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Threads about the finances of Mozilla are always full of criticism and begrudging. Yeah, they take money from Google, and that keeps them alive. Yeah, they woul

Threads about the finances of Mozilla are always full of criticism and begrudging. Yeah, they take money from Google, and that keeps them alive. Yeah, they would love to not be so reliant on them. This is old news. But while they are alive, and while Firefox continues development, Google have slightly less of a grip on the internet. That is undeniably a good thing. Mozilla getting paid by Google is a better scenario than Firefox being abandoned and Google controlling the browser engine space entirely.

chrisseaton 4y ago
Almost nobody uses Firefox - it's Safari that keeps balance in the browser world.
- ianbutler 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers To be fair, you are correct in the mobile space, and that is now the lion share of devices, but Firefox does have a healthy 7.5% usage in the desktop space if the metrics on this page are to be believed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tpush 4y ago
    Why not just look at market share across all devices? Which makes chrisseaton's point: Firefox sits at 3.26% as opposed to Safari at 18.61%.
    - ianbutler 4y ago
      Because mobile and desktop are different markets
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Because all browsers are Safari on the mobile platform that has 60% of market share in the US.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        Well yeah that’s a fact that supports the point. Why exclude it?
        ianbutler 4y ago
        You literally can’t run a different browser on the device.* If I’ve installed Firefox I’ve installed reskinned Safari. “2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.” From the App Store guidelines. It’s not a choice thing. *without jailbreaking
        chrisseaton 4y ago
        You choose the browser with the device.
        ianbutler 4y ago
        That seems like an anti trust action waiting to happen frankly.
      - chlorion 4y ago
        That is irrelevant though. It sucks that Apple does this but it doesn't actually change the fact that Firefox use is at 3%.
        heavyset_go 4y ago
        It affects usage rates of other browsers other than Safari on that platform, because other "browsers" are just limited chrome on top of Safari. The quality of Chrome, Firefox, etc on iOS will be behind the quality of the same browsers on platforms that they're allowed to improve and innovate upon.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Even 3% of market share could be hundreds of millions of people. Browser market size is extremely large. That's hardly irrelevant. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
- soperj 4y ago
  Only because people are forced to.
- pmarreck 4y ago
  I use Firefox across all my devices. It's fantastic. The people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely moved on from Chrome.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > I use Firefox across all my devices. I'm sure you really tip the scales. > The people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely moved on from Chrome. Well then clearly most people don't care do they? Isn't that the point? Firefox isn't having a significant impact. They aren't achieving what they say they want to. Safari's having much more of an impact.
    - dzikimarian 4y ago
      > Safari's having much more of an impact. So what? Is there a limit to the number of browsers in the world?
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        So what is it’s Safari keeping balance not Firefox. The original comment wasn’t right. You can’t keep balance with single-digit market-share.
        dzikimarian 4y ago
        Okay, that's good. Hopefully they will continue. Goal is to not have single-browser monopoly, so everyone develop according to the standards not optimize against single engine. What's the point in arguing who is better balance keeper?
    - kibwen 4y ago
      > I'm sure you really tip the scales. Why get so upset about someone whom you are apparently certain has no impact?
Waterluvian 4y ago
I think I mostly agree. But let me play Satan’s Lawyer for a moment: Google wants to avoid resembling a monopoly on browsers. But they also don’t want competition. Keeping Mozilla on palliative care may actually be worse than letting it collapse, the monopoly becoming obvious, and regulatory bodies forcing corrections of the situation. (but who am I kidding, that won’t happen… maybe in Europe)
- heather45879 4y ago
  It’s actually in Google’s best interest to help keep Mozilla alive. Mozilla is an innovator and helps push the envelope with technologies like Rust and WASM. Friendly competition helps prevent stagnation and encourages innovation on both sides.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Mozilla may have been an innovator, but the servo team was fired, and so was a security team, while the CEO's salary roared and the market share dropped further[1]. Maybe things have changed, idk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865, contains all the links.
    - yoasif_ 4y ago
      The Twitter post your link references has been deleted.
      - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-... ... laying off 250 staff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mozilla-cutting-250-jobs-after-coronavirus-pandemic-cuts-revenue/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mozilla-cutting-250-jobs...
pluc 4y ago
It's real odd to be the only alternative to Chrome yet be almost entirely funded by it. Google allows Firefox to exist, and Google can decide it's tired of sponsoring competition tomorrow morning. I don't like that Mozilla allows that to be their (and ours, and the web's) reality and isn't more adventurous in monetization. Also that they pay their CEO an outrageous amount of money, but I guess you're free to pick what your kneepads are going to be made of.
- kibwen 4y ago
  The last time that Mozilla parted ways with Google (in 2014), Yahoo snapped up that spot (if reports are to be believed, for actually more than Google was paying). Yahoo Search may be defunct, but as long as Bing exists, there's an out. Of course, it would be nicer if the existence of megacorp-funded search engines was not an existential prerequisite.
- rtepopbe 4y ago
  I don't like the situation either, but I find it hard to blame Mozilla for not pushing monetization hard enough. I can't think of anything more I'd like Mozilla to actually do. I'm rather against being sold out, and suspect most Firefox users feel similarly. Offering services essentially entirely separate from Firefox could work, but comes with substantial risk. Mozilla will be more trusted than some fly-by-night startup, at least among the techie crowd, but also can't just burn investor money and start over until something sticks. (Ironically, the only thing that comes to mind here for me would be a privacy-oriented email provider.) The only maybe, theoretically, kind-of, plausible route I see working would be more of an open-core-esque model, where their paid offerings essentially implemented extension-like capabilities that would benefit substantially from deep integration with the browser. Think things that would otherwise be impossible with the extension API, or have substantial performance improvements if only Firefox internals could be messed with. But. So many buts. I'm not even sure their organization is setup to allow this kind of thing. I'm sure their codebase isn't, especially if it might require special considerations to comply with their charter. Mozilla would also gain a bunch of perverse incentives to restrict or cripple base Firefox, which would bite them every time they added a new paid offering. For example, just how much more flack would they have caught for the new extension API if their own offerings wouldn't have to abide by any of those new limitations? And it seems inevitable that they'll have to spend some serious effort to minimize the amount of browser fragmentation issues that would now occur within Firefox itself. After all of that, the extensions most likely to get me to buy in - literally and otherwise - to the whole concept, would be ones that would seriously strain Mozilla's relationship with Google and many other companies. Things like deeply integrated ad-blocking and other privacy-focused features would be most likely to get me to not only accept the practice but even spend my money. But step one of weening themselves off Google's money probably shouldn't be "Burn bridges with Google." So... yeah. What else is Mozilla supposed to do? I'm not overly enamored with Mozilla these days. Increasingly I feel I'm sticking with them less because of anything they've done, and more because of what Google's done. But still, I find it hard to blame them too much for treading water.
thrown_22 4y ago
>Look Mr. Government, we're not a monopoly. We have a competitor! * *Who were funding and have neutered to the point where they've lost 90% of their market share in the last 10 years. Have fired all their developers and are spending the money on spending that looks a lot like what GFX did. Mozilla is a dead weight around the neck of the internet. The best thing that can happen is that it dies and something new, run by people who actually make things, is created again. When was the last time anyone was excited about a firefox update?
- speed_spread 4y ago
  Updates to existing browsers should not be exciting. I actually dread Chrome updates because they keep taking useful stuff away.
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  > Mozilla is a dead weight around the neck of the internet. How exactly are they dead weight?
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    They aren't. People got made because moz removed the XUL free for all and never got over it.
- gamjQZnHT53AMa 4y ago
  The people you are imagining that can make things exist wether it not Mozilla exists. And no one is successfully making a browser project to rival Firefox. So no, I think that isn't the best thing
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    Firefox is sucking up all the donations for such browsers. So no, them dying would make a thousands flowers bloom.
    - 4y ago
roenxi 4y ago
They have a billion dollars in assets and are making $600 million/annum if I'm reading their financial statement correctly. That is well into the 'corrupt until proven otherwise' range of wealth. Firefox's development needs orders of magnitude less than that, the browser's market share collapsed and it is notable that Eich [0] of all people went on to develop a browser based on Chrome after thinking about what would be the best base for a company. And Brave is at least trying things - it probably won't work but there is a vision there of reshaping the internet and toppling Google's advertising model. That could be Mozilla. It isn't. There is a lot of room here to criticise this project. It seems to be off the rails, and it is likely to go further off the rails. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
- chomp 4y ago
  $600 million in revenue (across all subsidiaries), $200 million on software development, $100 million on management, are you upset at Mozilla for running a healthy balance sheet? I'm confused about your complaint. Should Mozilla be packing itself to the gills with software developers for Firefox? It seems like they are trying to broaden their holdings and assets to build wealth for the company and Foundation so that they can become less reliant on Google. Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and was in a better position in 2015. I'm not seeing how this is can be made to an indictment of Mozilla corruption.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    > ...are you upset at Mozilla for running a healthy balance sheet... Charitable foundations aren't supposed to be corporations. If we've got an entity like Mozilla running a healthy balance sheet it should be a public corporation that we can all be shareholders in. So yes, I am upset by that too although that wasn't the point I was trying to make. They've set up a situation where they are going to be corrupted. A billion dollars in assets attracts charlatans and they won't have sufficient defences to stop the money being siphoned off into pet projects and general shenanigans. There will probably turn out to be fraud involved sooner or later. > ... Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and was in a better position in 2015... As far as I care, their purpose is to make a good web browser. This is absolutely an indictment of Mozilla.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
> Yeah, they would love to not be so reliant on them. If they had put a substantial chuck of this money in income producing investments for the last ten or twenty years (instead of executive perks), they could have a nice annuity right now. Could be called an "endowment."

chrisseaton 4y ago

Almost nobody uses Firefox - it's Safari that keeps balance in the browser world.

ianbutler 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers To be fair, you are correct in the mobile space, and that is now the lion share of devices, but Firefox does have a healthy 7.5% usage in the desktop space if the metrics on this page are to be believed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tpush 4y ago
  Why not just look at market share across all devices? Which makes chrisseaton's point: Firefox sits at 3.26% as opposed to Safari at 18.61%.
  - ianbutler 4y ago
    Because mobile and desktop are different markets
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Because all browsers are Safari on the mobile platform that has 60% of market share in the US.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Well yeah that’s a fact that supports the point. Why exclude it?
      - ianbutler 4y ago
        You literally can’t run a different browser on the device.* If I’ve installed Firefox I’ve installed reskinned Safari. “2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.” From the App Store guidelines. It’s not a choice thing. *without jailbreaking
        chrisseaton 4y ago
        You choose the browser with the device.
        ianbutler 4y ago
        That seems like an anti trust action waiting to happen frankly.
    - chlorion 4y ago
      That is irrelevant though. It sucks that Apple does this but it doesn't actually change the fact that Firefox use is at 3%.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        It affects usage rates of other browsers other than Safari on that platform, because other "browsers" are just limited chrome on top of Safari. The quality of Chrome, Firefox, etc on iOS will be behind the quality of the same browsers on platforms that they're allowed to improve and innovate upon.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Even 3% of market share could be hundreds of millions of people. Browser market size is extremely large. That's hardly irrelevant. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
soperj 4y ago
Only because people are forced to.
pmarreck 4y ago
I use Firefox across all my devices. It's fantastic. The people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely moved on from Chrome.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > I use Firefox across all my devices. I'm sure you really tip the scales. > The people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely moved on from Chrome. Well then clearly most people don't care do they? Isn't that the point? Firefox isn't having a significant impact. They aren't achieving what they say they want to. Safari's having much more of an impact.
  - dzikimarian 4y ago
    > Safari's having much more of an impact. So what? Is there a limit to the number of browsers in the world?
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      So what is it’s Safari keeping balance not Firefox. The original comment wasn’t right. You can’t keep balance with single-digit market-share.
      - dzikimarian 4y ago
        Okay, that's good. Hopefully they will continue. Goal is to not have single-browser monopoly, so everyone develop according to the standards not optimize against single engine. What's the point in arguing who is better balance keeper?
  - kibwen 4y ago
    > I'm sure you really tip the scales. Why get so upset about someone whom you are apparently certain has no impact?

Waterluvian 4y ago

I think I mostly agree. But let me play Satan’s Lawyer for a moment: Google wants to avoid resembling a monopoly on browsers. But they also don’t want competition. Keeping Mozilla on palliative care may actually be worse than letting it collapse, the monopoly becoming obvious, and regulatory bodies forcing corrections of the situation. (but who am I kidding, that won’t happen… maybe in Europe)

heather45879 4y ago
It’s actually in Google’s best interest to help keep Mozilla alive. Mozilla is an innovator and helps push the envelope with technologies like Rust and WASM. Friendly competition helps prevent stagnation and encourages innovation on both sides.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Mozilla may have been an innovator, but the servo team was fired, and so was a security team, while the CEO's salary roared and the market share dropped further[1]. Maybe things have changed, idk. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865, contains all the links.
  - yoasif_ 4y ago
    The Twitter post your link references has been deleted.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-... ... laying off 250 staff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mozilla-cutting-250-jobs-after-coronavirus-pandemic-cuts-revenue/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mozilla-cutting-250-jobs...

pluc 4y ago

It's real odd to be the only alternative to Chrome yet be almost entirely funded by it. Google allows Firefox to exist, and Google can decide it's tired of sponsoring competition tomorrow morning. I don't like that Mozilla allows that to be their (and ours, and the web's) reality and isn't more adventurous in monetization. Also that they pay their CEO an outrageous amount of money, but I guess you're free to pick what your kneepads are going to be made of.

kibwen 4y ago
The last time that Mozilla parted ways with Google (in 2014), Yahoo snapped up that spot (if reports are to be believed, for actually more than Google was paying). Yahoo Search may be defunct, but as long as Bing exists, there's an out. Of course, it would be nicer if the existence of megacorp-funded search engines was not an existential prerequisite.
rtepopbe 4y ago
I don't like the situation either, but I find it hard to blame Mozilla for not pushing monetization hard enough. I can't think of anything more I'd like Mozilla to actually do. I'm rather against being sold out, and suspect most Firefox users feel similarly. Offering services essentially entirely separate from Firefox could work, but comes with substantial risk. Mozilla will be more trusted than some fly-by-night startup, at least among the techie crowd, but also can't just burn investor money and start over until something sticks. (Ironically, the only thing that comes to mind here for me would be a privacy-oriented email provider.) The only maybe, theoretically, kind-of, plausible route I see working would be more of an open-core-esque model, where their paid offerings essentially implemented extension-like capabilities that would benefit substantially from deep integration with the browser. Think things that would otherwise be impossible with the extension API, or have substantial performance improvements if only Firefox internals could be messed with. But. So many buts. I'm not even sure their organization is setup to allow this kind of thing. I'm sure their codebase isn't, especially if it might require special considerations to comply with their charter. Mozilla would also gain a bunch of perverse incentives to restrict or cripple base Firefox, which would bite them every time they added a new paid offering. For example, just how much more flack would they have caught for the new extension API if their own offerings wouldn't have to abide by any of those new limitations? And it seems inevitable that they'll have to spend some serious effort to minimize the amount of browser fragmentation issues that would now occur within Firefox itself. After all of that, the extensions most likely to get me to buy in - literally and otherwise - to the whole concept, would be ones that would seriously strain Mozilla's relationship with Google and many other companies. Things like deeply integrated ad-blocking and other privacy-focused features would be most likely to get me to not only accept the practice but even spend my money. But step one of weening themselves off Google's money probably shouldn't be "Burn bridges with Google." So... yeah. What else is Mozilla supposed to do? I'm not overly enamored with Mozilla these days. Increasingly I feel I'm sticking with them less because of anything they've done, and more because of what Google's done. But still, I find it hard to blame them too much for treading water.

thrown_22 4y ago

>Look Mr. Government, we're not a monopoly. We have a competitor! * *Who were funding and have neutered to the point where they've lost 90% of their market share in the last 10 years. Have fired all their developers and are spending the money on spending that looks a lot like what GFX did. Mozilla is a dead weight around the neck of the internet. The best thing that can happen is that it dies and something new, run by people who actually make things, is created again. When was the last time anyone was excited about a firefox update?

speed_spread 4y ago
Updates to existing browsers should not be exciting. I actually dread Chrome updates because they keep taking useful stuff away.
dzikimarian 4y ago
> Mozilla is a dead weight around the neck of the internet. How exactly are they dead weight?
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  They aren't. People got made because moz removed the XUL free for all and never got over it.
gamjQZnHT53AMa 4y ago
The people you are imagining that can make things exist wether it not Mozilla exists. And no one is successfully making a browser project to rival Firefox. So no, I think that isn't the best thing
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Firefox is sucking up all the donations for such browsers. So no, them dying would make a thousands flowers bloom.
  - 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

They have a billion dollars in assets and are making $600 million/annum if I'm reading their financial statement correctly. That is well into the 'corrupt until proven otherwise' range of wealth. Firefox's development needs orders of magnitude less than that, the browser's market share collapsed and it is notable that Eich [0] of all people went on to develop a browser based on Chrome after thinking about what would be the best base for a company. And Brave is at least trying things - it probably won't work but there is a vision there of reshaping the internet and toppling Google's advertising model. That could be Mozilla. It isn't. There is a lot of room here to criticise this project. It seems to be off the rails, and it is likely to go further off the rails. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

chomp 4y ago
$600 million in revenue (across all subsidiaries), $200 million on software development, $100 million on management, are you upset at Mozilla for running a healthy balance sheet? I'm confused about your complaint. Should Mozilla be packing itself to the gills with software developers for Firefox? It seems like they are trying to broaden their holdings and assets to build wealth for the company and Foundation so that they can become less reliant on Google. Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and was in a better position in 2015. I'm not seeing how this is can be made to an indictment of Mozilla corruption.
- roenxi 4y ago
  > ...are you upset at Mozilla for running a healthy balance sheet... Charitable foundations aren't supposed to be corporations. If we've got an entity like Mozilla running a healthy balance sheet it should be a public corporation that we can all be shareholders in. So yes, I am upset by that too although that wasn't the point I was trying to make. They've set up a situation where they are going to be corrupted. A billion dollars in assets attracts charlatans and they won't have sufficient defences to stop the money being siphoned off into pet projects and general shenanigans. There will probably turn out to be fraud involved sooner or later. > ... Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and was in a better position in 2015... As far as I care, their purpose is to make a good web browser. This is absolutely an indictment of Mozilla.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

> Yeah, they would love to not be so reliant on them. If they had put a substantial chuck of this money in income producing investments for the last ten or twenty years (instead of executive perks), they could have a nice annuity right now. Could be called an "endowment."