4 ms·

I don't understand how they could be pulling in half a billion a year for a decade and still have financial problems... even if they just put that money in a lo

by ajdude 2y ago

I don't understand how they could be pulling in half a billion a year for a decade and still have financial problems... even if they just put that money in a low risk money market investment account the whole company could have just ran off interest by this point.

martin_a 2y ago
Well, they took over things like Pocket, build that VPN service and Firefox Send and probably founded other projects that are not important to the core of their "business". If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now.
- walrus01 2y ago
  They didn't build a VPN service, they built a wrapper around mullvad, an existing VPN service provider. At least they chose a fairly decent one.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    Right, and that seems a relatively modest commitment of resources in the grand scheme of things. And it seems like the implication is supposed to be that those resources came at the expense of sustaining other parts of the browser experience.
  - whamlastxmas 2y ago
    This whole comment section is full of weird not-true accusations against Firefox in a way that feels really weird to me. Why would anyone want to lie to attack Firefox? Just use genuine facts to express concern, there’s plenty of legitimate concern without hyperbole.
- II2II 2y ago
  > If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now. I have no idea what the motivations of Mozilla are, but it is important to remember that many players in the industry faded away simply because the industry changes fast and those players failed to anticipate those changes. It is entirely possible that Mozilla was trying to anticipate those changes and ended up making a string of very bad bets.
  - wtallis 2y ago
    The "industry change" that would make Firefox fade away would be the death of web browsers in general, replaced by site-specific apps that leave users with no freedom to control how they interact with a site aside from a complete boycott of the site and its app. Resisting that industry change is exactly what Mozilla should have been prioritizing. Nobody wants Mozilla to support or follow that trend.
  - mystified5016 2y ago
    Instead they're losing all the advantage they once had by failing to focus on their core. Being one half of a duopoly is a pretty stable position. Just about the only way to lose it is to fuck around and quit playing the game. There's really no external force that could have destroyed Mozilla if they had just stayed focused. Mozilla needed to be a browser company, trying to be an "everything" company was a really stupid move.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    What bad bets? Rust?
- glenstein 2y ago
  People repeat this ad nauseum, but assume away all the critical details that would actually make the argument work. Do we have any assessment, other than people in comment sections randomly just saying so, that any of these actually came at the cost of developer resources on the core browser? I feel like people have heard this repeated so many times that they keep saying it now. All of these issues were real, in 2016. And Firefox did the thing: they rebuilt the browser from the ground up under Quantum, achieving breakthrough performance and stability that everybody was asking for. And in the present day, the differences are real but subtle, and I don't think they have anything to do with the actual drivers of browser market share, which is about Google leveraging its unparalleled position in search and on Android. Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? Once you start saying these things out loud, it becomes clear how nonsensical and vibes-based the whole argument is. It's not to say that there's no concern with the pivot into erosions of privacy commitments. But it doesn't excuse the kind of tulip mania that seems to have spread across hn comment sections in reaction to every mention of Mozilla. I keep pleading with people who perpetuate these narratives to try and make real arguments accountable to our usual standards of causation and substantiation, and they never do.
  - wtallis 2y ago
    > Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? No, the argument is that if Mozilla didn't spend so much money on side projects, they wouldn't now be in such a precarious financial situation that they're making a drastic, controversial change with the stated purpose of ensuring their financial future. They might still have been poor stewards of the core browser project's technical development, but at least they'd have enough accumulated savings to continue without selling user data.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Which side projects and how much money? One person in this discussion claims they could live off the interest of $500 million invested in money markets. That's the level of seriousness and credibility so far. Do you have something more substantive, with evidence, or are you just piling on an open source project and the people who work hard at it.
nicce 2y ago
CEO salary alone was 6.9 million in 2022. I wonder what else is overpaid…
- gruez 2y ago
  How much do executives at similarly sized organizations make? Moreover, if you want to cut executive salaries, how do you avoid the "pay peanuts, get monkeys" problem? Mozilla has nearly 1.5B in assets. A cheaper CEO might save you a few million, but cause far more than that in damage to the organization.
  - fauigerzigerk 2y ago
    Perhaps linking a greater share of pay to success would be a good idea. How about $200,000 + $1 million per percentage of Firefox market share? In recent years, CEO pay has doubled while Firefox appears to be in terminal decline.
    - delfinom 2y ago
      It wasn't just doubling (and more) of CEO pay for Mozilla. They also layed off tons of engineers. While giving the CEO the pay increase the same year. Absolute trash of a human being and org.
    - nicce 2y ago
      Excellent post about this: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-report-ceo-pay-skyrockets-while-firefox-marketshare-nosedives https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-... Apparently the rewarding is opposite, to get Mozilla away from Firefox…
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ycombinatrix 2y ago
    A CEO running a non-profit into the ground does not deserve that kind of compensation
nurettin 2y ago
Maybe some of the money props up rust
- lrem 2y ago
  Haven’t they abandoned that and laid off the team half a decade ago?
  - nurettin 2y ago
    They are on the Silver list of Rust Foundation members. I don't know if that's a good thing. https://rustfoundation.org/members/#silver https://rustfoundation.org/members/#silver
blinding-streak 2y ago
They spent a lot of time and effort building a mobile OS for some reason. I'm sure that didn't help.
- Qem 2y ago
  IMHO it was a worth bet. Had it succeeded we could have one extra mobile OS with much more freedom today. It lost steam, but it would be a shame if not even attempted. It lives through FireOS, despite negligible market share. And I still have my Alcatel One Touch Fire as a keepsake.
  - tdeck 2y ago
    It was bound to fail because they had no way to make it popular. They were in a race for third with Windows Phone
- glenstein 2y ago
  Huge missed opportunity for the Mozilla-Yahoo partnership in my opinion. I was intrigued by it at the time, but I think I recall opinionated bloggers on the subject that what it needed was the bare bones, features like maps and an email client and so on. And Yahoo was still at a point where it was relevant enough that it could have pitched in on this front, although that would have required strategic vision that Yahoo never had. A big risk, but the right kind of idea. It's the kind of paradox of all of these Mozilla criticisms. "Do something to diversify your revenue. No, not that... Not that either."
- mmooss 2y ago
  Every tech company makes many bets that don't work out. If you only invest in sure bets, you invest in nothing. The rest is hindsight. Unless, of course, you can tell us some sure bets right now?

by ajdude 2y ago

martin_a 2y ago

Well, they took over things like Pocket, build that VPN service and Firefox Send and probably founded other projects that are not important to the core of their "business". If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now.

walrus01 2y ago
They didn't build a VPN service, they built a wrapper around mullvad, an existing VPN service provider. At least they chose a fairly decent one.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Right, and that seems a relatively modest commitment of resources in the grand scheme of things. And it seems like the implication is supposed to be that those resources came at the expense of sustaining other parts of the browser experience.
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  This whole comment section is full of weird not-true accusations against Firefox in a way that feels really weird to me. Why would anyone want to lie to attack Firefox? Just use genuine facts to express concern, there’s plenty of legitimate concern without hyperbole.
II2II 2y ago
> If Mozilla would have solely focused on Firefox and Thunderbird we could be in a better place right now. I have no idea what the motivations of Mozilla are, but it is important to remember that many players in the industry faded away simply because the industry changes fast and those players failed to anticipate those changes. It is entirely possible that Mozilla was trying to anticipate those changes and ended up making a string of very bad bets.
- wtallis 2y ago
  The "industry change" that would make Firefox fade away would be the death of web browsers in general, replaced by site-specific apps that leave users with no freedom to control how they interact with a site aside from a complete boycott of the site and its app. Resisting that industry change is exactly what Mozilla should have been prioritizing. Nobody wants Mozilla to support or follow that trend.
- mystified5016 2y ago
  Instead they're losing all the advantage they once had by failing to focus on their core. Being one half of a duopoly is a pretty stable position. Just about the only way to lose it is to fuck around and quit playing the game. There's really no external force that could have destroyed Mozilla if they had just stayed focused. Mozilla needed to be a browser company, trying to be an "everything" company was a really stupid move.
- mmooss 2y ago
  What bad bets? Rust?
glenstein 2y ago
People repeat this ad nauseum, but assume away all the critical details that would actually make the argument work. Do we have any assessment, other than people in comment sections randomly just saying so, that any of these actually came at the cost of developer resources on the core browser? I feel like people have heard this repeated so many times that they keep saying it now. All of these issues were real, in 2016. And Firefox did the thing: they rebuilt the browser from the ground up under Quantum, achieving breakthrough performance and stability that everybody was asking for. And in the present day, the differences are real but subtle, and I don't think they have anything to do with the actual drivers of browser market share, which is about Google leveraging its unparalleled position in search and on Android. Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? Once you start saying these things out loud, it becomes clear how nonsensical and vibes-based the whole argument is. It's not to say that there's no concern with the pivot into erosions of privacy commitments. But it doesn't excuse the kind of tulip mania that seems to have spread across hn comment sections in reaction to every mention of Mozilla. I keep pleading with people who perpetuate these narratives to try and make real arguments accountable to our usual standards of causation and substantiation, and they never do.
- wtallis 2y ago
  > Is the argument supposed to be that if the VPN wasn't there then like the tab snapping would work more smoothly and there would still be 35% market share? No, the argument is that if Mozilla didn't spend so much money on side projects, they wouldn't now be in such a precarious financial situation that they're making a drastic, controversial change with the stated purpose of ensuring their financial future. They might still have been poor stewards of the core browser project's technical development, but at least they'd have enough accumulated savings to continue without selling user data.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Which side projects and how much money? One person in this discussion claims they could live off the interest of $500 million invested in money markets. That's the level of seriousness and credibility so far. Do you have something more substantive, with evidence, or are you just piling on an open source project and the people who work hard at it.

nicce 2y ago

CEO salary alone was 6.9 million in 2022. I wonder what else is overpaid…

gruez 2y ago
How much do executives at similarly sized organizations make? Moreover, if you want to cut executive salaries, how do you avoid the "pay peanuts, get monkeys" problem? Mozilla has nearly 1.5B in assets. A cheaper CEO might save you a few million, but cause far more than that in damage to the organization.
- fauigerzigerk 2y ago
  Perhaps linking a greater share of pay to success would be a good idea. How about $200,000 + $1 million per percentage of Firefox market share? In recent years, CEO pay has doubled while Firefox appears to be in terminal decline.
  - delfinom 2y ago
    It wasn't just doubling (and more) of CEO pay for Mozilla. They also layed off tons of engineers. While giving the CEO the pay increase the same year. Absolute trash of a human being and org.
  - nicce 2y ago
    Excellent post about this: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-report-ceo-pay-skyrockets-while-firefox-marketshare-nosedives https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5053290/mozilla-2023-annual-... Apparently the rewarding is opposite, to get Mozilla away from Firefox…
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ycombinatrix 2y ago
  A CEO running a non-profit into the ground does not deserve that kind of compensation

nurettin 2y ago

Maybe some of the money props up rust

lrem 2y ago
Haven’t they abandoned that and laid off the team half a decade ago?
- nurettin 2y ago
  They are on the Silver list of Rust Foundation members. I don't know if that's a good thing. https://rustfoundation.org/members/#silver https://rustfoundation.org/members/#silver

blinding-streak 2y ago

They spent a lot of time and effort building a mobile OS for some reason. I'm sure that didn't help.

Qem 2y ago
IMHO it was a worth bet. Had it succeeded we could have one extra mobile OS with much more freedom today. It lost steam, but it would be a shame if not even attempted. It lives through FireOS, despite negligible market share. And I still have my Alcatel One Touch Fire as a keepsake.
- tdeck 2y ago
  It was bound to fail because they had no way to make it popular. They were in a race for third with Windows Phone
glenstein 2y ago
Huge missed opportunity for the Mozilla-Yahoo partnership in my opinion. I was intrigued by it at the time, but I think I recall opinionated bloggers on the subject that what it needed was the bare bones, features like maps and an email client and so on. And Yahoo was still at a point where it was relevant enough that it could have pitched in on this front, although that would have required strategic vision that Yahoo never had. A big risk, but the right kind of idea. It's the kind of paradox of all of these Mozilla criticisms. "Do something to diversify your revenue. No, not that... Not that either."
mmooss 2y ago
Every tech company makes many bets that don't work out. If you only invest in sure bets, you invest in nothing. The rest is hindsight. Unless, of course, you can tell us some sure bets right now?