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Angry crowd: “Mozilla should do things to diverse revenue!” Also angry crowd: “No! No! Not that thing! How dare you explore alternative revenue streams! You ar

by st3fan 2y ago

Angry crowd: “Mozilla should do things to diverse revenue!” Also angry crowd: “No! No! Not that thing! How dare you explore alternative revenue streams! You are Mozilla, just pick and the execute a successful 100 million dollar idea!”

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
Angry crowd all over my tech bubble: "Mozilla should make a subscription that directly funds the development of Firefox, and not the salary of the CEO that does nothing." Also angry crowd: "No, not ads or AI, it's stupid." What was your point anyway?
parasti 2y ago
Nobody in the crowd ever said the first thing.
- LeoWattenberg 2y ago
  I sure have. Mozillas main and perhaps only real mistake was that they didn't meaningfully attempt to become independent from Google the second Google started building Chrome (with Mozillas help, no less!). A truly independent Mozilla would not have needed to implement DRM, and would be shipping with adblock by default - which incidentally is exactly what made people switch from IE to FF in the first place, popup ads. Now the ship has beached itself and the crew is frantically trying something - anything - to plug the leaks, prevent her from capsizing and trying to get her back afloat. I don't know if they'll manage, or if ladybird is the alternative to the new IE that is Chrome
meindnoch 2y ago
Angry crowd: focus on your browser! Mozilla: what? acquire a bookmarking service? Angry crowd: no! develop your browser! Mozilla: ok, got it! I'll make a VPN service! Angry crowd: WORK ON YOUR FUCKING BROWSER Mozilla: AI? Did I hear AI from someone over there?
- MrAlex94 2y ago
  Fundamentally I think having people pay for a browser is a hard sell. I do think complementary services being sold to fund the browser are a good idea though. E.g. VPN, search, bookmarking service - great. Charge for them, have the money go into browser dev, focus on privacy and be done with it.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    I also don't think they necessarily were subtracting from resources necessary to maintain the browser experience (which would be the key to that whole entire argument), which probably was a significant motivator for doing them. Easy enough to spin up with little to lose.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  I don't know if you know this, but browsers don't generate revenue (with the exception of Google paying you hush money to pretend they aren't a browser monopoly)
  - rascul 2y ago
    Netscape used to.
    - pseudalopex 2y ago
      Netscape gave up trying to charge anyone to use their web browser 27 years ago.
      - rascul 2y ago
        Their last sale got them billions of dollars.
- glenstein 2y ago
  I know this sounds like it's making a point, but... Do we have any intuition for the resources dedicated to the side projects versus the ones dedicated to the core development and whether they subtracted from development? Was one project equivalent to 10% less resources on core browser development equivalent to 5% loss of market share? One percent? Ten percent? I feel like once you state these questions out loud it becomes clear that none of this cause and effect necessary to make the argument work is being critically thought through at all. There was a time when this complaint about core browser experience had some legitimacy and that was in the 2010s up through 2016. They rebuilt their whole engine into Quantum in 2017, which was a major leap forward. And ever since then the differences have been real, but subtle. Meanwhile Google has leveraged its dominant position in search, and it's major investments into Android and Chromebooks to push people to its browser. They've also used their revenue to invest in an embrace extend extinguish strategy in the browser space. The vast majority of the vibes about Mozilla transgressions are more like a self-perpetuating oral tradition than a thoughtful narrative grounded in causality.
glenstein 2y ago
Asking people what did "Mozilla do wrong?" is kind of like asking "How do I get to Shell Beach" in the movie Dark City, with similar results. People say "all the stuff going on with Mozilla" like there's a list of real things that really happened when it's upwards of 90% smoke and vibes. And this is coming from someone who thinks the recent subtraction of language about not selling your data actually was a bad move and rather damning. But it's a real thing in a long line of nothingburgers, and it's amazing once the comment gets to the part where it's supposed to make a specific charge and instead it's just "all the things going on".
- transcriptase 2y ago
  I mean, it’s not like you can’t look up all the various grants, fellowships, groups, businesses, programs, etc Mozilla funds. Or fault us for noticing all the random endeavours they pursue then kill because they would seemingly rather do anything than make sure Firefox offers an attractive alternative to other browsers. Firefox had ~30% market share 15 years ago and Mozilla leveraged that into Pocket/firefox send/firefox os/hubs/lockwise/hello/thimble/notes/persona/etc. All defunct except the ones they mashed into the browser itself, when the initial selling point in the IE days was that it was “lightweight”.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    So this is the type of comment I was thinking of. I'm just paste a segment from a previous comment that highlights the problems with this form of criticism, which I take to be more demonstration of an information literacy problem than a narrative that's pertinent to happenings with Firefox. >I don't believe it's astroturfing, simply just mind bogglingly awful arguments. Claiming the decline in market share is tied to inadequate browser features with no two conversations ever agreeing on what those features are. No coherent theory of cause and effect between features and market share while ignoring structural advantages that are much more important drivers, which Google leverages. Claims that CEO pay is the problem when it's 1% of annual revenue. Idiosyncratic interpretations of their published statements that make unfalsifiable assumptions about intentions. And a basic inability to grasp and compare the relative scale of different types of transgressions (e.g. Google is increasingly driving the web into deeper dependence on Chromium, but Mozilla once did a Mr. Robot promo!) These aren't good arguments. These aren't coming from a place of coherent thinking about the actual drivers of market share, and there's no coherent theory of cause and effect that ties other side bets to the trajectory. It's all incredibly low effort vibes because people seem to have lost grasp of how to make real arguments.

by st3fan 2y ago

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago

Angry crowd all over my tech bubble: "Mozilla should make a subscription that directly funds the development of Firefox, and not the salary of the CEO that does nothing." Also angry crowd: "No, not ads or AI, it's stupid." What was your point anyway?

parasti 2y ago

Nobody in the crowd ever said the first thing.

LeoWattenberg 2y ago
I sure have. Mozillas main and perhaps only real mistake was that they didn't meaningfully attempt to become independent from Google the second Google started building Chrome (with Mozillas help, no less!). A truly independent Mozilla would not have needed to implement DRM, and would be shipping with adblock by default - which incidentally is exactly what made people switch from IE to FF in the first place, popup ads. Now the ship has beached itself and the crew is frantically trying something - anything - to plug the leaks, prevent her from capsizing and trying to get her back afloat. I don't know if they'll manage, or if ladybird is the alternative to the new IE that is Chrome

meindnoch 2y ago

Angry crowd: focus on your browser! Mozilla: what? acquire a bookmarking service? Angry crowd: no! develop your browser! Mozilla: ok, got it! I'll make a VPN service! Angry crowd: WORK ON YOUR FUCKING BROWSER Mozilla: AI? Did I hear AI from someone over there?

MrAlex94 2y ago
Fundamentally I think having people pay for a browser is a hard sell. I do think complementary services being sold to fund the browser are a good idea though. E.g. VPN, search, bookmarking service - great. Charge for them, have the money go into browser dev, focus on privacy and be done with it.
- glenstein 2y ago
  I also don't think they necessarily were subtracting from resources necessary to maintain the browser experience (which would be the key to that whole entire argument), which probably was a significant motivator for doing them. Easy enough to spin up with little to lose.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I don't know if you know this, but browsers don't generate revenue (with the exception of Google paying you hush money to pretend they aren't a browser monopoly)
- rascul 2y ago
  Netscape used to.
  - pseudalopex 2y ago
    Netscape gave up trying to charge anyone to use their web browser 27 years ago.
    - rascul 2y ago
      Their last sale got them billions of dollars.
glenstein 2y ago
I know this sounds like it's making a point, but... Do we have any intuition for the resources dedicated to the side projects versus the ones dedicated to the core development and whether they subtracted from development? Was one project equivalent to 10% less resources on core browser development equivalent to 5% loss of market share? One percent? Ten percent? I feel like once you state these questions out loud it becomes clear that none of this cause and effect necessary to make the argument work is being critically thought through at all. There was a time when this complaint about core browser experience had some legitimacy and that was in the 2010s up through 2016. They rebuilt their whole engine into Quantum in 2017, which was a major leap forward. And ever since then the differences have been real, but subtle. Meanwhile Google has leveraged its dominant position in search, and it's major investments into Android and Chromebooks to push people to its browser. They've also used their revenue to invest in an embrace extend extinguish strategy in the browser space. The vast majority of the vibes about Mozilla transgressions are more like a self-perpetuating oral tradition than a thoughtful narrative grounded in causality.

glenstein 2y ago

Asking people what did "Mozilla do wrong?" is kind of like asking "How do I get to Shell Beach" in the movie Dark City, with similar results. People say "all the stuff going on with Mozilla" like there's a list of real things that really happened when it's upwards of 90% smoke and vibes. And this is coming from someone who thinks the recent subtraction of language about not selling your data actually was a bad move and rather damning. But it's a real thing in a long line of nothingburgers, and it's amazing once the comment gets to the part where it's supposed to make a specific charge and instead it's just "all the things going on".

transcriptase 2y ago
I mean, it’s not like you can’t look up all the various grants, fellowships, groups, businesses, programs, etc Mozilla funds. Or fault us for noticing all the random endeavours they pursue then kill because they would seemingly rather do anything than make sure Firefox offers an attractive alternative to other browsers. Firefox had ~30% market share 15 years ago and Mozilla leveraged that into Pocket/firefox send/firefox os/hubs/lockwise/hello/thimble/notes/persona/etc. All defunct except the ones they mashed into the browser itself, when the initial selling point in the IE days was that it was “lightweight”.
- glenstein 2y ago
  So this is the type of comment I was thinking of. I'm just paste a segment from a previous comment that highlights the problems with this form of criticism, which I take to be more demonstration of an information literacy problem than a narrative that's pertinent to happenings with Firefox. >I don't believe it's astroturfing, simply just mind bogglingly awful arguments. Claiming the decline in market share is tied to inadequate browser features with no two conversations ever agreeing on what those features are. No coherent theory of cause and effect between features and market share while ignoring structural advantages that are much more important drivers, which Google leverages. Claims that CEO pay is the problem when it's 1% of annual revenue. Idiosyncratic interpretations of their published statements that make unfalsifiable assumptions about intentions. And a basic inability to grasp and compare the relative scale of different types of transgressions (e.g. Google is increasingly driving the web into deeper dependence on Chromium, but Mozilla once did a Mr. Robot promo!) These aren't good arguments. These aren't coming from a place of coherent thinking about the actual drivers of market share, and there's no coherent theory of cause and effect that ties other side bets to the trajectory. It's all incredibly low effort vibes because people seem to have lost grasp of how to make real arguments.