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What if they found a way to monetize Firefox It’s not like those alternative streams have been very successful. Feels like they’ve been floundering from projec

What if they found a way to monetize Firefox It’s not like those alternative streams have been very successful. Feels like they’ve been floundering from project to project for a decade now.

dralley 2y ago
Making the browser itself paid would instantly doom them to irrelevance. It's already bad enough trying to make developers care about a browser with 2% marketshare, it will be impossible to do so if their marketshare drops to 0.1%, which it will if you make it paid. That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  What if they pursued a freemium model, other browsers like Orion do that. What if they monetize an aspect of the browser that people will actually pay good money for (something more than Pocket). Heck even Brave is trying something with its model.
  - dralley 2y ago
    Brave replaces third party ads with their own, I don't see that as being particularly ethical. Personally I'd like to see them try to recreate what Scroll were doing a few years ago before the Twitter acquisition destroyed them. They'd have to make it cross-browser though.
    - Apocryphon 2y ago
      I think Brave is disreputable but they’ve arguably been able to capture more excitement as an alternative browser in recent years, though I don’t know how much of that is because of Brendan Eich’s name. But at least they’re innovating on how to make money with a browser. Maybe Firefox could release an ad-supported edition?
      - BrendanEich 2y ago
        On "disreputable", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899. On Firefox doing ads, you must have missed https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... (Brave post on a related move by Mozilla and Meta at https://brave.com/blog/mozilla-ppa/ https://brave.com/blog/mozilla-ppa/).
    - BrendanEich 2y ago
      We have never and will never "replace third party ads". At this point, repeating this easily disproven story just calls your reliability into question. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899 We talked to Tony Haile and Scroll before they exited. I asked him how selling (enterprise pre-sales and sales) to publishers was going. Tony said "it's like stabbing yourself in the eye a different way each day". Publishers do not want to share subscriber data, period full stop. They also hate ad blockers. For Brave, we had to make a primal choice: user-first means blocking ads and trackers, not trying to serve publishers too. House divided will fall, and this kind of conflict of interest between fake blockers who sell whitelisting or otherwise cater to big publishers has hurt Eyeo GmbH among others famous cases.

What if they found a way to monetize Firefox It’s not like those alternative streams have been very successful. Feels like they’ve been floundering from project to project for a decade now.

dralley 2y ago

Making the browser itself paid would instantly doom them to irrelevance. It's already bad enough trying to make developers care about a browser with 2% marketshare, it will be impossible to do so if their marketshare drops to 0.1%, which it will if you make it paid. That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.

Apocryphon 2y ago
What if they pursued a freemium model, other browsers like Orion do that. What if they monetize an aspect of the browser that people will actually pay good money for (something more than Pocket). Heck even Brave is trying something with its model.
- dralley 2y ago
  Brave replaces third party ads with their own, I don't see that as being particularly ethical. Personally I'd like to see them try to recreate what Scroll were doing a few years ago before the Twitter acquisition destroyed them. They'd have to make it cross-browser though.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    I think Brave is disreputable but they’ve arguably been able to capture more excitement as an alternative browser in recent years, though I don’t know how much of that is because of Brendan Eich’s name. But at least they’re innovating on how to make money with a browser. Maybe Firefox could release an ad-supported edition?
    - BrendanEich 2y ago
      On "disreputable", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899. On Firefox doing ads, you must have missed https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... (Brave post on a related move by Mozilla and Meta at https://brave.com/blog/mozilla-ppa/ https://brave.com/blog/mozilla-ppa/).
  - BrendanEich 2y ago
    We have never and will never "replace third party ads". At this point, repeating this easily disproven story just calls your reliability into question. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899 We talked to Tony Haile and Scroll before they exited. I asked him how selling (enterprise pre-sales and sales) to publishers was going. Tony said "it's like stabbing yourself in the eye a different way each day". Publishers do not want to share subscriber data, period full stop. They also hate ad blockers. For Brave, we had to make a primal choice: user-first means blocking ads and trackers, not trying to serve publishers too. House divided will fall, and this kind of conflict of interest between fake blockers who sell whitelisting or otherwise cater to big publishers has hurt Eyeo GmbH among others famous cases.