4 ms·

Yes, attacking the source of revenue that sustains a project is always a sensitive prospect. But then again, what's the alternative for Mozilla? In case of You

by izacus 3y ago

Yes, attacking the source of revenue that sustains a project is always a sensitive prospect. But then again, what's the alternative for Mozilla? In case of YouTube Premium we've clearly seen that even HN software engineers, demanding six figure pay, will refuse to pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work. Where does Mozilla find funding to sustain itself elsewhere?

luc4 3y ago
What? We're not refusing to "pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work", we refuse to give in to the extortion attempts of a greedy multi-billion dollar company. I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful. However, I do agree that it's questionable whether you can easily replace Google as a source of funding.
- jamespo 3y ago
  It's hardly extortion, watching Youtube isn't a human right
  - 93po 3y ago
    Google has massively anti-competitive practices, and especially with Youtube. They have made an explicit effort to kill competition in the online video space and have been very successful at it. We are now left, as a result of Google's malicious actions, with a single realistic option of platforms for video content creators. To have Google take these actions, then force us with the decision of "let us shove ads and tracking down your throat" or "miss a massive part of important media available, including for professional and educational reasons", feels pretty bad to me. Maybe extortion isn't the best word, but it's super shitty.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  > I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful If you watch YouTube you presumably find it useful too? Also, what about content creators? They get paid off the money Google gets from YouTube.
  - luc4 3y ago
    I find the videos themselves useful. YouTube just happens to be the place where they're hosted. I support content creators directly and I have a Nebula subscription.
- abenga 3y ago
  I'm going to feel icky for being a corpo simp, but how is asking for payment for a service an "extortion attempt"? Not asking as a YouTube premium subscriber or watcher of of ads (can't pay for Premium in my country and cannot bear to watch ads, so I use Firefox and an alternative client on my TV). I find it hard to frame it as an ad free but still subscription free service I am entitled to, and any attempt by Google to circumvent my workarounds as something unethical on their part.
  - simongray 3y ago
    Google only sells YouTube Premium bundled with a music subscription in my Spotify-dominated country, because they obviously want to use their large video platform to expand into music. Classic monopolistic behaviour.
    - jpc0 3y ago
      I'm going to guess the reason for this is you would be pretty annoyed if you get ads on music videos watch on YouTube even if you are paying for YouTube premium, and if you aren't 99% of users would. You can't have your cake and eat it, Google neither and they will get what's coming but this is not the battle to pick, they do far worse than put ads on a video sharing platform
    - abenga 3y ago
      I honestly don't see how that is relevant, unless your perceived value of just watching videos ad free is lower than whatever price they have set; you can ignore that feature, right?
      - simongray 3y ago
        It's a feature to only sell the bundled product at a much high cost?
- izacus 3y ago
  And in case of Mozilla it'll be the CEO's compensation, or engineering pay, or the fact that there was Pocket integration or something else will be made up to fuel angry refusal to support development of the browser. There's always SOMETHING that's morally unacceptable to people who want it for free - I bet even full, total, complete submissions to whims of such community would not result in any significant revenue.
  - iteratethis 3y ago
    It's counter-productive for sure. Reminds me of the crypto controversy of 2 years back. Mozilla had been allowing crypto donations for as long as they existed. But then some important ex-employee "rediscovered" this, virtue signaled on Twitter how wildly inappropriate this is and formed a mob powerful enough to make Mozilla take the bow and close crypto donations. And now? Well, now there won't be crypto donations. The same amount of crypto is mined, just none of it donated to Mozilla. You've achieved less than nothing, but you did the virtuous thing. Whilst simultaneously being funded by Google, with a laundry list of ethical violations, but those "don't count".
- subtra3t 3y ago
  So it is "extortion" if you are asked to pay for a service you use? A service that is available for free and is very hardware-intensive, mind you.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    If they want to charge for it, they're free to put it completely behind a paywall with accounts requiring sign-in, just like Netflix does. The problem is they want it both ways: they want to give it out for free, but with annoying ads, but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads. Where I live, people regularly stand on the street in busy pedestrian areas and hand out free packets of tissues with a piece of paper on top advertising some business. These businesses aren't clamoring for laws or some technical means to force people to look at the ads closely; people routinely take the tissues, toss out the ad, and use the tissues, and it's ok. But according to many, many HN users with stockholm syndrome, not reading these ads closely and just trashing them is somehow "stealing", because that tissue took resources and a factory to make.
    - izacus 3y ago
      And yet Mozilla also wants it both ways - have a free browser and still be paid to develop it. What gives?
    - jpc0 3y ago
      > but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads They aren't tracking your eyes and pause the video if you aren't watching the screen. Not saying they wouldn't do that if it was feasible... They are annoyed that you are actively preventing them from playing out the ads in the first place, and they offered an alternative, to pay for not having the ads, at what is in my opinion a very reasonable price concidering the vast array of content you have access to on YouTube. So they are effectively making the implicit contract explicit. Watch with ads or pay for no ads, otherwise you can happily choose to not use YouTube. If you really think hosting video is cheap, make an alternative to YouTube.
      - 3y ago
SturgeonsLaw 3y ago
If I were running Mozilla I would be aggressively investing the Google money until it's at a point where the interest on that investment is enough to sustain the entire operation. The problem is, Mozilla is full of NGO types who don't care about the browser, and use the money stream to fund pet projects. If the spigot gets shut off, they don't care, they'll jump ship to some other non profit and will keep "making the world a better place" there. Meanwhile the entire internet will be worse off because of it. Even at a 5% interest rate, the $500M that Google has given Mozilla over the years would be returning $25M p.a. That can fund quite a few six figure salaries, indefinitely, while maintaining independence.
- curiousgal 3y ago
  But how would Mitchel Baker pay her self millions of dollars in salary if that money is tied up in investments?
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Mozilla consists of a non-profit foundation and a for-profit corporation. It is the corporation which develops the browser, and Google pays the corporation.
  - dizhn 3y ago
    Do you have a source for this? I found an old source that says they pay the foundation.
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      A quick look at the Wikipedia article for the corporation says that Google pays the corporation: "In 2006, the Mozilla Corporation generated $66.8 million in revenue and $19.8 million in expenses, with 85% of that revenue coming from Google for "assigning [Google] as the browser's default search engine, and for click-throughs on ads placed on the ensuing search results pages." Sources linked there like [0], albeit quite old now, mention only the corporation and not the foundation. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2011/12/5/2612918/future-of-firefoxs-google-search-partnership-remains-uncertain https://www.theverge.com/2011/12/5/2612918/future-of-firefox...
papichulo2023 3y ago
It doesnt help that Mozilla waste a lot of money on useless projects
- 93po 3y ago
  It's weird how people criticize Mozilla for taking Google money, but also criticize them for their attempts to diversify away from that.
  - iteratethis 3y ago
    The think is criticism is not on the attempt, rather that they are bad at it. In fairness though, it's actually very hard. Try inventing a new tech product that generates 200-400m in revenue, that others could not easily replicate. Say you'd have 0.5B at your disposal and a few hundred people. You likely can't do it.
timenova 3y ago
It's not just about being able to pay. Free YouTube: You can watch with ads and you are tracked. YouTube Premium: You can watch without ads but you're still tracked. YouTube with an Ad Blocker: You can watch without ads and without being tracked. Google's largest chunk of revenue comes from ads. Being tracked simply means you'll be shown targeted ads in other areas apart from YouTube if you pay them. They shouldn't charge you and still sell your data.
- iamacyborg 3y ago
  Youtube can still track you even if you use an ad blocker.
  - Timshel 3y ago
    Yes but it means keeping identifying informations to a minimum. Vs giving your credit card information when going premium ...
  - incrudible 3y ago
    They can, but do they?
    - 93po 3y ago
      Yes, extensively
la_oveja 3y ago
i religiously donate each month to mozilla but you wont catch me alive paying for spotify or youtube.
- rvz 3y ago
  You do realize that the donations you're making do not go to the development of Firefox? Do you?
zahllos 3y ago
I'm not a 6 figure HN/SV engineer, don't live in the US. But that's not the problem. YouTube premium simply isn't worth €168/year to me (I don't use it enough) and they'll still track me anyway wherever other people are using google analytics. I have a newspaper subscription to support local journalism and it is the same deal: the site is full of ads and just as bad as the free stuff, except I can see all the articles. I use Firefox, though.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  As another lowly paid EU developer, I think the money for Youtube premium is completely wroth if considering all the value I got from the creators there over the years. IMHO it's way more valuable than something like Netflix or Spotify since Youtube is not just brain-rot and entertainment, but a source of so much educational stuff on tech, math and programming, music, independent news reporting, fitness, dancing, finances, mindfulness, cooking, DIY, car and household repair tutorials, etc, so I'm curios why you would think it's not worth the money when you literally couldn't get videos on all those things anywhere else for any amount of money let alone for free(ads). For example if I go now on Youtube, besides the usual clickbait brain rot, there's small creators from my country explaining various topics of interest on subjects from the nation's high-school final exams(equivalent to the US SAT, UK GCSE or French Baccalaureate) far better than the underpaid and unmotivated teachers usually do at class. Complex stuff on maths, physics, organic chemistry, CS, biology all explained for dummies in the local language based on what's gonna be at the exams. Sure it's the creators that are putting the effort, but Youtube made it frictionless and accessible to everyone in exchange for ads. I would have killed for such a thing to be wildly available when I was in school, and now it's for free on Youtube for all schoolkids to enjoy.
dingi 3y ago
Perhaps, Mozilla ought cut the crap like spending huge sums on CEO salaries, social justice projects, And anything unrelated to browser building.
- idonotknowwhy 3y ago
  I wonder how much the actual browser development and hosting costs,without all the marketing, sjw stuff and experiments like their phone os. If it's not astronomical, surely it could be forked and setup with a patreon style model to fund engineers

by izacus 3y ago

luc4 3y ago

What? We're not refusing to "pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work", we refuse to give in to the extortion attempts of a greedy multi-billion dollar company. I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful. However, I do agree that it's questionable whether you can easily replace Google as a source of funding.

jamespo 3y ago
It's hardly extortion, watching Youtube isn't a human right
- 93po 3y ago
  Google has massively anti-competitive practices, and especially with Youtube. They have made an explicit effort to kill competition in the online video space and have been very successful at it. We are now left, as a result of Google's malicious actions, with a single realistic option of platforms for video content creators. To have Google take these actions, then force us with the decision of "let us shove ads and tracking down your throat" or "miss a massive part of important media available, including for professional and educational reasons", feels pretty bad to me. Maybe extortion isn't the best word, but it's super shitty.
Xenoamorphous 3y ago
> I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful If you watch YouTube you presumably find it useful too? Also, what about content creators? They get paid off the money Google gets from YouTube.
- luc4 3y ago
  I find the videos themselves useful. YouTube just happens to be the place where they're hosted. I support content creators directly and I have a Nebula subscription.
abenga 3y ago
I'm going to feel icky for being a corpo simp, but how is asking for payment for a service an "extortion attempt"? Not asking as a YouTube premium subscriber or watcher of of ads (can't pay for Premium in my country and cannot bear to watch ads, so I use Firefox and an alternative client on my TV). I find it hard to frame it as an ad free but still subscription free service I am entitled to, and any attempt by Google to circumvent my workarounds as something unethical on their part.
- simongray 3y ago
  Google only sells YouTube Premium bundled with a music subscription in my Spotify-dominated country, because they obviously want to use their large video platform to expand into music. Classic monopolistic behaviour.
  - jpc0 3y ago
    I'm going to guess the reason for this is you would be pretty annoyed if you get ads on music videos watch on YouTube even if you are paying for YouTube premium, and if you aren't 99% of users would. You can't have your cake and eat it, Google neither and they will get what's coming but this is not the battle to pick, they do far worse than put ads on a video sharing platform
  - abenga 3y ago
    I honestly don't see how that is relevant, unless your perceived value of just watching videos ad free is lower than whatever price they have set; you can ignore that feature, right?
    - simongray 3y ago
      It's a feature to only sell the bundled product at a much high cost?
izacus 3y ago
And in case of Mozilla it'll be the CEO's compensation, or engineering pay, or the fact that there was Pocket integration or something else will be made up to fuel angry refusal to support development of the browser. There's always SOMETHING that's morally unacceptable to people who want it for free - I bet even full, total, complete submissions to whims of such community would not result in any significant revenue.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  It's counter-productive for sure. Reminds me of the crypto controversy of 2 years back. Mozilla had been allowing crypto donations for as long as they existed. But then some important ex-employee "rediscovered" this, virtue signaled on Twitter how wildly inappropriate this is and formed a mob powerful enough to make Mozilla take the bow and close crypto donations. And now? Well, now there won't be crypto donations. The same amount of crypto is mined, just none of it donated to Mozilla. You've achieved less than nothing, but you did the virtuous thing. Whilst simultaneously being funded by Google, with a laundry list of ethical violations, but those "don't count".
subtra3t 3y ago
So it is "extortion" if you are asked to pay for a service you use? A service that is available for free and is very hardware-intensive, mind you.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  If they want to charge for it, they're free to put it completely behind a paywall with accounts requiring sign-in, just like Netflix does. The problem is they want it both ways: they want to give it out for free, but with annoying ads, but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads. Where I live, people regularly stand on the street in busy pedestrian areas and hand out free packets of tissues with a piece of paper on top advertising some business. These businesses aren't clamoring for laws or some technical means to force people to look at the ads closely; people routinely take the tissues, toss out the ad, and use the tissues, and it's ok. But according to many, many HN users with stockholm syndrome, not reading these ads closely and just trashing them is somehow "stealing", because that tissue took resources and a factory to make.
  - izacus 3y ago
    And yet Mozilla also wants it both ways - have a free browser and still be paid to develop it. What gives?
  - jpc0 3y ago
    > but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads They aren't tracking your eyes and pause the video if you aren't watching the screen. Not saying they wouldn't do that if it was feasible... They are annoyed that you are actively preventing them from playing out the ads in the first place, and they offered an alternative, to pay for not having the ads, at what is in my opinion a very reasonable price concidering the vast array of content you have access to on YouTube. So they are effectively making the implicit contract explicit. Watch with ads or pay for no ads, otherwise you can happily choose to not use YouTube. If you really think hosting video is cheap, make an alternative to YouTube.
    - 3y ago

SturgeonsLaw 3y ago

If I were running Mozilla I would be aggressively investing the Google money until it's at a point where the interest on that investment is enough to sustain the entire operation. The problem is, Mozilla is full of NGO types who don't care about the browser, and use the money stream to fund pet projects. If the spigot gets shut off, they don't care, they'll jump ship to some other non profit and will keep "making the world a better place" there. Meanwhile the entire internet will be worse off because of it. Even at a 5% interest rate, the $500M that Google has given Mozilla over the years would be returning $25M p.a. That can fund quite a few six figure salaries, indefinitely, while maintaining independence.

curiousgal 3y ago
But how would Mitchel Baker pay her self millions of dollars in salary if that money is tied up in investments?
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Mozilla consists of a non-profit foundation and a for-profit corporation. It is the corporation which develops the browser, and Google pays the corporation.
- dizhn 3y ago
  Do you have a source for this? I found an old source that says they pay the foundation.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    A quick look at the Wikipedia article for the corporation says that Google pays the corporation: "In 2006, the Mozilla Corporation generated $66.8 million in revenue and $19.8 million in expenses, with 85% of that revenue coming from Google for "assigning [Google] as the browser's default search engine, and for click-throughs on ads placed on the ensuing search results pages." Sources linked there like [0], albeit quite old now, mention only the corporation and not the foundation. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2011/12/5/2612918/future-of-firefoxs-google-search-partnership-remains-uncertain https://www.theverge.com/2011/12/5/2612918/future-of-firefox...

papichulo2023 3y ago

It doesnt help that Mozilla waste a lot of money on useless projects

93po 3y ago
It's weird how people criticize Mozilla for taking Google money, but also criticize them for their attempts to diversify away from that.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  The think is criticism is not on the attempt, rather that they are bad at it. In fairness though, it's actually very hard. Try inventing a new tech product that generates 200-400m in revenue, that others could not easily replicate. Say you'd have 0.5B at your disposal and a few hundred people. You likely can't do it.

timenova 3y ago

It's not just about being able to pay. Free YouTube: You can watch with ads and you are tracked. YouTube Premium: You can watch without ads but you're still tracked. YouTube with an Ad Blocker: You can watch without ads and without being tracked. Google's largest chunk of revenue comes from ads. Being tracked simply means you'll be shown targeted ads in other areas apart from YouTube if you pay them. They shouldn't charge you and still sell your data.

iamacyborg 3y ago
Youtube can still track you even if you use an ad blocker.
- Timshel 3y ago
  Yes but it means keeping identifying informations to a minimum. Vs giving your credit card information when going premium ...
- incrudible 3y ago
  They can, but do they?
  - 93po 3y ago
    Yes, extensively

la_oveja 3y ago

i religiously donate each month to mozilla but you wont catch me alive paying for spotify or youtube.

rvz 3y ago
You do realize that the donations you're making do not go to the development of Firefox? Do you?

zahllos 3y ago

I'm not a 6 figure HN/SV engineer, don't live in the US. But that's not the problem. YouTube premium simply isn't worth €168/year to me (I don't use it enough) and they'll still track me anyway wherever other people are using google analytics. I have a newspaper subscription to support local journalism and it is the same deal: the site is full of ads and just as bad as the free stuff, except I can see all the articles. I use Firefox, though.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
As another lowly paid EU developer, I think the money for Youtube premium is completely wroth if considering all the value I got from the creators there over the years. IMHO it's way more valuable than something like Netflix or Spotify since Youtube is not just brain-rot and entertainment, but a source of so much educational stuff on tech, math and programming, music, independent news reporting, fitness, dancing, finances, mindfulness, cooking, DIY, car and household repair tutorials, etc, so I'm curios why you would think it's not worth the money when you literally couldn't get videos on all those things anywhere else for any amount of money let alone for free(ads). For example if I go now on Youtube, besides the usual clickbait brain rot, there's small creators from my country explaining various topics of interest on subjects from the nation's high-school final exams(equivalent to the US SAT, UK GCSE or French Baccalaureate) far better than the underpaid and unmotivated teachers usually do at class. Complex stuff on maths, physics, organic chemistry, CS, biology all explained for dummies in the local language based on what's gonna be at the exams. Sure it's the creators that are putting the effort, but Youtube made it frictionless and accessible to everyone in exchange for ads. I would have killed for such a thing to be wildly available when I was in school, and now it's for free on Youtube for all schoolkids to enjoy.

dingi 3y ago

Perhaps, Mozilla ought cut the crap like spending huge sums on CEO salaries, social justice projects, And anything unrelated to browser building.

idonotknowwhy 3y ago
I wonder how much the actual browser development and hosting costs,without all the marketing, sjw stuff and experiments like their phone os. If it's not astronomical, surely it could be forked and setup with a patreon style model to fund engineers