it depends on what you choose A and B to be. For: A = OP supports Mozilla making money from address bar ads B = Mozilla is honest about making money from address bar ads "B -> A" (OP supports Mozilla if Mozilla acts a certain way) makes sense. "A -> B" sounds confusing in a sentence, but its contrapositive, "!B -> !A", also makes sense. However, for: B = Mozilla decides to make money from address bar ads and is honest about reasons "A -> B" no longer makes sense, since OP can support Mozilla having the address bar ads with an honest justification, but Mozilla can still decide to not have the address bar ads.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Why not just tell it like it is. Because the sad truth is every other company is doing exactly the same. We live in a world where the people who track you most will greet you with "we value your privacy".
- drdaeman 5y ago
  Well, that is literally true - they assign monetary value to your private information. ;)
- soundnote 5y ago
  Brave doesn't. "Sponsored images" and a huge subheading and toggle that say "Ads" speak pretty plain language.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
the day before i asked here why does mozilla need a ceo and i was met with anger for even suggesting that. "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28765685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28765685" aged like milk i guess.
bodge5000 5y ago
> Why not tell it like it is I'm no expert, but from what I've heard the reasoning is that ad companies don't like it when you do that and won't want to work with you. They'd rather FF says "we love these guys and they just happen to be handing us bags of money" rather than "look, we dont like this anymore than you do but we need the cash". Not excusing it, and I could well be wrong (there could also be a way of saying it that satisfies both parties), but thats my understanding of the rationale
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  If that's the case, this is already grounds for writing Mozilla off. Ad companies are what they are. But if Mozilla was not able to find a partner who's able to tolerate honesty, and decided to compromise instead, what else they're going to compromise on when their new "trusted partners" ask nicely?
silvestrov 5y ago
> Why not just tell it like it is. Because they don't want to say: "we want a lot of money to all kinds of projects irrelevant to the browser". They should focus on their core product and cut everything else away. Instead they are an organization that tries to save the whole world. It seems like they think the jobs created for themselves by "saving the world" is the core business and Firefox is just a cash-cow for this.
- cxr 5y ago
  Damn it would be nice if this meme would die. The first of its sins is the tacit agreement that Mozilla is doing this because, as the parent comment says, they "need funding". Mozilla needs funding now like Wikipedia needs funding: they have more of it than they've ever had, but by all appearances, you'd think they're really strapped for cash or something, because their pleas have gotten steadily more intrusive and desperate. Second is the "focus on their core product" remark. There's so much wrong with this sentence. First, it's the tacit acceptance that Mozilla is and should be a classic Valley tech company—a bit player with a product competing in the market, rather than the way mozilla.org operated in its heyday—you know, when it was actually a force for good and were winning hearts and minds. This is another case where the trend does not support the thesis. Mozilla _has_ steadily gotten more focused on Firefox compared to its historically diverse interests (to the exclusion and chagrin of many of its volunteers and advocates), and by most measures we're worse off for this Corporation-centric mindset. At its height, Mozilla was accomplishing way more, had greater influence than it has today, and did it on a fraction of the budget. Today, Mozilla has half a billion in annual revenue but the Firefox team claims that keeping a menu item around that lets you jump to a site's RSS feed is too much of a maintenance burden. Where do you think all the money is going? It's not Thunderbird or developer.mozilla.org that are sucking hundreds of millions away. And as bad as Mitchell's leadership has been over the last 5+ years, her new salary in the low single-digit millions has pretty much nothing to do with it. For comparison, Mozilla has something like a 50+ million dollar marketing budget. This is classic cost disease. Ten years ago, it was a common quip that Chrome's effective marketing budget (i.e. in imaginary dollars) was greater than Mozilla's entire annual revenue. Well guess where we are today? A well-funded contender in the browser wars could almost certainly appear tomorrow and grab as much market share in the next 3 to 5 year period as Firefox currently has and do it on total operating costs that measure half of Mozilla's marketing spend (in actual dollars). So please stop doing this. Every time you feed into this meme that you heard on social media and that sounded good to you because it wrapped things up in a nice, simple narrative, at best it's going to have no effect, and at worst you encourage Mozilla to lean in and do _exactly_ the things that have led to present situation. If you want to provide encouragement, encourage Mozilla to overhaul its entire leadership, to live by the principles they purport to care about (how about starting with removing opaque clicktracking links from emails?), to put a real content blocker in the browser, to stop hawking VPN snake oil, and to open source Pocket like it was promised over 4 years ago. Demand that they make falsifiable claims that can be evaluated for success or failure on well-defined criteria. Campaign for them to either cap the marketing budget to $1 million or actually do something effective with it (like writing a check to Wikimedia and then blogging about how the reason that there are no overlays on Wikipedia this year nagging you for funding this year is because Mozilla decided to foot the bill and so you're welcome—which would be way more effective than _anything_ the marketing department has done to date).
zaphirplane 5y ago
Firefox doesn’t need 400 million per year to develop Mozilla has a lot of no value initiatives activities that they want to fund
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Exactly that. If they got rid of their hobbies then this sort of scam wouldn't be necessary. Yes, it's a scam: bait and switch.
  - craftinator 5y ago
    You'd think from the messaging that they don't have nearly the funding today that they had 5 years ago, when in reality their funding has grown by ~50% during that time...
  - xfitm3 5y ago
    Remember Mozilla is ultimately a non profit and must spend a healthy percentage of their income every year. Mozilla is just representing the collective self interest of those it employs. People wanting to keep their cushy job.
    - 0des 5y ago
      I prefer they'd spend it on their browser engineers and whichever arm legislatively opposes existing browser monopolies.
    - protomyth 5y ago
      Remember Mozilla is ultimately a non profit and must spend a healthy percentage of their income every year. And Harvard has a multi-billion dollar endowment that they hoard. Mozilla is doing it wrong.
      - throwaway2037 5y ago
        A quick Google search tells me the rule in the United States IRS is: <<Generally, a private foundation must meet or exceed an annual payout requirement of five percent of the average market value of its net investment assets to avoid paying taxes.>> Harvard endowment is so huge for two reasons: (1) fundraising, (2) earning more than 5% per year for long, long, long time. But they still must spend 5% per year of their massive endowment. Running a non-profit with only an endowment (no fund-raising) for more than 20 years with is hard to do.
nonbirithm 5y ago
Having watched The Boys just an hour ago, I couldn't agree more. So much of that show is made up of language that conceals intent and how it is used to preserve one's public image and save face, and you can immediately tell when someone is actually willing to tell the truth instead of skirt around the actual issues. The incentives aren't made clear and you're left with the gaps to fill leading up to how decisions like these got made at an executive level. Does Mozilla stand to lose favor with Google or someone else by trying to be more honest about what it's trying to accomplish, or avoid? Mozilla does stand to lose a lot of favor with its core audience by trying to act corporate now of all times, with Firefox marketshare at an all-time low. And I have to wonder if these kind of statements were universally accepted by the people who are a part of the company, on the foundation or corporate side. Are there any Mozillians that believe that this is not Mozilla as people remember it? Would they be willing to express their thoughts, if so?
- adar 5y ago
  I'm not quite sure scripted dialogue in a fictional TV show about murderous superheroes is the correct comparison for Mozilla putting ads in search results...
  - oAlbe 5y ago
    The comment you are replying to is referencing the language used in the statement made by Mozilla. I hope it is not coming to you as news the fact that those corporate statements are scripted, likely much more heavily than a TV show.
qwerty456127 5y ago
Well, if Mozilla trusts someone - I feel curious. I would believe they have a chance to be better than others and my trust to them in fact goes from 0% to 25%.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  i dunno. In my experience, when someone says "trust me" and simultaneously offers me money to do something that I know is wrong, that's a good time not to trust them.
hnbad 5y ago
> Why not just tell it like it is. Given the massive salaries and bonuses paid out to upper management[0], I think their problem would be not sounding like that dril tweet about budgeting[1]. After the massive layoffs and cuts to vital web platform projects this move just feels consistent in their move from their old "quirky nerd charity" image to a new, more corporate one. I'm not saying that this is a good thing. [0]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html [1]: https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472 https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472
- piokoch 5y ago
  Huh, information in https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html are, delicately speaking, disturbing. One thing surprised me as well: "Firefox barely exists on phones, with a market share of less than half a percent. This is baffling given that mobile Firefox has a rare feature for a mobile browser: it's able to install extensions and so can block ads." Yes, indeed, FF is pretty great on the phone, it looks like someone fails to advertise it as such. I use it precisely because I can use add blocker. The person with 2.4M compensation should notice that something wrong is going on. I am afraid that Firefox/Mozilla at some point will become something like Yahoo or Commodore, a name that is being bought and sold by investment founds to extract some income and sell it further...
  - hnbad 5y ago
    The problem is that Mozilla's profits are tied less to their market cap than to their ability to raise funding. Historically Google contributed the lion's share because Firefox was useful to mask the increasing market domination of Chrome, which would have caused some upset so shortly after Microsoft got into trouble for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. This role is becoming less relevant with Microsoft reviving its browser efforts and Apple heavily pushing Safari, and of course Opera, Brave and others riding on Chrome's coat tails via Chromium (like MS for that matter). Ironically Netscape itself became "something like Yahoo or Commodore": AOL bought Netscape (which led to the Mozilla foundation being created), then proceeded to sell discount services under the name "Netscape ISP" and eventually renamed the original Netscape company. As far as I know the original company (now non-operating) eventually ended up being owned by Facebook and the Netscape brand somehow ended up being owned by Yahoo.
GordonS 5y ago
I'm with you on this - Firefox is supposed to be different, more trustworthy, more on your side. They've been losing market share, and these actions and language are not going to help.
x14km2d 5y ago
> and eroding trust. This is exactly the point why I left Google Chrome back then and considered FF as a good alternative. I didn't trust Google anymore. But now I face the same problem again, because I don't want these "features and trusted partners". I also don't want to have to justify over and over again why I don't want them. I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SimeVidas 5y ago
  > I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust. You can't trust any of them. The real question is, who do you trust more? Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Brave. You can't trust any of them, but you have to pick one.
  - leppr 5y ago
    Mozilla might be the best out of this, but they're also in the weaker position. Ads, whether they respect privacy or not, give off a scummy feel to users. The clean Chrome UI, even if it tracks you in a hundred ways, "looks" more trustworthy to users than a browser riddled with ads. It's bad enough to have to instruct people how to disable the New Tab ads, now you have to add one more step. At this point it becomes pretty awkward: "Don't use Chrome browsers, they don't respect your privacy and are bad for the web! Use Firefox instead. Oh but wait you have to disable integrated ads first, just do this and that and this and I swear it's fine!"
    - ghoward 5y ago
      You're not wrong. This is why I use Ungoogled Chromium and build it myself.
      - leppr 5y ago
        Well that's more effort than just disabling the New Tab ads on Firefox and you're clearly technically inclined so this doesn't go towards my argument.
cabalamat 5y ago
> Why not just tell it like it is. Indeed. Mozilla should be honest. That's what builds trust. We all know they need money, so if this gives them money to improve FF, fine by me. But they need to quit the marketing bullshit-speak.
- andrepd 5y ago
  They need money to improve FF so they will get it by fucking up FF? Sounds counterproductive to me.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    No, they need money to pay for their CEO. She had to fire 250 engineers to pay her salary last year, she might not have another 250 left to fire this year.
    - krferriter 5y ago
      The salary of 250 engineers is way more than her own salary, but yes it is a bad look to be firing engineers while raising executive pay.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    It is but it also happens often enough in business that you have to wonder what it is that drives it? Is it some business school process or management training BS? It usually only happens when "trained" business people get involved that this sort of BS happens.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    To be fair, this issue is also reflected with the mobile upgrade that wiped most of the functionality, extension integration, and good will. Whomever they have hired to (1) perform UX research and (2) make executive decisions aren't performing, IMHO.
    - tempest_ 5y ago
mblock 5y ago
Why are we shocked about marketing?
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Disappointment isn't shock. And criticism doesn't imply either.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Who is this "we"? Are you shocked? Speaking for myself, I'm not shocked, nor even surprised, that marketers would like to get into my living-room and my bedroom. If Mozilla wants to facilitate that, then they become my enemy. Marketers are going to do marketing, just as pigs roll in shit and rabbits breed. I'm not trying to stop the tide; but I'll sandbag my front-door, so the tide doesn't wash into my home. If Mozilla wants to try an end-run around my flood defences, Mozilla can be removed quite easily. Mozilla execs seem increasingly the same as the execs at IANA. They don't have real customers or shareholders; they are not held to account. It astonishes me how much these greedy oafs get paid. They are removing value, not adding it.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Reflecting further: Wouldn't it be cool if we could get some of the products we use from companies that are structured so that they "serve their customers" and nobody else? Customers (i.e. users) would then have a veto on idiotic new "features" and infelicitous marketing partnerships. If Mozilla had been such an organisation, then perhaps Firefox wouldn't have slid away from the top spot.
jrochkind1 5y ago
At first I had an immediate negative reaction to this. But then I thought, okay, they need money, ads in address bar isn't the worst thing in the world. But then then I thought: But only if they are clearly disclosed as ads! Instead we seem to have a combination of " traditional suggestions like browsing history and open tabs, as well as new suggestions from our partners" -- are the "paid placements" clearly designated as such? Unclear? Probably not? In "traditional" media, the first rule of advertisements is that they be clearly identified as advertisements, as content put there by someone paying for it, instead of by editorial judgement. Because how can you trust the editorial judgement of the publisher if you can't tell which is which? That even Mozilla no longer thinks this is necessary shows how much the culture has changed, where "paid placement" is pretty much assumed everywhere (or if not, you're a naive fool) and nobody trusts anybody.
- mox1 5y ago
  I would love for them to go NPR style on ads. If you listen to an NPR radio station (at least here in my area), basically anyone can run a radio ad, but it has to be about 10 seconds max and it is delivered by the on-air personality. "Npr would like to thank Bob's Hot Dogs, Bobs hot dogs deliver an excellent dog at an excellent price, find out more at bobdogs.com" Replace the brand there with yours and that's what you get. No contextual bs, no crazy logos or statements, just a simple word from a sponsor.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Yes, but unfortunately public radio isn't always as good about this anymore as one would wish or as they used to, either. National "NPR" may be better. But our local NPR "affiliate" has whole shows that are really pay-to-play. :( https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcp-why-so-much-pr-wypr-seems-to-routinely-trade-underwriting-for-air-time-is-that-a-problem-20150310-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcp-why-so-much-pr-wy...
    - nescioquid 5y ago
      Agreed, and I'd even contend that public media dependence on commercial advertisement is a problem. I'd much prefer to see public funding for public media restored. Maybe Mozilla needs to do a pledge drive, instead. I had used Mozilla products for many years before I even realized they accepted charitable donations.
orangeoxidation 5y ago
> FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust Excactly them trying to find more sources of income is fine by me. The hiding it and the deceptive messaging is awful. "enhance and speed up your searching experience" - I'm sure it will. Even the opt-in screen is an anti-pattern. "Allow suggestions" or "customize". No "do not allow suggestions". On the first level. This is the stuff I want (and in the past expected) Mozilla to fight, not to become.

_wolfie_ 5y ago

> We need funding Yeah, I guess Baker needs a raise.

laurent92 5y ago
Counterpoint, I’d rather NGOs and benevolent societies be attractive for world-class leaders, rather than be the constant underdog. Of course those CEOs have to avoid implementing classic business schemes.
- krageon 5y ago
  > world-class leaders Yes, the kind of leaders that forget the core of what they are doing and that make shady deals and decisions like this. "World-class leaders" are sharks and have no place in a company for common good.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  If Mozilla hired a better CEO with the money, I agree that’d justify paying the position more.
- account42 5y ago
  Word class leaders? https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html I'd rather have people that care about the cause in charge of these NGOs.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    It's ironic that Brave is growing.
- shakow 5y ago
  > world-class leaders ‶Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%″ -- https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
- lucideer 5y ago
  > attractive for world-class leaders You're equating greed and competence. It's an oddly common mistake. NGOs and benevolent societies are attractive on the basis of their values. If monetary compensation were correlatory with quality products, we clearly wouldn't be in this position with Firefox: Mozilla's current leader is clearly world-class by your own definition (where world-class==well remunerated), and is yet demonstrably failing the company on every possible metric.
- craftinator 5y ago
  It's ironic that the CEO is allowing ads in the search bar then.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Exactly. No excuses - when you use such a language, you do it on purpose - you know you're going to fuck people over, and the language is there to keep them unaware that they're being exploited. I second your opinion - I'd be willing to entertain, or even support, this way of them making money iff they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why. In details. Talk with me like two adults that respect each other.

chrisweekly 5y ago
+1 for "iff" (if and only if), which I wish were more broadly used and recognized in written English
- deepbreath 5y ago
  Except it's not used correctly here. "A iff B" means "A implies B and B implies A". "I'd be willing to entertain, or even support, this way of them making money iff they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why" implies both of these: - "If they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why, I'd be willing to entertain [...]" - "If I'd be willing to entertain [..] then they will honestly spell what they're doing and why". The second of which doesn't make sense to me, unless I'm missing something? He should have used "only if" rather than "iff" here.
  - unbalancedevh 5y ago
    A iff B doesn't mean that B is because of A. It simply means that if A is true then B must be as well. > - "If I'd be willing to entertain [..] then they will honestly spell what they're doing and why". This is true, because if they won't, then you wouldn't be willing to entertain [..]
    - deepbreath 5y ago
      You're right, I guess it depends on what you choose A and B to be. For: A = OP supports Mozilla making money from address bar ads B = Mozilla is honest about making money from address bar ads "B -> A" (OP supports Mozilla if Mozilla acts a certain way) makes sense. "A -> B" sounds confusing in a sentence, but its contrapositive, "!B -> !A", also makes sense. However, for: B = Mozilla decides to make money from address bar ads and is honest about reasons "A -> B" no longer makes sense, since OP can support Mozilla having the address bar ads with an honest justification, but Mozilla can still decide to not have the address bar ads.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

> Why not just tell it like it is. Because the sad truth is every other company is doing exactly the same. We live in a world where the people who track you most will greet you with "we value your privacy".

drdaeman 5y ago
Well, that is literally true - they assign monetary value to your private information. ;)
soundnote 5y ago
Brave doesn't. "Sponsored images" and a huge subheading and toggle that say "Ads" speak pretty plain language.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

the day before i asked here why does mozilla need a ceo and i was met with anger for even suggesting that. "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28765685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28765685" aged like milk i guess.

bodge5000 5y ago

> Why not tell it like it is I'm no expert, but from what I've heard the reasoning is that ad companies don't like it when you do that and won't want to work with you. They'd rather FF says "we love these guys and they just happen to be handing us bags of money" rather than "look, we dont like this anymore than you do but we need the cash". Not excusing it, and I could well be wrong (there could also be a way of saying it that satisfies both parties), but thats my understanding of the rationale

TeMPOraL 5y ago
If that's the case, this is already grounds for writing Mozilla off. Ad companies are what they are. But if Mozilla was not able to find a partner who's able to tolerate honesty, and decided to compromise instead, what else they're going to compromise on when their new "trusted partners" ask nicely?

silvestrov 5y ago

> Why not just tell it like it is. Because they don't want to say: "we want a lot of money to all kinds of projects irrelevant to the browser". They should focus on their core product and cut everything else away. Instead they are an organization that tries to save the whole world. It seems like they think the jobs created for themselves by "saving the world" is the core business and Firefox is just a cash-cow for this.

cxr 5y ago
Damn it would be nice if this meme would die. The first of its sins is the tacit agreement that Mozilla is doing this because, as the parent comment says, they "need funding". Mozilla needs funding now like Wikipedia needs funding: they have more of it than they've ever had, but by all appearances, you'd think they're really strapped for cash or something, because their pleas have gotten steadily more intrusive and desperate. Second is the "focus on their core product" remark. There's so much wrong with this sentence. First, it's the tacit acceptance that Mozilla is and should be a classic Valley tech company—a bit player with a product competing in the market, rather than the way mozilla.org operated in its heyday—you know, when it was actually a force for good and were winning hearts and minds. This is another case where the trend does not support the thesis. Mozilla _has_ steadily gotten more focused on Firefox compared to its historically diverse interests (to the exclusion and chagrin of many of its volunteers and advocates), and by most measures we're worse off for this Corporation-centric mindset. At its height, Mozilla was accomplishing way more, had greater influence than it has today, and did it on a fraction of the budget. Today, Mozilla has half a billion in annual revenue but the Firefox team claims that keeping a menu item around that lets you jump to a site's RSS feed is too much of a maintenance burden. Where do you think all the money is going? It's not Thunderbird or developer.mozilla.org that are sucking hundreds of millions away. And as bad as Mitchell's leadership has been over the last 5+ years, her new salary in the low single-digit millions has pretty much nothing to do with it. For comparison, Mozilla has something like a 50+ million dollar marketing budget. This is classic cost disease. Ten years ago, it was a common quip that Chrome's effective marketing budget (i.e. in imaginary dollars) was greater than Mozilla's entire annual revenue. Well guess where we are today? A well-funded contender in the browser wars could almost certainly appear tomorrow and grab as much market share in the next 3 to 5 year period as Firefox currently has and do it on total operating costs that measure half of Mozilla's marketing spend (in actual dollars). So please stop doing this. Every time you feed into this meme that you heard on social media and that sounded good to you because it wrapped things up in a nice, simple narrative, at best it's going to have no effect, and at worst you encourage Mozilla to lean in and do _exactly_ the things that have led to present situation. If you want to provide encouragement, encourage Mozilla to overhaul its entire leadership, to live by the principles they purport to care about (how about starting with removing opaque clicktracking links from emails?), to put a real content blocker in the browser, to stop hawking VPN snake oil, and to open source Pocket like it was promised over 4 years ago. Demand that they make falsifiable claims that can be evaluated for success or failure on well-defined criteria. Campaign for them to either cap the marketing budget to $1 million or actually do something effective with it (like writing a check to Wikimedia and then blogging about how the reason that there are no overlays on Wikipedia this year nagging you for funding this year is because Mozilla decided to foot the bill and so you're welcome—which would be way more effective than _anything_ the marketing department has done to date).

zaphirplane 5y ago

Firefox doesn’t need 400 million per year to develop Mozilla has a lot of no value initiatives activities that they want to fund

jacquesm 5y ago
Exactly that. If they got rid of their hobbies then this sort of scam wouldn't be necessary. Yes, it's a scam: bait and switch.
- craftinator 5y ago
  You'd think from the messaging that they don't have nearly the funding today that they had 5 years ago, when in reality their funding has grown by ~50% during that time...
- xfitm3 5y ago
  Remember Mozilla is ultimately a non profit and must spend a healthy percentage of their income every year. Mozilla is just representing the collective self interest of those it employs. People wanting to keep their cushy job.
  - 0des 5y ago
    I prefer they'd spend it on their browser engineers and whichever arm legislatively opposes existing browser monopolies.
  - protomyth 5y ago
    Remember Mozilla is ultimately a non profit and must spend a healthy percentage of their income every year. And Harvard has a multi-billion dollar endowment that they hoard. Mozilla is doing it wrong.
    - throwaway2037 5y ago
      A quick Google search tells me the rule in the United States IRS is: <<Generally, a private foundation must meet or exceed an annual payout requirement of five percent of the average market value of its net investment assets to avoid paying taxes.>> Harvard endowment is so huge for two reasons: (1) fundraising, (2) earning more than 5% per year for long, long, long time. But they still must spend 5% per year of their massive endowment. Running a non-profit with only an endowment (no fund-raising) for more than 20 years with is hard to do.

nonbirithm 5y ago

Having watched The Boys just an hour ago, I couldn't agree more. So much of that show is made up of language that conceals intent and how it is used to preserve one's public image and save face, and you can immediately tell when someone is actually willing to tell the truth instead of skirt around the actual issues. The incentives aren't made clear and you're left with the gaps to fill leading up to how decisions like these got made at an executive level. Does Mozilla stand to lose favor with Google or someone else by trying to be more honest about what it's trying to accomplish, or avoid? Mozilla does stand to lose a lot of favor with its core audience by trying to act corporate now of all times, with Firefox marketshare at an all-time low. And I have to wonder if these kind of statements were universally accepted by the people who are a part of the company, on the foundation or corporate side. Are there any Mozillians that believe that this is not Mozilla as people remember it? Would they be willing to express their thoughts, if so?

adar 5y ago
I'm not quite sure scripted dialogue in a fictional TV show about murderous superheroes is the correct comparison for Mozilla putting ads in search results...
- oAlbe 5y ago
  The comment you are replying to is referencing the language used in the statement made by Mozilla. I hope it is not coming to you as news the fact that those corporate statements are scripted, likely much more heavily than a TV show.

qwerty456127 5y ago

Well, if Mozilla trusts someone - I feel curious. I would believe they have a chance to be better than others and my trust to them in fact goes from 0% to 25%.

dsr_ 5y ago
i dunno. In my experience, when someone says "trust me" and simultaneously offers me money to do something that I know is wrong, that's a good time not to trust them.

hnbad 5y ago

> Why not just tell it like it is. Given the massive salaries and bonuses paid out to upper management[0], I think their problem would be not sounding like that dril tweet about budgeting[1]. After the massive layoffs and cuts to vital web platform projects this move just feels consistent in their move from their old "quirky nerd charity" image to a new, more corporate one. I'm not saying that this is a good thing. [0]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html [1]: https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472 https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472

piokoch 5y ago
Huh, information in https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html are, delicately speaking, disturbing. One thing surprised me as well: "Firefox barely exists on phones, with a market share of less than half a percent. This is baffling given that mobile Firefox has a rare feature for a mobile browser: it's able to install extensions and so can block ads." Yes, indeed, FF is pretty great on the phone, it looks like someone fails to advertise it as such. I use it precisely because I can use add blocker. The person with 2.4M compensation should notice that something wrong is going on. I am afraid that Firefox/Mozilla at some point will become something like Yahoo or Commodore, a name that is being bought and sold by investment founds to extract some income and sell it further...
- hnbad 5y ago
  The problem is that Mozilla's profits are tied less to their market cap than to their ability to raise funding. Historically Google contributed the lion's share because Firefox was useful to mask the increasing market domination of Chrome, which would have caused some upset so shortly after Microsoft got into trouble for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. This role is becoming less relevant with Microsoft reviving its browser efforts and Apple heavily pushing Safari, and of course Opera, Brave and others riding on Chrome's coat tails via Chromium (like MS for that matter). Ironically Netscape itself became "something like Yahoo or Commodore": AOL bought Netscape (which led to the Mozilla foundation being created), then proceeded to sell discount services under the name "Netscape ISP" and eventually renamed the original Netscape company. As far as I know the original company (now non-operating) eventually ended up being owned by Facebook and the Netscape brand somehow ended up being owned by Yahoo.

GordonS 5y ago

I'm with you on this - Firefox is supposed to be different, more trustworthy, more on your side. They've been losing market share, and these actions and language are not going to help.

x14km2d 5y ago

> and eroding trust. This is exactly the point why I left Google Chrome back then and considered FF as a good alternative. I didn't trust Google anymore. But now I face the same problem again, because I don't want these "features and trusted partners". I also don't want to have to justify over and over again why I don't want them. I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SimeVidas 5y ago
> I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust. You can't trust any of them. The real question is, who do you trust more? Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Brave. You can't trust any of them, but you have to pick one.
- leppr 5y ago
  Mozilla might be the best out of this, but they're also in the weaker position. Ads, whether they respect privacy or not, give off a scummy feel to users. The clean Chrome UI, even if it tracks you in a hundred ways, "looks" more trustworthy to users than a browser riddled with ads. It's bad enough to have to instruct people how to disable the New Tab ads, now you have to add one more step. At this point it becomes pretty awkward: "Don't use Chrome browsers, they don't respect your privacy and are bad for the web! Use Firefox instead. Oh but wait you have to disable integrated ads first, just do this and that and this and I swear it's fine!"
  - ghoward 5y ago
    You're not wrong. This is why I use Ungoogled Chromium and build it myself.
    - leppr 5y ago
      Well that's more effort than just disabling the New Tab ads on Firefox and you're clearly technically inclined so this doesn't go towards my argument.

cabalamat 5y ago

> Why not just tell it like it is. Indeed. Mozilla should be honest. That's what builds trust. We all know they need money, so if this gives them money to improve FF, fine by me. But they need to quit the marketing bullshit-speak.

andrepd 5y ago
They need money to improve FF so they will get it by fucking up FF? Sounds counterproductive to me.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  No, they need money to pay for their CEO. She had to fire 250 engineers to pay her salary last year, she might not have another 250 left to fire this year.
  - krferriter 5y ago
    The salary of 250 engineers is way more than her own salary, but yes it is a bad look to be firing engineers while raising executive pay.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  It is but it also happens often enough in business that you have to wonder what it is that drives it? Is it some business school process or management training BS? It usually only happens when "trained" business people get involved that this sort of BS happens.
- tomrod 5y ago
  To be fair, this issue is also reflected with the mobile upgrade that wiped most of the functionality, extension integration, and good will. Whomever they have hired to (1) perform UX research and (2) make executive decisions aren't performing, IMHO.
  - tempest_ 5y ago

mblock 5y ago

Why are we shocked about marketing?

pseudalopex 5y ago
Disappointment isn't shock. And criticism doesn't imply either.
denton-scratch 5y ago
Who is this "we"? Are you shocked? Speaking for myself, I'm not shocked, nor even surprised, that marketers would like to get into my living-room and my bedroom. If Mozilla wants to facilitate that, then they become my enemy. Marketers are going to do marketing, just as pigs roll in shit and rabbits breed. I'm not trying to stop the tide; but I'll sandbag my front-door, so the tide doesn't wash into my home. If Mozilla wants to try an end-run around my flood defences, Mozilla can be removed quite easily. Mozilla execs seem increasingly the same as the execs at IANA. They don't have real customers or shareholders; they are not held to account. It astonishes me how much these greedy oafs get paid. They are removing value, not adding it.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Reflecting further: Wouldn't it be cool if we could get some of the products we use from companies that are structured so that they "serve their customers" and nobody else? Customers (i.e. users) would then have a veto on idiotic new "features" and infelicitous marketing partnerships. If Mozilla had been such an organisation, then perhaps Firefox wouldn't have slid away from the top spot.

jrochkind1 5y ago

At first I had an immediate negative reaction to this. But then I thought, okay, they need money, ads in address bar isn't the worst thing in the world. But then then I thought: But only if they are clearly disclosed as ads! Instead we seem to have a combination of " traditional suggestions like browsing history and open tabs, as well as new suggestions from our partners" -- are the "paid placements" clearly designated as such? Unclear? Probably not? In "traditional" media, the first rule of advertisements is that they be clearly identified as advertisements, as content put there by someone paying for it, instead of by editorial judgement. Because how can you trust the editorial judgement of the publisher if you can't tell which is which? That even Mozilla no longer thinks this is necessary shows how much the culture has changed, where "paid placement" is pretty much assumed everywhere (or if not, you're a naive fool) and nobody trusts anybody.

mox1 5y ago
I would love for them to go NPR style on ads. If you listen to an NPR radio station (at least here in my area), basically anyone can run a radio ad, but it has to be about 10 seconds max and it is delivered by the on-air personality. "Npr would like to thank Bob's Hot Dogs, Bobs hot dogs deliver an excellent dog at an excellent price, find out more at bobdogs.com" Replace the brand there with yours and that's what you get. No contextual bs, no crazy logos or statements, just a simple word from a sponsor.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  Yes, but unfortunately public radio isn't always as good about this anymore as one would wish or as they used to, either. National "NPR" may be better. But our local NPR "affiliate" has whole shows that are really pay-to-play. :( https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcp-why-so-much-pr-wypr-seems-to-routinely-trade-underwriting-for-air-time-is-that-a-problem-20150310-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcp-why-so-much-pr-wy...
  - nescioquid 5y ago
    Agreed, and I'd even contend that public media dependence on commercial advertisement is a problem. I'd much prefer to see public funding for public media restored. Maybe Mozilla needs to do a pledge drive, instead. I had used Mozilla products for many years before I even realized they accepted charitable donations.

orangeoxidation 5y ago

> FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust Excactly them trying to find more sources of income is fine by me. The hiding it and the deceptive messaging is awful. "enhance and speed up your searching experience" - I'm sure it will. Even the opt-in screen is an anti-pattern. "Allow suggestions" or "customize". No "do not allow suggestions". On the first level. This is the stuff I want (and in the past expected) Mozilla to fight, not to become.