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Backing off of VPN, Relay and Monitor sounds like bad news. They are the Mozilla's only source of income if the Google search deal goes away. Mozilla's financia
by pavon 3y ago
Backing off of VPN, Relay and Monitor sounds like bad news. They are the Mozilla's only source of income if the Google search deal goes away. Mozilla's financial statements never detailed how much money they were spending on their different segments, so perhaps those projects weren't generating profit, and thus weren't worth keeping even though they brought in revenue. I can certainly see how it would be hard to compete with other business that are focused solely on that market, while Mozilla is trying to use it as a side-gig to fund Firefox.
But they were at least an attempt to create alternate revenue streams and seemed like useful products that were complementary to Firefox. I am very skeptical that Mozilla will be able to monetize any AI integration they include, assuming they even build anything worth using given how far removed AI is from their existing competencies.
- mozempthrowaway 3y agoIt fluctuates a little bit but 80-85% of revenue comes from search deals with Google being the dominant one. Everything else has a lot of overhead because nothing is developed in house; it’s just white labeled. VPN is Mullvad, Monitor is OneRep, etc. So even that 15% of revenue doesn’t/barely covers all the product/marketing/etc personnel that work on those teams. Every quarter that segment is behind forecasts - pocket too - mostly because the forecasts are widely optimistic. It’s not a viable business strategy to pursue them much further.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoThey do have their own software for connecting to their VPN, and it is worse than the one from Mullvad. I don't think any significant developer time is spent on improving the software.
- goodSteveramos 3y ago“Everything else has a lot of overhead because nothing is developed in house“ How does doing less result in more overhead?
- Rebelgecko 3y agoBecause they're paying other companies to do it for them, and presumably the other companies are trying to make a profit from the deals
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dvngnt_ 3y agoliterally the only thing i've paid mozilla for lmao. let's see how this works out
- JeremyNT 3y agoYeah this is insane. I pay for Mozilla VPN now and considered paying for Privacy Guard. I guess they just don't want our money.
- wkat4242 3y agoI love firefox but I'd never support those initiatives. If I want a VPN I'll just get the full mullvad (in fact I did). The relay is not what I want, I'd want the same thing for web (similar to iCloud private relay for web). Mozilla was working on that but killed it and it was only ever US only so I couldn't use it anyway. Just let me pay for sync, or just let me donate to the firefox project directly (not the foundation!) But really their revenue generating projects are very poorly suggested, there's nothing there i would actually want.
- nortonham 3y agoI get what you're saying about mullvad, but firefox having a VPN is one more way to get revenue.
- jrnichols 3y agoI was thinking of signing up for Mozilla Monitor but seeing them already downsizing it is a huge concern.
- nortonham 3y agoand here I was, getting ready to sign up to their VPN service