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Mitchell Baker needs to go. I hold her responsible for much of Firefox's slide in use over the years. She keeps pulling in a larger and larger salary for doing

Mitchell Baker needs to go. I hold her responsible for much of Firefox's slide in use over the years. She keeps pulling in a larger and larger salary for doing less and less.

j16sdiz 3y ago
According to the article,"Transitioning Mozilla away from Firefox." is the current organisation goal. She have done her job great. why was it a goal, I have bo idea
- duped 3y ago
  Not affiliated with Mozilla in any way, but their mission isn't to create a browser. It's to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." (1) Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use. (1) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
  - baal80spam 3y ago
    > their mission isn't to create a browser Aaaand that's why I don't use Firefox.
    - LightHugger 3y ago
      As long as you use something better, that isnt chrome. Chrome blatant spyware that scans your whole pc ever since google had the bright idea of sneaking an "antivirus" into chrome and enabling it by default. Firefox is better that chrome, but there's lots better than firefox.
      - macspoofing 3y ago
        >As long as you use something better, that isnt chrome. This is why it is critical to have a meaningful alternative. Developers and end-users are pragmatic - all things being equal they will choose privacy and openness, but not at the expense of performance and capabilities. This is why it is so perplexing seeing Mozilla just focus on everything except for the one thing that gives them relevance and is actually important.
      - sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
        What would be an example of something better that isn’t chromium based?
        LightHugger 3y ago
        Chromium based browsers and firefox forks are the two big pillars. The comment i replied to doesnt like firefox, so i would probably suggest ungoogled chromium or brave. For non chromium based, librewolf is a clear winner for me. Waterfox is also good. Hardened firefox is also okayish but not ideal.
    - outwit 3y ago
      That makes you part of the problem.
      - Levitz 3y ago
        No. It makes Mozilla part of the problem. People getting tired of Mozilla's incompetence and stopping supporting them is just a consequence of that. I use Firefox. I want to use Firefox. That Mozilla insists on pretending it's not the one single worthwhile thing they do doesn't make it easy.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I read that mission as definitely including a browser. What could possibly be more important at "ensur[ing] the internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all" than keeping competition and choice in browsers, which forces web technology openness and standards? We've already seen Google's web integrity moves coming, and we can no doubt expect more of that as they continue to dominate. A world with only Chromium-based browsers is one where Google can implement anything they fancy. To me the importance of that overshadows anything else Mozilla can do (that I can think of at least).
  - macspoofing 3y ago
    >Not affiliated with Mozilla in any way, but their mission isn't to create a browser. It's to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." (1) Yes .. and that is the core problem. Their relevance (and income) only comes from Firefox and its market share. But for some reason, they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this. The income they generated from Firefox, should have been re-invested in Firefox. They should have been organized as an engineering company at the forefront of web technologies. >Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use. That is their strategy. Right now, Firefox is still the only thing that gives them any sort of relevance.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    In what capacity have they delivered on that mission outside Firefox?
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    > Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use. Like what? Selling you "premium" subscription to glorified bookmarks service? Or reselling Mullvad with Mozilla logo slapped on top of it?
- hellotomyrars 3y ago
  The goal is obvious and not new. Firefox as a product is only useful to them as a handout from google to use as an antitrust defense. The problem is that Mozilla hasn’t been able to find any product that generates any meaningful revenue. It makes perfect sense for them to try to be an entity that can exist without their biggest competitor tossing them scraps. How they should achieve that is certainly up for debate but it’s also clear that their attempts to add monetizable aspects to Firefox isn’t moving the needle much either.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Firefox makes half a billion a year in revenue. It's not a handout like you claim, but a revenue share deal negotiated between the two companies. If Google didn't pay for being the default search engine, or tried lowballing, someone else would make a deal instead. The idea that it's some kind of a proactive antitrust defense is one of the more bizarre ideas that gets repeated on HN.
    - hellotomyrars 3y ago
      More than one thing can be true at the same time. Deals are usually made because interests are aligned. There is a direct benefit to an overwhelmingly dominant player to be able to point to any competitor. There is also a direct benefit to having people use your product. There is even a tertiary benefit of the money theoretically going to development for Firefox that could feed back into their own product. If you look at the situation in the reverse, what sense does it make? Why would you pay a direct competitor to exist when the amount of money you put in to them is an incredibly large majority of their revenue? Firefox continues to become more irrelevant, and the amount of their revenue they get from Google doesn't really reflect that trend. I'm not saying the only reason Firefox exists is for Google to point at it. That doesn't mean it isn't a major one. It also is pretty clear to Mozilla because they sure keep trying (and failing) to find other revenue sources
      - jsnell 3y ago
        > Why would you pay a direct competitor to exist when the amount of money you put in to them is an incredibly large majority of their revenue? One plausible reason is that Google is not a monolith: the entity paying the money is the Search division, which does not compete with Firefox. Chrome does, but Chrome is not a party to the deal. Search is interested in maximizing their own profit, not in maximizing Chrome's usage share. > Firefox continues to become more irrelevant, and the amount of their revenue they get from Google doesn't really reflect that trend. It is a revenue share deal. Firefox gets some specific (agreed) percentage of the search revenue from searches done via the Firefox search bar. If the revenue Firefox gets is stable despite reduced relevance, it is because the revenue is stable. Relevance doesn't translate to revenue. What matters is the number of users and revenue per user.
- anonymousab 3y ago
  They likely view the idea off competing with Chrome - a key chess piece of the company keeping Mozilla around merely as a pet to ward of regulators - as impossible if not counterproductive to their mid-term survival at this point. Which is to say, at some point they might become annoying enough for Google to not want to pay them anymore, and then Mozilla would cease to exist shortly thereafter. So with that in mind, Firefox as a dedicated separate browser with its own engine is an albatross around their neck. A source of significant ongoing investment and cost for comparatively little return. For the Mozilla "mission" and the CEO's personal goals and purpose, a simple rebadged chromium fork skinned up with open-web platitudes is a far better idea in the long term.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    No absolutely not... That would be the worst thing for the web. Blink is objectively bad in the first place, and we need more than just chromiumum skins in the market. I wish they would finish and move to Servo. I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based. Everyone consolidating down to Blink and Chromium is about the worst thing that could happen to anyone that desires an open Web
    - macspoofing 3y ago
      >I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based. This hurts because Firefox should have been that embedded framework powering browsers like Brave and electron apps. But that would have required them to invest in R&D to match performance but also to make their rendering engine easily embeddable (with a corresponding investment in documentation and outreach).
      - phpisthebest 3y ago
        I believe that was a goal of servo, however it was starved for resources (just like the documentation project) in favor of foolish endeavors like Pocket, VPN Services, FireFox OS, and of course there many missteps in the world of Political Social Activism.
- aquova 3y ago
  I don't strictly disagree with that as a concept, as diversifying themselves from being Firefox and Firefox alone is a sound business strategy. Unfortunately, while they have come up with some neat ideas (I was a fan of Firefox Send) they still haven't found a business strategy and have let Firefox's market share slide in the meanwhile, and many of those neat concepts have withered away as well.
- xbar 3y ago
  It is her goal. She will spend a lot of time explaining to you why it is a good idea. At the end, you will still have bo idea.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  >why was it a goal, I have bo idea Because an ongoing antitrust suit against Google search could mean the revenue they get from Firefox is no longer an option.
username1228023 3y ago
I've been critical of Mozilla for a long time, and Mitchell has not been a good leader for the last ~10 years or so. Having said that, Mitchell was instrumental to several very important things, not all of them in the distant past. She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing. (I do think that $7 million per year is pretty gross, though, especially given the current "state of Mozilla".) Having said that, $7 million for a CEO who isn't earning it really isn't Mozilla's biggest problem, and it's not even its biggest financial problem. If you really want to be critical of its spending, consider this: The annual budget for marketing and branding every year falls between $30 and $60 million. Per year. This is Mozilla. Empirically, it may as well not even have a marketing department. When Chrome really started eating into Firefox marketshare 10+ years ago, one of the things that Mozilla folks used to complain about (a lot) is that Chrome's effective* marketing budget was higher* than Mozilla's total budget—browser development and other software eng. included. The perverse thing is that the same is true of Mozilla: you could take its annual marketing budget, pour it into a different org that works on a different browser, and what you could get out of it is an independent browser development company. What's more is that you could without too much difficulty get that company not only to profitable status in pretty short order (given that kind of budget), but get it to usage share that matches Firefox's own (given how low that is). This would take something like 3, 4, 5 years max, provided you have competent leadership. That's the sort of profligate spending and a lot of other poor decisionmaking at Mozilla that really needs to be addressed if Mozilla is going to turn around. (I have given up hope that this is ever going to happen. I expect it not to.) People hardly talk about this aspect of the business, however—instead focusing on how much Mitchell is getting paid, which, to reiterate, is not in any sense the biggest problem that Mozilla is facing. -- former Mozillian
- laweijfmvo 3y ago
  > She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing. Sorry, what? She was underpaid for a few years, so should get a couple mil forever now? Can you at least list out the "several important things?"

Mitchell Baker needs to go. I hold her responsible for much of Firefox's slide in use over the years. She keeps pulling in a larger and larger salary for doing less and less.

j16sdiz 3y ago

According to the article,"Transitioning Mozilla away from Firefox." is the current organisation goal. She have done her job great. why was it a goal, I have bo idea

duped 3y ago
Not affiliated with Mozilla in any way, but their mission isn't to create a browser. It's to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." (1) Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use. (1) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
- baal80spam 3y ago
  > their mission isn't to create a browser Aaaand that's why I don't use Firefox.
  - LightHugger 3y ago
    As long as you use something better, that isnt chrome. Chrome blatant spyware that scans your whole pc ever since google had the bright idea of sneaking an "antivirus" into chrome and enabling it by default. Firefox is better that chrome, but there's lots better than firefox.
    - macspoofing 3y ago
      >As long as you use something better, that isnt chrome. This is why it is critical to have a meaningful alternative. Developers and end-users are pragmatic - all things being equal they will choose privacy and openness, but not at the expense of performance and capabilities. This is why it is so perplexing seeing Mozilla just focus on everything except for the one thing that gives them relevance and is actually important.
    - sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
      What would be an example of something better that isn’t chromium based?
      - LightHugger 3y ago
        Chromium based browsers and firefox forks are the two big pillars. The comment i replied to doesnt like firefox, so i would probably suggest ungoogled chromium or brave. For non chromium based, librewolf is a clear winner for me. Waterfox is also good. Hardened firefox is also okayish but not ideal.
  - outwit 3y ago
    That makes you part of the problem.
    - Levitz 3y ago
      No. It makes Mozilla part of the problem. People getting tired of Mozilla's incompetence and stopping supporting them is just a consequence of that. I use Firefox. I want to use Firefox. That Mozilla insists on pretending it's not the one single worthwhile thing they do doesn't make it easy.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I read that mission as definitely including a browser. What could possibly be more important at "ensur[ing] the internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all" than keeping competition and choice in browsers, which forces web technology openness and standards? We've already seen Google's web integrity moves coming, and we can no doubt expect more of that as they continue to dominate. A world with only Chromium-based browsers is one where Google can implement anything they fancy. To me the importance of that overshadows anything else Mozilla can do (that I can think of at least).
- macspoofing 3y ago
  >Not affiliated with Mozilla in any way, but their mission isn't to create a browser. It's to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." (1) Yes .. and that is the core problem. Their relevance (and income) only comes from Firefox and its market share. But for some reason, they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this. The income they generated from Firefox, should have been re-invested in Firefox. They should have been organized as an engineering company at the forefront of web technologies. >Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use. That is their strategy. Right now, Firefox is still the only thing that gives them any sort of relevance.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  In what capacity have they delivered on that mission outside Firefox?
- caskstrength 3y ago
  > Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use. Like what? Selling you "premium" subscription to glorified bookmarks service? Or reselling Mullvad with Mozilla logo slapped on top of it?
hellotomyrars 3y ago
The goal is obvious and not new. Firefox as a product is only useful to them as a handout from google to use as an antitrust defense. The problem is that Mozilla hasn’t been able to find any product that generates any meaningful revenue. It makes perfect sense for them to try to be an entity that can exist without their biggest competitor tossing them scraps. How they should achieve that is certainly up for debate but it’s also clear that their attempts to add monetizable aspects to Firefox isn’t moving the needle much either.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Firefox makes half a billion a year in revenue. It's not a handout like you claim, but a revenue share deal negotiated between the two companies. If Google didn't pay for being the default search engine, or tried lowballing, someone else would make a deal instead. The idea that it's some kind of a proactive antitrust defense is one of the more bizarre ideas that gets repeated on HN.
  - hellotomyrars 3y ago
    More than one thing can be true at the same time. Deals are usually made because interests are aligned. There is a direct benefit to an overwhelmingly dominant player to be able to point to any competitor. There is also a direct benefit to having people use your product. There is even a tertiary benefit of the money theoretically going to development for Firefox that could feed back into their own product. If you look at the situation in the reverse, what sense does it make? Why would you pay a direct competitor to exist when the amount of money you put in to them is an incredibly large majority of their revenue? Firefox continues to become more irrelevant, and the amount of their revenue they get from Google doesn't really reflect that trend. I'm not saying the only reason Firefox exists is for Google to point at it. That doesn't mean it isn't a major one. It also is pretty clear to Mozilla because they sure keep trying (and failing) to find other revenue sources
    - jsnell 3y ago
      > Why would you pay a direct competitor to exist when the amount of money you put in to them is an incredibly large majority of their revenue? One plausible reason is that Google is not a monolith: the entity paying the money is the Search division, which does not compete with Firefox. Chrome does, but Chrome is not a party to the deal. Search is interested in maximizing their own profit, not in maximizing Chrome's usage share. > Firefox continues to become more irrelevant, and the amount of their revenue they get from Google doesn't really reflect that trend. It is a revenue share deal. Firefox gets some specific (agreed) percentage of the search revenue from searches done via the Firefox search bar. If the revenue Firefox gets is stable despite reduced relevance, it is because the revenue is stable. Relevance doesn't translate to revenue. What matters is the number of users and revenue per user.
anonymousab 3y ago
They likely view the idea off competing with Chrome - a key chess piece of the company keeping Mozilla around merely as a pet to ward of regulators - as impossible if not counterproductive to their mid-term survival at this point. Which is to say, at some point they might become annoying enough for Google to not want to pay them anymore, and then Mozilla would cease to exist shortly thereafter. So with that in mind, Firefox as a dedicated separate browser with its own engine is an albatross around their neck. A source of significant ongoing investment and cost for comparatively little return. For the Mozilla "mission" and the CEO's personal goals and purpose, a simple rebadged chromium fork skinned up with open-web platitudes is a far better idea in the long term.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  No absolutely not... That would be the worst thing for the web. Blink is objectively bad in the first place, and we need more than just chromiumum skins in the market. I wish they would finish and move to Servo. I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based. Everyone consolidating down to Blink and Chromium is about the worst thing that could happen to anyone that desires an open Web
  - macspoofing 3y ago
    >I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based. This hurts because Firefox should have been that embedded framework powering browsers like Brave and electron apps. But that would have required them to invest in R&D to match performance but also to make their rendering engine easily embeddable (with a corresponding investment in documentation and outreach).
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      I believe that was a goal of servo, however it was starved for resources (just like the documentation project) in favor of foolish endeavors like Pocket, VPN Services, FireFox OS, and of course there many missteps in the world of Political Social Activism.
aquova 3y ago
I don't strictly disagree with that as a concept, as diversifying themselves from being Firefox and Firefox alone is a sound business strategy. Unfortunately, while they have come up with some neat ideas (I was a fan of Firefox Send) they still haven't found a business strategy and have let Firefox's market share slide in the meanwhile, and many of those neat concepts have withered away as well.
xbar 3y ago
It is her goal. She will spend a lot of time explaining to you why it is a good idea. At the end, you will still have bo idea.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
>why was it a goal, I have bo idea Because an ongoing antitrust suit against Google search could mean the revenue they get from Firefox is no longer an option.

username1228023 3y ago

I've been critical of Mozilla for a long time, and Mitchell has not been a good leader for the last ~10 years or so. Having said that, Mitchell was instrumental to several very important things, not all of them in the distant past. She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing. (I do think that $7 million per year is pretty gross, though, especially given the current "state of Mozilla".) Having said that, $7 million for a CEO who isn't earning it really isn't Mozilla's biggest problem, and it's not even its biggest financial problem. If you really want to be critical of its spending, consider this: The annual budget for marketing and branding every year falls between $30 and $60 million. Per year. This is Mozilla. Empirically, it may as well not even have a marketing department. When Chrome really started eating into Firefox marketshare 10+ years ago, one of the things that Mozilla folks used to complain about (a lot) is that Chrome's effective* marketing budget was higher* than Mozilla's total budget—browser development and other software eng. included. The perverse thing is that the same is true of Mozilla: you could take its annual marketing budget, pour it into a different org that works on a different browser, and what you could get out of it is an independent browser development company. What's more is that you could without too much difficulty get that company not only to profitable status in pretty short order (given that kind of budget), but get it to usage share that matches Firefox's own (given how low that is). This would take something like 3, 4, 5 years max, provided you have competent leadership. That's the sort of profligate spending and a lot of other poor decisionmaking at Mozilla that really needs to be addressed if Mozilla is going to turn around. (I have given up hope that this is ever going to happen. I expect it not to.) People hardly talk about this aspect of the business, however—instead focusing on how much Mitchell is getting paid, which, to reiterate, is not in any sense the biggest problem that Mozilla is facing. -- former Mozillian

laweijfmvo 3y ago
> She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing. Sorry, what? She was underpaid for a few years, so should get a couple mil forever now? Can you at least list out the "several important things?"