4 ms·

>A fair playing field is vital to ensure that Mozilla and other independent companies can continue to act as a counterweight to big tech You literally exist on

>A fair playing field is vital to ensure that Mozilla and other independent companies can continue to act as a counterweight to big tech You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent.

kajaktum 4y ago
(Corrupt execs aside) What other forms of revenue can Mozilla use? Everyone thinks Pocket is a meme, no one really cares about Mozilla VPN, any attempts at making money will be seen as Mozilla turning for-profit. Donations? Lmao. Good engineers are extremely expensive to buy.
- joecool1029 4y ago
  Realistically their business would not be able to function without tech giants funding it. The only reason those tech giants fund it is to both continue to promote their own products and to reap the benefit of arguing that it is to foster competition. This is a longterm no-win situation for Mozilla. I guess I could see government drafting bids for developing browser technology (make a national security argument like this stupid bill does) that Mozilla would be able to win. Of course then we'd have articles written by people freaking out about government influence.
cma 4y ago
Doesn't Google outbid Bing for the role? Would it be existential for moz if they had to take Bing's smaller bid?
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Why do people act like that's some kind of "gotcha"? To me that fact gives it more weight, not less.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Because Google has been the weakest when it comes to privacy measures. And so when you're giving them money, data, traffic and users you're increasing their ability to set the privacy agenda and promoting a single search engine, single browser view of the world. It's hypocritical and short-sighted.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Mozilla is every bit as weak when it comes to privacy defaults.
    - dathinab 4y ago
      not quite, a lot of the weakness comes solely from the fact of it not being used super widely and as such being easier to finger print. Through then the moment flutter became semi successful any hope for preventing/limiting fingerprinting was lost as the only way I know of to prevent fingerprinting through WebGl and similar is by not allowing it's usage. I.e. only allow it for special use-cases like games and tell the user of the drawback of reduced privacy. But flutter needs/wants that tech for normal websites...
- joecool1029 4y ago
  At the end of the day their very existence has enabled Google to argue 'We're not an abusive monopoly. See? We fund this very outspoken open web technology company'. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming independence when they are fully dependent on tech giants. The end result is a delay in the courts using already existing antitrust law to address the problem.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Mozilla may be getting played. Yet they don't only take money from Google for defaults. And at times they've used other defaults in the US too, like Yahoo. There is still value there, and the good need not be enemy of the perfect.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Independance and financial reliance are two separate things. Getting money from Google doesn't make them a group company.
  - ajvs 4y ago
    Their whole point is that it's not a fair playing field, so independent companies don't stand a chance. Therefore even decently sized companies like Mozilla have to suck on the teat of the Big Tech behemoths.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
j-bos 4y ago
If anything that lends weight to the message. Like an ant calling out the elephant.
- joecool1029 4y ago
  You can rationalize it that way, I get it. However, last I checked Mozilla has a lawyer as their CEO. Why do you think they haven't tested this idea in court if the message is so good?
  - price 4y ago
    The blog post you are writing comments about is literally about working to get the law changed. Courts apply the existing law. The existing law puts very few constraints on big companies using their power. That is exactly why Mozilla is urging Congress to change the law.
  - stale2002 4y ago
    Did you read the blog post at all? It answers this question. The answer is that they are trying to change the law.
    - joecool1029 4y ago
      >Did you read the blog post at all? Did you read the bill at all? That's more important than the Google-funded PR piece. This bill they are promoting contains nationalistic or sinophobic text. I could see a targeted party like Apple moving their argument from 'It would negatively impact user experience' to 'China could hack our users if we allow other browser engines' and it'd be totally cool under this bill. It's a shit bill with a very narrow scope that's easily evaded.
echelon 4y ago
> You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent. Google used venture dollars to grow to a scale that they could fund the biggest browser team in the world, show download links on the web portal every single person on the planet uses, and pay OEMs to pre-install it. They then bought in early into smartphones and distribute devices with their browser and Google defaults. They use their browser to show preference to other Google products, and they cripple ad blocking tech to make more revenue. Firefox had a healthy percent of browser market share before Google showed up. This is like private equity buying the land your business sits on and giving you a pat on the back for job well done. I am far from anti-capitalist, but you have to realize these monopolistic moves are harming competition and making the tech landscape harder for everyone else to compete.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Most of the people I know moved to Chrome because Firefox was sucking sixteen variations of arse and getting worse.
goodpoint 4y ago
And how is this invalidating the open letter? Does such message stop being true depending on who said it?
dathinab 4y ago
> exist[...] in order to prevent antitrust litigation, How does it exclude independent acting. It literally requires independent acting of the pseudo competition as if not it would count as a cartel and make antitrust actions _easier_ not harder. The reason they might not be seen as a real competition is not because you do control them, it's because you have so much more money and monopoly-like power that you don't fare their action no matter what hey do.
rvz 4y ago
There you go. Mozilla also knows it and the CEO has admitted it. [0] After 14 years of promising to live without Google's money, [0] they still cannot find a way to make money and are chronically reliant on Google bank-rolling them as over 80% of their revenues are from Google. Thunderbird, Firefox VPN, Firefox OS, all failures. They are essentially on life support. A joke to achieving their mission statement without being dependent on their anti-privacy foe's money and are the weakest counterweight to big tech. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9044160/Mozilla_can_live_without_Google_s_money_Baker_says_ https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...
- mschuster91 4y ago
  What are the alternatives? How should Mozilla fund itself? It's the same problem that every piece of open source software has: developers cost serious money and relying on unpaid volunteers is unsustainable as well as dangerous (see https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ for the appropriate meme). Some projects have attempted to solve that problem by providing enterprise consulting (MySQL), SaaS hosting (Elasticsearch), getting funded/acquired by a megacorp (Google, IBM, Oracle)... but for Mozilla and its various projects I can't see any way of monetization. > Firefox OS, all failures. Again, the same problem: Google and Apple have probably sunk dozens of billions of dollars into Android and iOS. It is impossible to create a viable competition against such massive amounts of money, even Microsoft with its advantage of many years of experience with Windows CE / Windows Phone and the bankroll of being Microsoft has failed.
  - CrimsonRain 4y ago
    maybe focus on building the browser better and allowing donation for it instead of spending money (including any donation) on rubbish executives/political causes?
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      Donations are a notoriously fickle beast. Other than Wikipedia, no successful open-source project is being dominantly funded from donations - and one might argue that Wikipedia only gets so many donations because their funding drives are pretty damn obnoxious (Yes I'm aware that it's Wikimedia Foundation but let's be honest the side projects are pretty much irrelevant). To make it worse, even the behemoth that Wikipedia is creates barely 160 million dollars a year in revenue [1]. That is orders of magnitude less than the amount of money that Google, MS and Apple have at their disposal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

kajaktum 4y ago

(Corrupt execs aside) What other forms of revenue can Mozilla use? Everyone thinks Pocket is a meme, no one really cares about Mozilla VPN, any attempts at making money will be seen as Mozilla turning for-profit. Donations? Lmao. Good engineers are extremely expensive to buy.

joecool1029 4y ago
Realistically their business would not be able to function without tech giants funding it. The only reason those tech giants fund it is to both continue to promote their own products and to reap the benefit of arguing that it is to foster competition. This is a longterm no-win situation for Mozilla. I guess I could see government drafting bids for developing browser technology (make a national security argument like this stupid bill does) that Mozilla would be able to win. Of course then we'd have articles written by people freaking out about government influence.

cma 4y ago

Doesn't Google outbid Bing for the role? Would it be existential for moz if they had to take Bing's smaller bid?

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Why do people act like that's some kind of "gotcha"? To me that fact gives it more weight, not less.

threeseed 4y ago
Because Google has been the weakest when it comes to privacy measures. And so when you're giving them money, data, traffic and users you're increasing their ability to set the privacy agenda and promoting a single search engine, single browser view of the world. It's hypocritical and short-sighted.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Mozilla is every bit as weak when it comes to privacy defaults.
  - dathinab 4y ago
    not quite, a lot of the weakness comes solely from the fact of it not being used super widely and as such being easier to finger print. Through then the moment flutter became semi successful any hope for preventing/limiting fingerprinting was lost as the only way I know of to prevent fingerprinting through WebGl and similar is by not allowing it's usage. I.e. only allow it for special use-cases like games and tell the user of the drawback of reduced privacy. But flutter needs/wants that tech for normal websites...
joecool1029 4y ago
At the end of the day their very existence has enabled Google to argue 'We're not an abusive monopoly. See? We fund this very outspoken open web technology company'. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming independence when they are fully dependent on tech giants. The end result is a delay in the courts using already existing antitrust law to address the problem.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Mozilla may be getting played. Yet they don't only take money from Google for defaults. And at times they've used other defaults in the US too, like Yahoo. There is still value there, and the good need not be enemy of the perfect.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Independance and financial reliance are two separate things. Getting money from Google doesn't make them a group company.
- ajvs 4y ago
  Their whole point is that it's not a fair playing field, so independent companies don't stand a chance. Therefore even decently sized companies like Mozilla have to suck on the teat of the Big Tech behemoths.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

j-bos 4y ago

If anything that lends weight to the message. Like an ant calling out the elephant.

joecool1029 4y ago
You can rationalize it that way, I get it. However, last I checked Mozilla has a lawyer as their CEO. Why do you think they haven't tested this idea in court if the message is so good?
- price 4y ago
  The blog post you are writing comments about is literally about working to get the law changed. Courts apply the existing law. The existing law puts very few constraints on big companies using their power. That is exactly why Mozilla is urging Congress to change the law.
- stale2002 4y ago
  Did you read the blog post at all? It answers this question. The answer is that they are trying to change the law.
  - joecool1029 4y ago
    >Did you read the blog post at all? Did you read the bill at all? That's more important than the Google-funded PR piece. This bill they are promoting contains nationalistic or sinophobic text. I could see a targeted party like Apple moving their argument from 'It would negatively impact user experience' to 'China could hack our users if we allow other browser engines' and it'd be totally cool under this bill. It's a shit bill with a very narrow scope that's easily evaded.

echelon 4y ago

> You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent. Google used venture dollars to grow to a scale that they could fund the biggest browser team in the world, show download links on the web portal every single person on the planet uses, and pay OEMs to pre-install it. They then bought in early into smartphones and distribute devices with their browser and Google defaults. They use their browser to show preference to other Google products, and they cripple ad blocking tech to make more revenue. Firefox had a healthy percent of browser market share before Google showed up. This is like private equity buying the land your business sits on and giving you a pat on the back for job well done. I am far from anti-capitalist, but you have to realize these monopolistic moves are harming competition and making the tech landscape harder for everyone else to compete.

bombcar 4y ago
Most of the people I know moved to Chrome because Firefox was sucking sixteen variations of arse and getting worse.

goodpoint 4y ago

And how is this invalidating the open letter? Does such message stop being true depending on who said it?

dathinab 4y ago

> exist[...] in order to prevent antitrust litigation, How does it exclude independent acting. It literally requires independent acting of the pseudo competition as if not it would count as a cartel and make antitrust actions _easier_ not harder. The reason they might not be seen as a real competition is not because you do control them, it's because you have so much more money and monopoly-like power that you don't fare their action no matter what hey do.

rvz 4y ago

There you go. Mozilla also knows it and the CEO has admitted it. [0] After 14 years of promising to live without Google's money, [0] they still cannot find a way to make money and are chronically reliant on Google bank-rolling them as over 80% of their revenues are from Google. Thunderbird, Firefox VPN, Firefox OS, all failures. They are essentially on life support. A joke to achieving their mission statement without being dependent on their anti-privacy foe's money and are the weakest counterweight to big tech. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9044160/Mozilla_can_live_without_Google_s_money_Baker_says_ https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...

mschuster91 4y ago
What are the alternatives? How should Mozilla fund itself? It's the same problem that every piece of open source software has: developers cost serious money and relying on unpaid volunteers is unsustainable as well as dangerous (see https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ for the appropriate meme). Some projects have attempted to solve that problem by providing enterprise consulting (MySQL), SaaS hosting (Elasticsearch), getting funded/acquired by a megacorp (Google, IBM, Oracle)... but for Mozilla and its various projects I can't see any way of monetization. > Firefox OS, all failures. Again, the same problem: Google and Apple have probably sunk dozens of billions of dollars into Android and iOS. It is impossible to create a viable competition against such massive amounts of money, even Microsoft with its advantage of many years of experience with Windows CE / Windows Phone and the bankroll of being Microsoft has failed.
- CrimsonRain 4y ago
  maybe focus on building the browser better and allowing donation for it instead of spending money (including any donation) on rubbish executives/political causes?
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Donations are a notoriously fickle beast. Other than Wikipedia, no successful open-source project is being dominantly funded from donations - and one might argue that Wikipedia only gets so many donations because their funding drives are pretty damn obnoxious (Yes I'm aware that it's Wikimedia Foundation but let's be honest the side projects are pretty much irrelevant). To make it worse, even the behemoth that Wikipedia is creates barely 160 million dollars a year in revenue [1]. That is orders of magnitude less than the amount of money that Google, MS and Apple have at their disposal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...