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> The Justice Department also kept a Biden-era proposal that seeks to ban Google from paying companies like Apple, other smartphone manufacturers and Mozilla to

> The Justice Department also kept a Biden-era proposal that seeks to ban Google from paying companies like Apple, other smartphone manufacturers and Mozilla to make its search engine the default on their phones and browsers. RIP Firefox?

hinkley 2y ago
Ah fuck. Welp. They had a chance to be default alive and they fucked it by trying to spend the money on new initiatives instead of just spending the interest payments from an endowment.
- wmf 2y ago
  Weren't the new initiatives pretty small compared to Firefox development?
  - hinkley 2y ago
    At the moment when I got upset about this, they were trying to do an awful lot, and it felt like the money was burning a hole in their pockets. I know they cut back a little but maybe they’ve sobered up since? Haven’t had the heart to look again.
  - pavon 2y ago
    Yes. And other than Firefox, Mozilla was spending money in two ways. First creating new paid products in an attempt to have revenue in case the Google money ever went away. None of them were successful enough to meet this goal, but it was a good goal. Secondly, they spent their charity donations on activism work. The way they are structured they legally could not spend that money on Firefox. They would need to restructure as a non-profit corporation (not tax deductible charity) to accept donations to spend on Firefox, like their Thunderbird subsidiary. I hope they do so now, and at least attempt to support Firefox on donations. The truth is that browsers are a very complicated, very quickly moving, and very security sensitive piece of software. They spent all that money on Firefox rather than saving it because if they didn't Firefox would have fallen behind Chrome and Safari and it wouldn't be worth using today.
    - hinkley 2y ago
      I would put that heavily on the “excuse not reason” category. The public doesn’t understand this nuance and I hope you’re right about next steps. It makes no good goddamned sense that money that was given in order to be featured in a web browser cannot be spent primarily on that web browser, and can only be spent on anything except that web browser.
jcfrei 2y ago
If chrome is no longer owned by Google I'll use it. That's the reason I switched to firefox in the first place.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  In my opinion Firefox is better in all the ways except speed - Chrome still feels faster on old computers. And I prefer the browser market to still have some technical diversity no matter who actually runs it.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    Ever try installing chrome on an old operating system like Windows 7? It doesn't work but if already installed then much faster. Wonder upto what version works with win7
  - tiberious726 2y ago
    Eh, I tried using Firefox again for a few months when manifest v3 was announced, nothing worked quite right, then I ran into this: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
  - nextaccountic 2y ago
    Firefox had Servo, a project that among other things focused on delivering faster technologies for a web browser. They had impressive results (integrated into Firefox as Firefox Quantum) but were suddenly fired At that point I think Firefox lost a vision of a better future
- Tuna-Fish 2y ago
  chrome no longer supports effective ad-blocking extensions.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    Isn't that because Google doesn't want them upsetting their advertising business. Breaking up seems like it will help this
rollcat 2y ago
Firefox will be just fine. Mozilla CEO bonuses however...
- dralley 2y ago
  This is complete nonsense. I don't love the CEO bonuses, but they are objectively less than half a percent of Mozilla's budget. Google search on the other hand is 85% of their revenue.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I think it's now at 1% $6.3M of $650M revenue which is a lot for a CEO failing to keep the company viable from a clearly obvious eventuality.
    - loeg 2y ago
      Maybe they'd be better served with a more effective and expensive CEO. It's hard to know.
  - rollcat 2y ago
    Apologies for the cheap shot at sarcasm, however the point I was trying to make is this: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/09/this-is-a-pretty-dire-assessment-of-mozilla/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/09/this-is-a-pretty-dire-asses...
  - asadotzler 2y ago
    Any other CEO with a similarly sized company, revenue stream, and user base in Silicon Valley would be making 2-3X what Mozilla's CEO makes when you consider total compensation.
infinitezest 2y ago
I recently switched to Vivaldi and have really liked it.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  Is it going to support manifest v2 after it is phased out by Google or whoever is going to own Chrome?
  - tumsfestival 2y ago
    Nope. And they're betting on their built-in AdBlock being a good replacement for uBlock, even though it's extremely basic, more so than uBlock Lite.
- ofalkaed 2y ago
  I made that switch quite a few years ago, got sick of dealing with extensions and configuring browsers. Vivaldi gives me enough out of the box to call it good.
manquer 2y ago
It will hurt but it won’t be their death. They have been saving up a bit last year if you see the financial reports their reserves are just above $1B now and there are others who paid in the past (like Yahoo did till 2017) who will pay Firefox a decent amount if not like Google does . My guess it is likely be Bing or probably a new generation AI company like OpenAI who will replace Google and perhaps even pay similar or close to what Google pays. The traffic is worth a lot. Bing attested to click flow as the reason they cannot make a better product in their testimony in this trial. Also Google will either be allowed to continue the contract till its current end (I believe 1-2 more years ) or will pay fully and release Mozilla from their obligations (Mozilla is not party to the case so early termination without compensation would be penalty on them for no reason ). Mozilla will need to make some significant cuts and layoffs no doubt will be hard on the team, but the product will survive.
- delfinom 2y ago
  They can start by reducing their CEO salary from check notes $6.9 million in 2022. It increased by millions in just a decade while their market share declined and they layed off hundreds.
  - manquer 2y ago
    Compensation is complicated and function of value added to the organization may not correlate to work put in. I have no opinion on what should be cut, just pointing out it won't the end of Mozilla without Google deal. -- For anyone who wants to know what the other side of the compensation discussion would go like.. One could argue though the Mozilla leadership has also more than quadrupled their revenue from $150M in 2011 to $690M in 2024, despite loosing market share, revenue generated from their only competitor no less. It isn't a easy job to convince your competitor to be your primary source of income to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and keep increasing that every year. Yes, Google is not funding the search deal out of the goodness of their hearts, but they also don't have to pay $500M+ per year to keep Mozilla alive if that is all they cared about. Such a deal doesn't happen without a ton of work by Mozilla to build relationships, show value of paying 500M to Google etc. If the leadership can no longer generate the growth/value they too will face the music sooner or later. Mozilla still would need competent people(this group or another) to be able make the deals to pivot to other revenue sources and they don't come cheap. A for profit subsidiary of a non-profit in software world will always end up paying what looks like generous compensation perhaps even compared to the market for similar roles in pure for-profit companies, because unlike those companies, Mozilla cannot offer stock compensation on top of cash.
_bin_ 2y ago
time to try ladybird haha
catach 2y ago
I recall it being claimed that Mozilla has the warchest to survive at typical spending levels for quite some time, without Google.
- pavon 2y ago
  If I am reading their financial statement correctly, they have about 3 years of runway. $500M/year expenses, $65M/year revenue other than search deals, $45M/year interest on savings and $1300M assets. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-2023-fs-final-short-1209.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...
binarymax 2y ago
Mozilla should have seen this coming and invested in their own search and ad infrastructure like Brave. They’ve had years but wasted their time on tiny features like Pocket.

hinkley 2y ago

Ah fuck. Welp. They had a chance to be default alive and they fucked it by trying to spend the money on new initiatives instead of just spending the interest payments from an endowment.

wmf 2y ago
Weren't the new initiatives pretty small compared to Firefox development?
- hinkley 2y ago
  At the moment when I got upset about this, they were trying to do an awful lot, and it felt like the money was burning a hole in their pockets. I know they cut back a little but maybe they’ve sobered up since? Haven’t had the heart to look again.
- pavon 2y ago
  Yes. And other than Firefox, Mozilla was spending money in two ways. First creating new paid products in an attempt to have revenue in case the Google money ever went away. None of them were successful enough to meet this goal, but it was a good goal. Secondly, they spent their charity donations on activism work. The way they are structured they legally could not spend that money on Firefox. They would need to restructure as a non-profit corporation (not tax deductible charity) to accept donations to spend on Firefox, like their Thunderbird subsidiary. I hope they do so now, and at least attempt to support Firefox on donations. The truth is that browsers are a very complicated, very quickly moving, and very security sensitive piece of software. They spent all that money on Firefox rather than saving it because if they didn't Firefox would have fallen behind Chrome and Safari and it wouldn't be worth using today.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    I would put that heavily on the “excuse not reason” category. The public doesn’t understand this nuance and I hope you’re right about next steps. It makes no good goddamned sense that money that was given in order to be featured in a web browser cannot be spent primarily on that web browser, and can only be spent on anything except that web browser.

jcfrei 2y ago

If chrome is no longer owned by Google I'll use it. That's the reason I switched to firefox in the first place.

qwerty456127 2y ago
In my opinion Firefox is better in all the ways except speed - Chrome still feels faster on old computers. And I prefer the browser market to still have some technical diversity no matter who actually runs it.
- ipaddr 2y ago
  Ever try installing chrome on an old operating system like Windows 7? It doesn't work but if already installed then much faster. Wonder upto what version works with win7
- tiberious726 2y ago
  Eh, I tried using Firefox again for a few months when manifest v3 was announced, nothing worked quite right, then I ran into this: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
- nextaccountic 2y ago
  Firefox had Servo, a project that among other things focused on delivering faster technologies for a web browser. They had impressive results (integrated into Firefox as Firefox Quantum) but were suddenly fired At that point I think Firefox lost a vision of a better future
Tuna-Fish 2y ago
chrome no longer supports effective ad-blocking extensions.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  Isn't that because Google doesn't want them upsetting their advertising business. Breaking up seems like it will help this

rollcat 2y ago

Firefox will be just fine. Mozilla CEO bonuses however...

dralley 2y ago
This is complete nonsense. I don't love the CEO bonuses, but they are objectively less than half a percent of Mozilla's budget. Google search on the other hand is 85% of their revenue.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  I think it's now at 1% $6.3M of $650M revenue which is a lot for a CEO failing to keep the company viable from a clearly obvious eventuality.
  - loeg 2y ago
    Maybe they'd be better served with a more effective and expensive CEO. It's hard to know.
- rollcat 2y ago
  Apologies for the cheap shot at sarcasm, however the point I was trying to make is this: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/09/this-is-a-pretty-dire-assessment-of-mozilla/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/09/this-is-a-pretty-dire-asses...
- asadotzler 2y ago
  Any other CEO with a similarly sized company, revenue stream, and user base in Silicon Valley would be making 2-3X what Mozilla's CEO makes when you consider total compensation.

infinitezest 2y ago

I recently switched to Vivaldi and have really liked it.

qwerty456127 2y ago
Is it going to support manifest v2 after it is phased out by Google or whoever is going to own Chrome?
- tumsfestival 2y ago
  Nope. And they're betting on their built-in AdBlock being a good replacement for uBlock, even though it's extremely basic, more so than uBlock Lite.
ofalkaed 2y ago
I made that switch quite a few years ago, got sick of dealing with extensions and configuring browsers. Vivaldi gives me enough out of the box to call it good.

manquer 2y ago

It will hurt but it won’t be their death. They have been saving up a bit last year if you see the financial reports their reserves are just above $1B now and there are others who paid in the past (like Yahoo did till 2017) who will pay Firefox a decent amount if not like Google does . My guess it is likely be Bing or probably a new generation AI company like OpenAI who will replace Google and perhaps even pay similar or close to what Google pays. The traffic is worth a lot. Bing attested to click flow as the reason they cannot make a better product in their testimony in this trial. Also Google will either be allowed to continue the contract till its current end (I believe 1-2 more years ) or will pay fully and release Mozilla from their obligations (Mozilla is not party to the case so early termination without compensation would be penalty on them for no reason ). Mozilla will need to make some significant cuts and layoffs no doubt will be hard on the team, but the product will survive.

delfinom 2y ago
They can start by reducing their CEO salary from check notes $6.9 million in 2022. It increased by millions in just a decade while their market share declined and they layed off hundreds.
- manquer 2y ago
  Compensation is complicated and function of value added to the organization may not correlate to work put in. I have no opinion on what should be cut, just pointing out it won't the end of Mozilla without Google deal. -- For anyone who wants to know what the other side of the compensation discussion would go like.. One could argue though the Mozilla leadership has also more than quadrupled their revenue from $150M in 2011 to $690M in 2024, despite loosing market share, revenue generated from their only competitor no less. It isn't a easy job to convince your competitor to be your primary source of income to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and keep increasing that every year. Yes, Google is not funding the search deal out of the goodness of their hearts, but they also don't have to pay $500M+ per year to keep Mozilla alive if that is all they cared about. Such a deal doesn't happen without a ton of work by Mozilla to build relationships, show value of paying 500M to Google etc. If the leadership can no longer generate the growth/value they too will face the music sooner or later. Mozilla still would need competent people(this group or another) to be able make the deals to pivot to other revenue sources and they don't come cheap. A for profit subsidiary of a non-profit in software world will always end up paying what looks like generous compensation perhaps even compared to the market for similar roles in pure for-profit companies, because unlike those companies, Mozilla cannot offer stock compensation on top of cash.

_bin_ 2y ago

time to try ladybird haha

catach 2y ago

I recall it being claimed that Mozilla has the warchest to survive at typical spending levels for quite some time, without Google.

pavon 2y ago
If I am reading their financial statement correctly, they have about 3 years of runway. $500M/year expenses, $65M/year revenue other than search deals, $45M/year interest on savings and $1300M assets. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-2023-fs-final-short-1209.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...

binarymax 2y ago

Mozilla should have seen this coming and invested in their own search and ad infrastructure like Brave. They’ve had years but wasted their time on tiny features like Pocket.