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> Typically, Mozilla seems to pick a middle-ground. Deeply disagree. I think you are avoiding looking at facts by presenting the issue as a matter of contradi

> Typically, Mozilla seems to pick a middle-ground. Deeply disagree. I think you are avoiding looking at facts by presenting the issue as a matter of contradicting opinions. Mozilla did fire an executive with a track record of good decisions for political pressure by a minority linked to things unrelated to his tenure. Mozilla invested significant amount of moneys in a lot of projects which all failed: buying Pocket, the tv thing, the smartphone things. Meanwhile, their main product has been losing market share while they barely fought on the marketing side of things. Worse, there were multiple events leading to negative marketing created by poor strategy. Despite this string of failures, top management has been significantly increasing their compensation. The issue is not knowing if these compensations are competitive. Everything points to the top management being grossly incompetent. Nobody wants them to treat it like a passion project. People want them out. I mean except Google of course which is all to happy that they meet the goal assigned to them: not being a competitor in the browser market and being an useful umbrella in case competition authorities wants to take a look at Chrome.

glenstein 1y ago
>Mozilla invested significant amount of moneys in a lot of projects which all failed: buying Pocket, the tv thing, the smartphone things. Meanwhile, their main product has been losing market share while they barely fought on the marketing side of things. This right here is the myth that keeps getting repeated without evidence. As I said in a different comment, most of these widely criticized side bets happened long after the market share decline, so the attempt to tie that to cause and effect just doesn't work. And the "significant" money invested in the side bets is almost never quantified (normally people trying to make this argument, once you ask for numbers, are just browsing the 990 for the first time and making random guesses). The VPN cost seems like it was utterly trivial, the amount to purchase Pocket was never disclosed but I read of fundraising around $14MM and implied valuations in the low to mid tens of millions, which may be the ballpark of what Pocket costed to acquire. And Pocket did bring in revenue, also possibly on the order of tens of millions. So the worst case is that they lost low tens of millions, the best case is that it was a wash. So that's not nothing, but that's what it looks like to attach these claims to facts. It's probably less than what their endowment earns them in a year, and relatively small against their annual revenue. But it doesn't tell a story of side bets triggering a collapse in market share like people keep claiming. And it seems like I keep having to repeat this, but these kinds of narratives completely ignore what were likely the real drivers of market share change, which was Google leveraging its powerful position in search, on Android, the rollout of Chromebooks.
glenstein 1y ago
>Mozilla did fire an executive with a track record of good decisions for political pressure Sidebar for this one. Seems like you are referring to Brandon Eich who was CEO for all of 11 days. He was significant to Mozilla in other ways before that, but interestingly, it's his career at Mozilla that most intersects with the period of major collapse in market share. >while they barely fought on the marketing side of things Mozilla has long had a rather huge marketing budget that, depending on the person, is something for which they're criticized. I foget the exact numbers, but after software and development, "operations", and legal, marketing is the biggest chunk of spending and it's comparable to those other departments. If you wanted to argue that they are spending too much that actually would, imo, be one of the stronger charges to make against Mozilla, depending on what you think their priorities should be.
- 0xy 1y ago
  He's CEO of Brave which now has a third the amount of market share of Firefox and rapidly rising, while Firefox continues to crater.
  - glenstein 1y ago
    I'll happily credit Eich for his successes if he ever again applies his talents to a non Chromium browser. But right now that's Firefox, and hopefully soon, Ladybird.
    - BrendanEich 1y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336441 (ladybird) You go build a web engine. I've done it enough and the fight for user rights is a level up now. Brave would have died on the Gecko or Servo hill, and quickly, if we'd been foolish enough to charge up it.
      - sfink 1y ago
        Not that it matters to anyone, but I feel a responsibility to say it: Brendan, you were right and I was wrong about the CEO pay. It still doesn't bother me as a thing in itself, but it now seems like a critical trigger in the cascade of events leading to the MBA types taking over. I still disagree with a lot of the HN crowd's complaints about Mozilla, and think we're still serving an important function for now. The bulk of the complaints are applying hindsight to decisions that were difficult at the time, and suggesting alternate paths that are ludicrously unrealistic or optimistic. Other complaints are on target, but way overblown. But the complaint that management has been taken over by the industry-standard hype-chasing short term value extraction mindset? I can't point to any evidence that says they haven't. (Admittedly, it's hard to find a company these days that hasn't...)
pseudalopex 1y ago
The smartphone things meant Firefox OS? The TV thing meant the Fire TV version? How much did it cost? How much did Amazon pay Mozilla? What was Eich's track record of good decisions? He supported Firefox OS. This seems a bad decision according to you. Many people say Firefox was much inferior to Chrome from 2008 to 2017 at least. Eich was CTO from 2005 to 2014. His track record at Brave includes multiple events which led to negative marketing. Eich's tenure as Mozilla's CEO included failing to prepare for a predictable PR crisis, declining to apologize for harming people, and declining to say he wouldn't do it again.
- BrendanEich 1y ago
  I grew Mozilla and then Firefox from zero (not 2005 CTO title, from 1998 public [late 1997 inside Netscape] in tech leader role for Mozilla, rainmaker and exec sponsor in 2001 for mozilla/browser which became Firefox) to their heights. Now I'm growing Brave to 100M MAU (we will pass Firefox as it falls and we rise, likely this October). Take care!
  - pseudalopex 1y ago
    My comment was not intended as a summary of your CV. The 2005 CTO title was enough to establish you didn't inherit 2008 Firefox. Mitchell Baker also could boast she grew Mozilla and Firefox to their heights. Her tenure after 2008 is not called a track record of good decisions.
    - BrendanEich 1y ago
      Why are you commenting about part of my time at Mozilla to try to put me in a bad light, then when I challenge you, suddenly dragging Mitchell in? I was not attacking her, but you were definitely attacking me. Changing the subject to someone else does not excuse your usual sniping at me. For your information, Mitchell and I collaborated closely as leaders (I was tech, she was mgmt/legal) of Mozilla from 1999 on to Firefox launch and peak in 2010 or 2011. We also worked after that year to deal with CEO issues, before with her support I became CEO. We both supported FirefoxOS among other projects I was a tech cofounder or sponsor of. Have a nice day.

glenstein 1y ago

>Mozilla invested significant amount of moneys in a lot of projects which all failed: buying Pocket, the tv thing, the smartphone things. Meanwhile, their main product has been losing market share while they barely fought on the marketing side of things. This right here is the myth that keeps getting repeated without evidence. As I said in a different comment, most of these widely criticized side bets happened long after the market share decline, so the attempt to tie that to cause and effect just doesn't work. And the "significant" money invested in the side bets is almost never quantified (normally people trying to make this argument, once you ask for numbers, are just browsing the 990 for the first time and making random guesses). The VPN cost seems like it was utterly trivial, the amount to purchase Pocket was never disclosed but I read of fundraising around $14MM and implied valuations in the low to mid tens of millions, which may be the ballpark of what Pocket costed to acquire. And Pocket did bring in revenue, also possibly on the order of tens of millions. So the worst case is that they lost low tens of millions, the best case is that it was a wash. So that's not nothing, but that's what it looks like to attach these claims to facts. It's probably less than what their endowment earns them in a year, and relatively small against their annual revenue. But it doesn't tell a story of side bets triggering a collapse in market share like people keep claiming. And it seems like I keep having to repeat this, but these kinds of narratives completely ignore what were likely the real drivers of market share change, which was Google leveraging its powerful position in search, on Android, the rollout of Chromebooks.

glenstein 1y ago

>Mozilla did fire an executive with a track record of good decisions for political pressure Sidebar for this one. Seems like you are referring to Brandon Eich who was CEO for all of 11 days. He was significant to Mozilla in other ways before that, but interestingly, it's his career at Mozilla that most intersects with the period of major collapse in market share. >while they barely fought on the marketing side of things Mozilla has long had a rather huge marketing budget that, depending on the person, is something for which they're criticized. I foget the exact numbers, but after software and development, "operations", and legal, marketing is the biggest chunk of spending and it's comparable to those other departments. If you wanted to argue that they are spending too much that actually would, imo, be one of the stronger charges to make against Mozilla, depending on what you think their priorities should be.

0xy 1y ago
He's CEO of Brave which now has a third the amount of market share of Firefox and rapidly rising, while Firefox continues to crater.
- glenstein 1y ago
  I'll happily credit Eich for his successes if he ever again applies his talents to a non Chromium browser. But right now that's Firefox, and hopefully soon, Ladybird.
  - BrendanEich 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43336441 (ladybird) You go build a web engine. I've done it enough and the fight for user rights is a level up now. Brave would have died on the Gecko or Servo hill, and quickly, if we'd been foolish enough to charge up it.
    - sfink 1y ago
      Not that it matters to anyone, but I feel a responsibility to say it: Brendan, you were right and I was wrong about the CEO pay. It still doesn't bother me as a thing in itself, but it now seems like a critical trigger in the cascade of events leading to the MBA types taking over. I still disagree with a lot of the HN crowd's complaints about Mozilla, and think we're still serving an important function for now. The bulk of the complaints are applying hindsight to decisions that were difficult at the time, and suggesting alternate paths that are ludicrously unrealistic or optimistic. Other complaints are on target, but way overblown. But the complaint that management has been taken over by the industry-standard hype-chasing short term value extraction mindset? I can't point to any evidence that says they haven't. (Admittedly, it's hard to find a company these days that hasn't...)

pseudalopex 1y ago

The smartphone things meant Firefox OS? The TV thing meant the Fire TV version? How much did it cost? How much did Amazon pay Mozilla? What was Eich's track record of good decisions? He supported Firefox OS. This seems a bad decision according to you. Many people say Firefox was much inferior to Chrome from 2008 to 2017 at least. Eich was CTO from 2005 to 2014. His track record at Brave includes multiple events which led to negative marketing. Eich's tenure as Mozilla's CEO included failing to prepare for a predictable PR crisis, declining to apologize for harming people, and declining to say he wouldn't do it again.

BrendanEich 1y ago
I grew Mozilla and then Firefox from zero (not 2005 CTO title, from 1998 public [late 1997 inside Netscape] in tech leader role for Mozilla, rainmaker and exec sponsor in 2001 for mozilla/browser which became Firefox) to their heights. Now I'm growing Brave to 100M MAU (we will pass Firefox as it falls and we rise, likely this October). Take care!
- pseudalopex 1y ago
  My comment was not intended as a summary of your CV. The 2005 CTO title was enough to establish you didn't inherit 2008 Firefox. Mitchell Baker also could boast she grew Mozilla and Firefox to their heights. Her tenure after 2008 is not called a track record of good decisions.
  - BrendanEich 1y ago
    Why are you commenting about part of my time at Mozilla to try to put me in a bad light, then when I challenge you, suddenly dragging Mitchell in? I was not attacking her, but you were definitely attacking me. Changing the subject to someone else does not excuse your usual sniping at me. For your information, Mitchell and I collaborated closely as leaders (I was tech, she was mgmt/legal) of Mozilla from 1999 on to Firefox launch and peak in 2010 or 2011. We also worked after that year to deal with CEO issues, before with her support I became CEO. We both supported FirefoxOS among other projects I was a tech cofounder or sponsor of. Have a nice day.