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Huh, information in https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html are, delicately speaking, disturbing. One thing surprised me as w

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.

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.