18 ms·

Having worked at Mozilla a while ago, the CEO role is one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Success is oddly defined: it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit own

• wvh 10mo ago
  I'm still sad they shelved Mozilla Persona due to low adoption. There is a hole in the market around privacy and identity, and Mozilla would be a natural choice to fill it, but it's going to be an uphill battle to get major sites and end users on board. Not a job to be envious about indeed.
  • glenstein 10mo ago
    And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. It would have been a great time for an alternative mobile OS 10+ years in the making, to welcome all the energy that has gone into beautiful projects like F-Droid. If I could time travel into the past, in addition to preventing all the bad things (e.g. Young Sheldon), I might have told Yahoo they should flex some financial muscle while they still had relevance and worked to mobilize (no pun intended) developer time, energy, etc and perhaps even provide a baseline ecosystem of stock apps to support FirefoxOS.
    • benoau 10mo ago
      I installed FirefoxOS on a phone years ago, it wasn't even bad really.
      • MattTheRealOne 10mo ago
        As with most new operating systems, its biggest problem was lack of apps. Mozilla seemed to abandon Firefox OS right as Progressive Web Apps were starting to take off, which would have done a lot to fix that problem.
      • flaburgan 10mo ago
        I use it as my primary phone for 2 years, first with the Flame, then with a Z3C. For me Firefox OS was the finale move of Mozilla, either it successes and Mozilla becomes a major actor again or it fails and they slowly die. And thebmy decided to kill it right when it was becoming stable enough.
        • glenstein 10mo ago
          It's another damned if you do, damned if you don't. FirefoxOS is regularly listed by commenters as an example of a wasteful side bet, whereas my feeling is more along the lines of yours, that it was striding greatly, as the saying goes, and attempting to be a major actor. A big part of the market share loss was due to monopoly and distribution lockdown of a controlled platform tightly tied to hardware, so I can certainly see the strategic wisdom of the attempt. I suspect they didn't have the resources to press forward, they had a lot less money then than they do now. Which makes it all the more maddening that Yahoo's role as a partner was so muted; it could have made the difference for both of them.
      • szatkus 10mo ago
        The main problem with Firefox OS was that it was really slow. At the same time it was targeting budget phones. But on the other hand progress was quite good. Back in the days I was maintaining unofficial images for Alcatel Fire. Each version was a little bit faster, but you really can't do much when the whole OS is a browser running on a device with with 256MB of RAM and a single core CPU.
  • ethbr1 10mo ago
    1000% The two places it's mind boggling that Mozilla doesn't have a product are (1) identity (especially as a provider to 3rd parties) and (2) instant messaging (especially on mobile). They were important 10 years ago, they're more important today, and the existing providers all have huge privacy concerns.
    • pseudalopex 10mo ago
      What would be Mozilla's revenue model for instant messaging?
      • glenstein 10mo ago
        [flagged]
      • ethbr1 10mo ago
        Ads? Nothing says you have to track users, if you're not looking to optimize ad monetization per user. And I daresay there are a fair number of companies who would love to get even blind exposure to Mozilla's userbase.
        • pseudalopex 10mo ago
          Why would people use Mozilla's app and not WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, or others?
          • ethbr1 10mo ago
            Privacy, availability, popularity respectively.
            • mikestorrent 10mo ago
              Signal is already ostensibly private, available, and popular enough, and doesn't have ads... why compete? IMO Mozilla should just double down on the browser and do everything they can to keep it as a lifeline for Free Software devices to be able to participate on the internet as first class citizens.
  • array_key_first 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    • wtallis 10mo ago
      You don't really seem to be trying to fairly describe the problem. With Pocket, Mozilla forced it on everyone, then two years later they bought the service, then many years later they eventually killed it for everyone. They didn't even try the approach of making it an opt-in extension that users could install if they desired. The unoffensive strategy was obvious all along, and they just didn't choose that route. The concerns of Mozilla partnering with and promoting a proprietary service were easily anticipated, and the solution (buying Pocket) was clearly an option since they did that step eventually. Yes, Mozilla may be in a hard place trying to diversify and find success with their other ventures. But they're clearly making plenty of unforced errors along the way.
      • throwup238 10mo ago
        That unforced error was particularly egregious considering that tab containers and Facebook containers are optional addons that are well integrated into the browser.
      • troyvit 10mo ago
        > With Pocket, Mozilla forced it on everyone, It was ridiculously easy to turn off. Making a fairly non-obtrusive service opt-out instead of opt-in is not forcing it on everyone.
        • wtallis 10mo ago
          They literally forced every user to either accept the invasion of the proprietary service, or have to take extra steps to disable it on each of their devices. Neither of those is actually a reasonable, respectful way to treat your users.
          • jrflowers 10mo ago
• nightski 10mo ago
  Why is so much profit needed?
  • gkoberger 10mo ago
    Depends on how you look at it. They made $653 million in 2023, most coming from their biggest competitor, Google. They don't need this much money, but it means more layoffs and cutting scope drastically. It's expensive to run a modern browser.
    • Jolter 10mo ago
      Do you mean they need income, or do you actually mean profit? In a nonprofit, you don’t need layoffs unless you’re losing money (negative profit), normally.
      • gkoberger 10mo ago
        Yeah you're right, I said profit in the original post because it was a nice polyptoton, but I did indeed mean revenue. That's on me!
• mixmastamyk 10mo ago
  The job was always very easy, fire all of the pure managers and sock the google money into an endowment before it runs out. Then focus on privacy as you mentioned. They’ve taken in several billion dollars by now. Let that sink in. They're supposedly a non-profit, so this plan is the well-trodden playbook. But of course no Manager instance could imagine such a thing. Cue Upton Sinclair quote.
  • tectec 10mo ago
    What's the quote?
    • Teever 10mo ago
      "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I agree with the person you're responding to. Decades of funding and they have zero savings to show for it. Though it's questionable as to how much big players like Google would have continued to fund Mozilla if they had seen Mozilla making the financial moves that would have made it an independent and self-sufficient entity.
      • gkoberger 10mo ago
        Well, they have over a billion in the bank. Which is both a ton of money, but also goes away quickly when you're a large company paying lots of money to salaries.
        • zug_zug 10mo ago
          So if you have a billion in the bank, you can collect 5% return and never touch the money. So you get $50m a year to pay enough engineers to make a browser. That's plenty of money if they recognize they need a super lean company with 0 bloat and a few highly paid experts who focus on correctness and not bullshit features.
          • pseudalopex 10mo ago
• the_biot 10mo ago
  You're assuming Mozilla would be successful at a privacy play because they are a trusted organization. I can't stress this enough: they are not.
  • zero0529 10mo ago
    Trust is relative and it is subjective meaning that I trust Mozilla more than I trust google but I also trust them in general, enough at least that they support most of my internet browsing. Unless you mean something else ?
  • mmooss 10mo ago
    What is that based on? You can trust your doctor much more about your knee and much less about their billing. Trust isn't binary and isn't per person/organization/object, but varies by person and (activity?). And anything will be trusted more or less by different people. Is there evidence of who trusts Mozilla with what, and how much? The the fact that you don't trust them or that some on HN don't trust them isn't evidence. Also, each of us is both commentator and agent. When we say 'I trust X' or 'I don't trust X', we both communicate our thoughts and change others' thoughts.
    • hamdingers 10mo ago
      That's a great question, honestly, and I like your framing of trust. I do not trust Mozilla to keep a product alive. I was frustrated by Firefox OS and more recently Pocket, but everything they've tried or acquired aside from the browser itself (and Thunderbird I guess?) has failed and been shut down. That has burned a lot of people along the way. For this reason I can't see myself becoming a user of any future Mozilla projects.
      • mmooss 10mo ago
        That makes much more sense. I wonder what the non-HN public thinks - most of those products, like Firefox OS, were essentially unknown outside HN-like populations. Pocket was better known. But yes, that is part of trust and I'd like to see them address it.
• whatever1 10mo ago
  This. I want a password/passkey/auth and bookmark manager that work across platforms and devices.
  • mattmaroon 10mo ago
    Don't you have this already? Chrome and Firefox both have these. Devices have solid password manager integration, I use mine across 3 OSes and who knows how many devices.
    • whatever1 10mo ago
      No passkeys, no authenticators.
      • DANmode 10mo ago
        Bitwarden is spoken highly of!
        • tigroferoce 10mo ago
          I second Bitwarden. It works well, and it even has a business model.
    • dpark 10mo ago
      I think password manager integration is pretty janky but that’s not something Mozilla can solve in general.
  • DANmode 10mo ago
    Well, then I’ve gotta bust your balls here and tell you to step away from the Win98 machine, because that’s been around for some time. Even secure, privacy-respecting versions!
    • mattmaroon 10mo ago
      It's weird when someone's wish list is something you've been doing for years for free.
• e584 10mo ago
  The best that Mozilla can do for AI is to make Firefox more headless and scriptable.
  • CarbonJ 10mo ago
    What would you like to see from Firefox to make it more headless and scriptable? Are there specific usecases you're interested in supporting?
    • slau 10mo ago
      I'd love to be able to modify JS at runtime on random websites. Too often there's a bug, or a "feature" that prevents me from using a service, that I could fix by removing an event or something in the JS code.
      • holowoodman 10mo ago
        That's what development tools are for. Or Greasemonkey/Violentmonkey.
        • slau 10mo ago
          As far as I know neither Firefox nor Chrome allow you to modify the JS prior to execution without a plugin. You can run random JS, sure, but you can’t monkeypatch.
• rapind 10mo ago
  > that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time Why? might be I'm just missing something, but I don't understand why this needs to be a goal of theirs?
• macspoofing 10mo ago
  > What Mozilla is good at ... Firefox - the one thing they do not want to work on is the only thing that makes them special.
  • gkoberger 10mo ago
    They do work on it. A lot. But the issue is browsers don't make money. You can't charge for it, you can't add ads to it, etc. You're competing with the biggest companies in the world (Google, Apple), all of whom are happy to subsidize a browser for other reasons.
    • beej71 10mo ago
      They could make it so we could subsidize development like with Thunderbird.
    • viraptor 10mo ago
      > You can't charge for it They could try. I just keep hearing people who would pay for no extra features as long as it paid for actual Firefox development and not the random unrelated Mozilla projects. I would pay a subscription. But they don't let me.
      • cjpearson 10mo ago
        You can't effectively paywall it because not only is it open source, but there are many nearly equivalent competitors all of which are free. Any subscribers would essentially be donors. There are people like yourself who would be happy to donate, but not nearly enough. Replacing MoCo's current revenue with donors would require donations at the level of Doctors without Borders, American Cancer Society, or the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Turning into one of the largest charities in America overnight simply isn't realistic. A drastic downsizing to subsist on donor revenue also isn't wise when Mozilla already has to compete with a smaller team. And "Ladybird does it" isn't a real argument until and unless it graduates from cool project to usable and competitive browser.
        • 10mo ago
• tsoukase 10mo ago
  Firemail should be the name of a free and privacy oriented email client wholly owned by Mozilla with a web and mobile app. I would sign up instantly and gradually migrate from gmail, while being assured for its sustainability.
  • Sailemi 10mo ago
    Maybe not exactly what you’re looking for but Thunderbird is working on a paid email service: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/ https://www.tb.pro/en-US/
    • dabockster 10mo ago
      They were also supposedly working on mobile apps. I'd pay some solid money for Thunderbird mobile if it was a good product.
  • dpark 10mo ago
    “Free”. Therein lies the Mozilla problem. Everyone wants everything free. It’s real hard to compete with Google who happily gives out free email and browser because they can monetize attention.
  • coder543 10mo ago
    A free and privacy-oriented hosted service that people have to pay to maintain? That is a confusing concept. How would the incentives be aligned?
• m463 10mo ago
  > I'd focus on privacy. I would love that. that said, right now firefox unstoppably and constantly phones home
  • autoexec 10mo ago
    Does this not work anymore? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making... I've been perfectly willing to spend an hour making countless changes using about:config to beat Firefox (or its forks) into submission on every install, but that only works while they continue to give us the ability.
• rapnie 10mo ago
  > Instead, if I were CEO, I'd go the opposite way: I'd focus on privacy. Where it comes to AI in that regard, I would also focus on direct human connection. Where AI encapsulates people in bubbles of tech isolation and social indirection.
• FarhadG 10mo ago
  Super well stated and interesting point regarding (general) privacy. I miss the days where Mozilla (Firefox) was known to be the "fastest browser." It worked and such an easy transition for users (including myself) who were tired of the bloated browser experience.
• skeeter2020 10mo ago
  Anil Dash wrote something relevant recently: https://www.anildash.com/2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/ https://www.anildash.com/2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/ His point (which I agree with - softly) is that Mozilla could approach this from a more nuanced perspective that others cannot, like not anti-AI but anti "Big AI". Facilitate what people are already doing (and outside of the HN bubble everyone is using AI all the time, even if it's just what we think is "dumb" stuff) throught the FF lens. Like a local LLM that runs entirely in an extension or similar. THere's no shortage of hard, valuable things that big tech won't do because of $$$.
• trinsic2 10mo ago
  Why cant Mozilla go the same route with Firefox as Thunderbird where its community supported, I wonder?
  • bpye 10mo ago
    Web standards move very quickly, the only other two parties that keep up today are Google with Blink and Apple with WebKit.
• wcchandler 10mo ago
  Privacy, identity, and more importantly, anonymity are one of those things I keep thinking about. A few months back I had this idea of comparing the need to that of credit reporting agencies. You have the big 3 - Equifax, Experian, TransUnion. They provide credit information to companies that want it. You request the info, they provide it. There's a fee for retrieving it. I think our personal identities should be treated similarly. We sign up for various online services and provide some PII, but not much. Why should the website be able to store that information? Maybe they shouldn't be able to. Instead, lets permit these identity brokers to control our private information. Name, address, email, etc. Then whenever a companies needs that info, for whatever reason, they query the identity broker, get select info they need and be done. Token based access could permit the site to certain data, for certain periods of time. You can review the tokens at a later date and make sure only the ones you care about get the info. Large companies that already participate in this space (Google, Microsoft, etc.) can separate out this business function and have it be isolated from their core products. I was thinking it'd require an act of congress to get implemented, and that may be possible. But instead of having that as a hard requirement, maybe just a branding/badge/logo on services. Say your product respects your privacy and uses data brokers for your privacy. Going a step further, how do we encourage use? Aside from personal privacy, what if social media sites allowed us to use our identities to validate comments or attachments? Similar to the idea of a token, we upload a photo of our cat. We permit FB access to that cat pic, generate the token, say it's good until we revoke it. We revoke it, and now that picture will fail to load. We can also restrict access to our cat picture. By requesting access to the cat pic, another user provides their identity as well. If their identity is allowed to view it, then it can render. Similar to comments. It's just a string, but we can invalidate a token and make access to it no longer possible. What about digital hoarding? Can't we screenshot everything or scrape the website and store it for later? Yes. But that's no longer a trusted source. Everything can be faked, especially as AI tools advance. Instead, by using the identity broker, you can verify if a statement was actually said. This will be a mindshift. Similar to how wikipedia isn't a credible source in a term paper, a screenshot is not proof of anything. Identity brokers can also facilitate anonymous streams. Similar to a crypto wallet, separate personas can be generated by an identity. An anonymous comment can be produced and associated with that randomized persona. The identity broker can store the private key for the persona, possibly encrypted by the identity in some manner, or it can be stored elsewhere, free for the identity to resume using should they want to. It's an interesting problem to think about.
• wirrbel 10mo ago
  i work for a for-profit owned by a non-profit. This is a weird take. You can shape a product, sure you need to bring in a profit, but there are options of working with your owner (the non-profit) that you just don't have in a publicly traded company. I am sure people would queue up for the job, fully aware of what it entails.
• Yoric 10mo ago
  FWIW, I remember when Mozilla started experimenting with AI, and that was way ahead of the curve (around 2015, iirc?) But yeah, I agree that buying a great email provider would be a very interesting step. And perhaps partnering with Matrix.
  • Arathorn 10mo ago
    On the Matrix side we would love for Mozilla (or MZLA) to become a paid Matrix hosting provider. Element has ended up focusing on digitally-sovereign govtech (https://element.io/en/sectors https://element.io/en/sectors) in order to prevail, and it's left a hole in the market.
    • dabockster 10mo ago
      > Element has ended up focusing on digitally-sovereign govtech (https://element.io/en/sectors https://element.io/en/sectors) in order to prevail, and it's left a hole in the market. And unless they have verifiable testimonials, I'd take their reach with a grain of salt. Anyone can plaster a bunch of public domain government and defense logos all over their website.
  • dabockster 10mo ago
    They need to give Thunderbird more resources first.
• chiefalchemist 10mo ago
  Merge Mozilla (including Firefox Relay, Mozilla VPN, etc ) with FastMail or Proton, price it reasonably and I’d be on board. If it worked well I’d recommend it to anyone I could. I understand email isn’t easy but it difficult to imagine why Mozilla didn’t seize the opportunity.
• CuriousRose 10mo ago
  Fully agree with this. - Mozilla SSL Certs - for corporations that don't want Let's Encrypt - Mozilla Mail - a reliable Exchange/Google Mail alternative (desperately needed imo) - Thunderbird for iOS - why is this not a thing yet? - Mozilla Search - metasearch that isn't based on Bing/DDG/Google - Mozilla HTTPS DNS - although Cloudflare will probably always do this better All seemingly low-hanging fruit with brand alignment.
  • binwang 10mo ago
    > Mozilla Mail - a reliable Exchange/Google Mail alternative (desperately needed imo) Thunderbird Pro was announced a while back, still not GA though
  • SamDc73 10mo ago
    > Mozilla Mail - a reliable Exchange/Google Mail alternative (desperately needed imo) I think the privacy industry is oversaturated we already have: ProtonMail, Tuta and Mailbox Mail
    • gkoberger 10mo ago
      Agreed, this is why I think they should buy.
    • CuriousRose 10mo ago
      I'm thinking more at an SMB level, not necessarily for secure mail, PGP and the like. IMAP + CalDev + CardDev sat on-top of cPanel is getting a bit long in the tooth for companies that want exchange-like mail solutions outside of the big two. Unfortunately MS and Google run the "spam" filters as well, so you really need an established company that they can't afford to irritate to enter the space - see Mozilla - to reliably force acceptance of enterprise mail outside the Duopoly they have. Zoho is trying their best also in this space - not sure how successful they have been on the trusted email provider and integration front.
      • veqq 10mo ago
        > IMAP + CalDev + CardDev sat on-top of cPanel is getting a bit long in the tooth Why so?
• Izkata 10mo ago
  > And anything done to make that profit will annoy the community. I don't keep close track of this, but as far as I remember they haven't tried donations that go only to Firefox/Thunderbird/etc of the person's choice, instead of Mozilla as a whole. That's what people always claim they want in these threads. I doubt donations would be enough, but I think doing it like that would at least be a step in a direction people like instead of are annoyed by, as long as they don't go nagging like Wikipedia.
  • dblohm7 10mo ago
    They do that for Thunderbird now.
  • e2le 10mo ago
    Thunderbird is entirely funded by donations for some years now and is more than enough. In 2024, Thunderbird received $10.3M (19% increase over the previous year) in donations which was used to employ 43 people. https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-25/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-...
• arijun 10mo ago
  I wouldn’t mind privacy-focused AI tools, either (as long as they don’t cram it in our faces). On its AI search assist, DDG has a button to open up a private session with GPT, which I use on occasion.
• chironjit 10mo ago
  Adding my 2 cents worth to this: why is there not a Mozilla family internet suite of privacy browser, VPN, relay, tracker blocker, etc for one price? I already pay for family plans for other services, so this is a no brainer if it exists. Right now, all of Mozilla's products are not even available in a standardised form in key countries. For example, I pay for Mozilla relay and VPN, and these are not available in the same countries! Mind you, I'm lucky to have actual access to several countries, and so I can work around this. But really, why can't this team just put everything in one place for me? Besides relay and Mozilla VPN, I am also paying for Bit warden password manager. I'm also willing to pay for a privacy-first email(though I haven't done so yet), and please have a family plan that bundles all of this together! If Norton can have an Internet Suite, why can't Mozilla?
• nailer 10mo ago
  Just ask for money. 10 USD a year in the app store. I’d pay it.
• rvba 10mo ago
  Every time Mozilla CEO changes HN gets a set of "its so difficult" propaganda Those CEOs get 6M per year and cannot figure out to focus on core product: Mozilla, keep a war chest, dont spend on politics. Also cut all bullshit projects that are made for self promotion and dont help Mozilla as a browser. When will real extensions return? Never? Now they want to kill adblocks too
• 28304283409234 10mo ago
  I would pay 20 euros per month forever if I could just have firefox, as a product, without all the tracking and tracing and dark patterns. Let me be the customer.
• reactordev 10mo ago
  I’m sorry but Mozilla is out of their league now. Firefox is all they have. They know the web, but that’s where it ends. They haven’t been relevant outside of web standards for more than a decade.
• aaron_m04 10mo ago
  > it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit owned by a non-profit) that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time. Can you please elaborate on this need to make a big profit? Where does the need come from?