4 ms·

Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

41 points by speckx 2mo ago

pessimizer 2mo ago
Yes, I should give up my country and the rule of law to preserve firefox, Google's little bodyguard.
spwa4 2mo ago
TLDR: Mozilla makes money from Google paying it to be the default search engine on Firefox. If that practice is outlawed, Mozilla will not have any income stream even close to replacing that.
- typeofhuman 2mo ago
  Why is this a problem? I don't understand it. Would this apply to services offering to "promote" your post/listing to the top of the page. Like what is the legislation and logic here.
- amelius 2mo ago
  EU should heavily subsidize Mozilla, so that this is not necessary.
  - alexdns 2mo ago
    Why Mozilla in particular ? Or its that just what you like ?
    - ForHackernews 2mo ago
      Gecko is the only semi-mainstream browser engine that isn't controlled by Google.
      - ranger_danger 2mo ago
        Webkit is not controlled by Google and powers Safari as well as some smaller browsers and many other applications.
        ImJamal 2mo ago
        Safari doesn't run on Windows or Linux. WebKit does run outside of Apple's environment but no major browser uses it which means you are left Firefox, a Blink based browser or a WebKit browser that 5 people use.
        ranger_danger 2mo ago
        Safari runs on many, many millions of various Apple devices though, and I think that more than qualifies it as a major/mainstream browser, and the same for Webkit as a mainstream engine... especially considering Safari's market share is ~5x higher than Firefox. You may disagree though, and that's ok.
  - Meneth 2mo ago
    Mozilla wasted most of its money on crappy features no one wanted. They should not be subsidized by anyone.
    - yoavm 2mo ago
      It's not clear what this claim is based on. Most of its money? Firefox is an excellent browser, and probably much less funded than Chrome/Safari.
      - chrismorgan 2mo ago
        Read through https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363424/mozilla-layoffs-quarter-staff-250-people-new-revenue-focus https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363424/mozilla-layoffs-...: six years ago, Mozilla laid off 250 people, about a quarter of their staff, in order to focus on… two specific services that they have since killed (Pocket, Hubs), one service completely unrelated to the browser (VPN, though they have recently decided to set more money on fire by integrating some VPN stuff into Firefox, where it never had any place and is frankly an affront), and new and unspecified “security and privacy” tools (probably things like Relay and Monitor) which are almost certainly completely unrelated to the browser. They are focusing on things that are nothing to do with their core product, and have been acting so for a long time. Mozilla is deeply unhealthy, and has been slowly collapsing for more than a decade at this point. I believe that the significant majority of its staff are doing things of no or negative value to Firefox. I suspect that ten developers not beholden to Mozilla but with a mandate to make a good browser would be better custodians of Firefox. If you raised the budget to forty, I’m all but certain of it.
  - malicka 2mo ago
    They definitely shouldn’t. Mozilla has talented engineers, but it’s been catastrophically mismanaged for almost 20 years at this point. Keep Firefox, but let Mozilla finally die.
    - chrismorgan 2mo ago
      I’m curious where you start it. I was thinking about it a couple of weeks ago and decided “more than a decade” was safe to say, but I was thinking towards fifteen years, not twenty.
  - EbNar 2mo ago
    Nope. Why should my money (taxes) fund a US corporation?
    - amelius 2mo ago
      Why not if they are working in your interest and produce open source code.
      - EbNar 2mo ago
        It's not in my interest. I couldn't care less about Mozilla. It's entirely their fault what is happening to them and to FF.
    - EbNar 2mo ago
      Here come the downvotes. People, donate your own money to Mozilla, if you're so concerned about its fate. Let me decide what to do with my own money.
  - pkaye 2mo ago
    They could fund Lady Bird browser. Less legacy code to worry about. Run it lean like Blender.
    - spwa4 2mo ago
      They won't do anything and everyone knows it. It's not like they are critically dependent on it as a 500 million people government, critically dependent on US software, and US and Chinese hardware, and therefore could find themselves with a problem that would effectively end their ability to work digitally overnight. Oh wait ...
wasmitnetzen 2mo ago
"The mafia is paying for some school kids' lunches, so please don't go after them or the kids will go hungry"
dartharva 2mo ago
It may kill Mozilla, no reason to say it will kill Firefox itself. Perhaps Firefox would flourish a lot more if it is finally released from Mozilla's clutches.
- exitheone 2mo ago
  That's extremely unlikely. Keeping up with modern browser features takes a very large amount of work.
  - vsgherzi 2mo ago
    That’s true but I think most people’s beef is that most of the funding for Mozilla isn’t going to that work. Wethers that’s the case or no I have no idea, but that’s the general sentiment
    - DroneBetter 2mo ago
      the CEO's pay in particular seems to have absorbed a large portion of the savings created by layoffs. cf. Mozilla Firefox Is Dying (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939271 and a list of posts from 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39303736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39303736
  - sfdlkj3jk342a 2mo ago
    I would have agreed with you a couple years ago. But a few motivated volunteer developers and some LLMs could do it (possibly along with some moderate community funding).
- throwatdem12311 2mo ago
  Who would possibly take it over? Redhat maybe? I don’t think Firefox survives as a community based project.
  - theraido 2mo ago
    I would love to see it be funded by the EU, but it shouldn't be owned or developed by the EU.
concinds 2mo ago
Judge Mehta's reasoning is obviously correct. > US federal and state competition authorities recently asked the court of appeals to overturn the part of Mehta’s ruling that permits these payments. You get the "competition authorities" you pay for. Decades of government-bashing, bureaucrat-bashing, sidelining and shit pay give you this level of institutional competence.
- stackskipton 2mo ago
  Strong disagree. These payments are clearly massive tent pole of maintaining the monopoly and I think it was right for competition authorities to appeal them. In fact, IMO, Metha ruling was way to favorable for Google. Basically like, well, they did the crime but it's too much to disrupt so I guess we will nibble at the edges accomplishing little.
  - throwaway27448 2mo ago
    It sounds like you two agree.
  - TheCoelacanth 2mo ago
    Yeah, they should be forced to split Chrome into a separate business and stay out of the browser business permanently. Anything short of that either won't help or will further strengthen their monopoly.
    - pydry 2mo ago
      Chrome isnt viable as a separate business. Its entire function is to be a loss leader / feeder for search. Google should still be split, but along lines which are cohesive, financially viable and would level the playing field for competition, e.g. - google workspaces / gmail / maps / search / chrome / youtube - search index / cloud / datacenters - youtube - android
      - TheCoelacanth 2mo ago
        Browsers would work as a separate business if we stopped the anti-competitive practice of giving them away for free as a way to prevent competition in your other lines of business.
hn_submit 2mo ago
I love Firefox but feel little pity for Mozilla which receives $400+ million a year on search placement in their browser but spends only a tiny fraction on its development. The rest is wasted on greedy management and frivolous projects to give that same management an excuse to give themselves multi-million dollar payouts. Everyone's only in it for the money. There are no good or bad people anymore, only...unfortunates. (that last line I stole from The Equalizer 2).
- SilasX 2mo ago
  They also could have used those payments to build up an endowment that makes them not dependent on others.
  - JoshTriplett 2mo ago
    Agreed. Put half of it in investments every year, and after a few years they'd have had enough to sustain a browser nearly indefinitely. That said, the terms of the contract are not public, and it's possible that it was restricted in a fashion which did not permit such usage.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- dralley 2mo ago
  HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. Rust was a side project, asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM, IIRC LetsEncrypt was a side project (or at least a side project of Mozilla engineers, if not official), significant parts of the initial R&D for AV1 and Opus came out of Mozilla, Servo was largely a side project at the point that it got cancelled (the parts that had been largely successful had already been merged into Firefox, the rest was either nowhere near ready or being completely rewritten or both, and the main application for it at the time was some attempts to make a browser for running web apps in VR headsets at high framerates). Thunderbird was a side project. But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money, like the branded VPN service. Or projects like FirefoxOS, which ultimately failed but still resulted in a lot of improvements to Firefox and web standards. And it wasn't a bad idea either, it just put the cart (mobile OS) before the horse (the web APIs that are needed to make a browser-based mobile OS successful, like access to GPS and IMU hardware, which didn't exist at the time) without the heft to really push through the barriers while competing directly with Apple and Google. It seems like people define "frivolous side projects" as "anything Mozilla did that didn't end up being incredibly successful" and anything that did become incredibly successful gets taken for granted. "What did Rome ever do for us" rewritten as a tech parable. (don't tell me that "we're going to create a whole new language to fix security issues in our web browser" didn't sound a bit frivolous in 2012)
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
sylens 2mo ago
Mozilla should start exploring a subscription business and tout its continued support for the full uBlock Origin among other extensions. I would pay a small amount annually to support its development and I bet I'm not alone.
- ranger_danger 2mo ago
  I think Mozilla asking people for more money is the last thing users want. They have more than enough money to be better, and focus more on development, they just... don't.
QuantumNoodle 2mo ago
Mozilla has been killing itself. $400mil a year and very little to show for it in the browser. I still rep Firefox but ladybird could not come sooner.
throwaway27448 2mo ago
At this point I want Mozilla to fail. They're actively draining resources from people who want to protect the open internet.
- yoavm 2mo ago
  How are they actively draining resources from people who want to protect the open internet?
  - throwaway27448 2mo ago
    ? They make $680M a year and use it to shill for the very company responsible for destroying the open internet. Firefox hasn't been easy to recommend for over a decade now. Where on earth is that money going if not to drain money from projects that actually work for humanity? I'm aware that this very revenue is what Mozilla is complaining about. But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual business model instead of just being a parasite.
    - dralley 2mo ago
      > But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual business model HN would complain (and indeed has complained) every time they try to find a non-Google source of revenue. The advertisement for the Disney movie with a Red Panda got flamed despite being completely innocuous, Pocket and Mozilla VPN and Lockwise got flamed for being "distractions" or whatever, etc. "Focus on the browser", everyone says, except that browsers are the most commoditized market you could possibly immagine, where their competitors (3 of the richest companies in the entire world) literally spend billions of dollars pushing their own browsers as loss-leaders, and also they come pre-installed on billions of devices by default. What kind of "business model" do you expect, exactly? Do like Brave and build a crypto scheme around in-page ad replacement?
      - throwaway27448 2mo ago
        > except that browsers are the most commoditized market you could possibly immagine There's just blink, webkit, and gecko. What are you referring to? > What kind of "business model" do you expect, exactly? If Mozilla pays me $5M I can do better than "beg google", "ads", and "AI". It's like these mea freaks who run the organization haven't bothered to use their own brains for thirty straight years
freedomben 2mo ago
Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in. However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely outcomes in your opinion if Mozilla went down? Do you see a big corp (which it increasingly seems is the only way to keep up with the needed pace for a browser) stepping up?
- irishcoffee 2mo ago
  How is firefox essential to the open web?
  - cgyvbunji 2mo ago
    How is firefox not essential to the open web?
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    If what is left are Chrome forks, the Web is gone, replaced by Chrome OS Platform.
  - JoshTriplett 2mo ago
    We've seen what happens when almost everyone uses one browser engine (Internet Explorer): that vendor gets undue influence over the direction of the web, and their proprietary extensions make it difficult for others to compete. We would end up in the same place if everything is based on Blink/WebKit; arguably we're partway there already. Hopefully Servo will provide a competitive browser engine and full browser in the future as well, with the bonus of being great for embedding. But it's not quite there yet. And other potential competitors have their own problems. Firefox is, for the moment, the most popular and only viable browser not based on Blink/WebKit.
  - fancyfredbot 2mo ago
    Firefox provides one of two browser engines. If there's only one browser engine the Web immediately closes up like a giant impenetrable clam. All of humanity will be left outside, doomed to scrape forlornly on the shell with our nails and dream of the pearls within.
mirmor23 2mo ago
for all the PR that mozilla floats about them being the guardian of free internet, i would wager that, today, most non-tech folks will have hard time configuring firefox properly. it used to be simple back in the days, now they have made it so complex to tie all of them together. also, previously on android, when apps were cleared from desktop, the browser used to quit. now you need to go to menu->quit. otherwise it will keep opening new tabs. a non-tech friend of mine was once complaining about their phone being very slow. i looked at their chrome and -- i kid you not -- it had 800 tabs open. non tech folks are a goldmine for the data stealers, and firefox likely implemented that 'enhancement request' to make it easy for them, not for the user.
- hn_submit 2mo ago
  I've given up on technical solutions to internet spying and tracking. Even with NoScript, uBlock Origin and "Enhanced Protection" in Firefox turned on I always have the feeling Google and Facebook still know everything about me and sell it to the entire internet. I believe we need to get legislation in place to ban the selling of customer information to third-parties.
rustcleaner 2mo ago
[flagged]
ChrisArchitect 2mo ago
Amicus brief? Wasn't that like a year ago? Not their first foray into this case I suppose: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_brief/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_b... (May 2025) https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/defending-an-open-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/defendin... (Sep 2025)
devsda 2mo ago
Chrome should be split, Firefox or its forks (if Mozilla continues to mismanage) should be able to receive funds from Google but Chrome should not be allowed to be paid for Google search engine placement at least for the next 5-6 years. I'm sure many other players will play top dollar to be the default on a browser that virtually commands all the market. That'll let us discover the real price of search engine defaults because the Mozilla payout is partly due to antitrust reasons. In that case, I think we'll also see a visible decrease in "bugs" affecting Firefox on Google's properties.
VCFundedGenYer 2mo ago
Sounds like poor prior proper planning enabling piss poor performance (the 7 Ps) on Mozilla's part. They need to figure out how to break away from Google. It's clearly an abusive relationship. Mozilla also manages itself horribly. They need to do things differently. For one, stop paying the CEO an inappropriate amount of money. Second, stop loading up the browser with garbage features, hyperfocusing on side quests nobody cares about (VPNs, Pocket, AI garbage, etc), and get back to basics. What they were doing in the 2000s was glorious and they need to return to that.
AudreyWilson289 2mo ago
[dead]

41 points by speckx 2mo ago

Yes, I should give up my country and the rule of law to preserve firefox, Google's little bodyguard.

spwa4 2mo ago

TLDR: Mozilla makes money from Google paying it to be the default search engine on Firefox. If that practice is outlawed, Mozilla will not have any income stream even close to replacing that.

typeofhuman 2mo ago
Why is this a problem? I don't understand it. Would this apply to services offering to "promote" your post/listing to the top of the page. Like what is the legislation and logic here.
amelius 2mo ago
EU should heavily subsidize Mozilla, so that this is not necessary.
- alexdns 2mo ago
  Why Mozilla in particular ? Or its that just what you like ?
  - ForHackernews 2mo ago
    Gecko is the only semi-mainstream browser engine that isn't controlled by Google.
    - ranger_danger 2mo ago
      Webkit is not controlled by Google and powers Safari as well as some smaller browsers and many other applications.
      - ImJamal 2mo ago
        Safari doesn't run on Windows or Linux. WebKit does run outside of Apple's environment but no major browser uses it which means you are left Firefox, a Blink based browser or a WebKit browser that 5 people use.
        ranger_danger 2mo ago
        Safari runs on many, many millions of various Apple devices though, and I think that more than qualifies it as a major/mainstream browser, and the same for Webkit as a mainstream engine... especially considering Safari's market share is ~5x higher than Firefox. You may disagree though, and that's ok.
- Meneth 2mo ago
  Mozilla wasted most of its money on crappy features no one wanted. They should not be subsidized by anyone.
  - yoavm 2mo ago
    It's not clear what this claim is based on. Most of its money? Firefox is an excellent browser, and probably much less funded than Chrome/Safari.
    - chrismorgan 2mo ago
      Read through https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363424/mozilla-layoffs-quarter-staff-250-people-new-revenue-focus https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363424/mozilla-layoffs-...: six years ago, Mozilla laid off 250 people, about a quarter of their staff, in order to focus on… two specific services that they have since killed (Pocket, Hubs), one service completely unrelated to the browser (VPN, though they have recently decided to set more money on fire by integrating some VPN stuff into Firefox, where it never had any place and is frankly an affront), and new and unspecified “security and privacy” tools (probably things like Relay and Monitor) which are almost certainly completely unrelated to the browser. They are focusing on things that are nothing to do with their core product, and have been acting so for a long time. Mozilla is deeply unhealthy, and has been slowly collapsing for more than a decade at this point. I believe that the significant majority of its staff are doing things of no or negative value to Firefox. I suspect that ten developers not beholden to Mozilla but with a mandate to make a good browser would be better custodians of Firefox. If you raised the budget to forty, I’m all but certain of it.
- malicka 2mo ago
  They definitely shouldn’t. Mozilla has talented engineers, but it’s been catastrophically mismanaged for almost 20 years at this point. Keep Firefox, but let Mozilla finally die.
  - chrismorgan 2mo ago
    I’m curious where you start it. I was thinking about it a couple of weeks ago and decided “more than a decade” was safe to say, but I was thinking towards fifteen years, not twenty.
- EbNar 2mo ago
  Nope. Why should my money (taxes) fund a US corporation?
  - amelius 2mo ago
    Why not if they are working in your interest and produce open source code.
    - EbNar 2mo ago
      It's not in my interest. I couldn't care less about Mozilla. It's entirely their fault what is happening to them and to FF.
  - EbNar 2mo ago
    Here come the downvotes. People, donate your own money to Mozilla, if you're so concerned about its fate. Let me decide what to do with my own money.
- pkaye 2mo ago
  They could fund Lady Bird browser. Less legacy code to worry about. Run it lean like Blender.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    They won't do anything and everyone knows it. It's not like they are critically dependent on it as a 500 million people government, critically dependent on US software, and US and Chinese hardware, and therefore could find themselves with a problem that would effectively end their ability to work digitally overnight. Oh wait ...

wasmitnetzen 2mo ago

"The mafia is paying for some school kids' lunches, so please don't go after them or the kids will go hungry"

dartharva 2mo ago

It may kill Mozilla, no reason to say it will kill Firefox itself. Perhaps Firefox would flourish a lot more if it is finally released from Mozilla's clutches.

exitheone 2mo ago
That's extremely unlikely. Keeping up with modern browser features takes a very large amount of work.
- vsgherzi 2mo ago
  That’s true but I think most people’s beef is that most of the funding for Mozilla isn’t going to that work. Wethers that’s the case or no I have no idea, but that’s the general sentiment
  - DroneBetter 2mo ago
    the CEO's pay in particular seems to have absorbed a large portion of the savings created by layoffs. cf. Mozilla Firefox Is Dying (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939271 and a list of posts from 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39303736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39303736
- sfdlkj3jk342a 2mo ago
  I would have agreed with you a couple years ago. But a few motivated volunteer developers and some LLMs could do it (possibly along with some moderate community funding).
throwatdem12311 2mo ago
Who would possibly take it over? Redhat maybe? I don’t think Firefox survives as a community based project.
- theraido 2mo ago
  I would love to see it be funded by the EU, but it shouldn't be owned or developed by the EU.

concinds 2mo ago

Judge Mehta's reasoning is obviously correct. > US federal and state competition authorities recently asked the court of appeals to overturn the part of Mehta’s ruling that permits these payments. You get the "competition authorities" you pay for. Decades of government-bashing, bureaucrat-bashing, sidelining and shit pay give you this level of institutional competence.

stackskipton 2mo ago
Strong disagree. These payments are clearly massive tent pole of maintaining the monopoly and I think it was right for competition authorities to appeal them. In fact, IMO, Metha ruling was way to favorable for Google. Basically like, well, they did the crime but it's too much to disrupt so I guess we will nibble at the edges accomplishing little.
- throwaway27448 2mo ago
  It sounds like you two agree.
- TheCoelacanth 2mo ago
  Yeah, they should be forced to split Chrome into a separate business and stay out of the browser business permanently. Anything short of that either won't help or will further strengthen their monopoly.
  - pydry 2mo ago
    Chrome isnt viable as a separate business. Its entire function is to be a loss leader / feeder for search. Google should still be split, but along lines which are cohesive, financially viable and would level the playing field for competition, e.g. - google workspaces / gmail / maps / search / chrome / youtube - search index / cloud / datacenters - youtube - android
    - TheCoelacanth 2mo ago
      Browsers would work as a separate business if we stopped the anti-competitive practice of giving them away for free as a way to prevent competition in your other lines of business.

hn_submit 2mo ago

I love Firefox but feel little pity for Mozilla which receives $400+ million a year on search placement in their browser but spends only a tiny fraction on its development. The rest is wasted on greedy management and frivolous projects to give that same management an excuse to give themselves multi-million dollar payouts. Everyone's only in it for the money. There are no good or bad people anymore, only...unfortunates. (that last line I stole from The Equalizer 2).

SilasX 2mo ago
They also could have used those payments to build up an endowment that makes them not dependent on others.
- JoshTriplett 2mo ago
  Agreed. Put half of it in investments every year, and after a few years they'd have had enough to sustain a browser nearly indefinitely. That said, the terms of the contract are not public, and it's possible that it was restricted in a fashion which did not permit such usage.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
dralley 2mo ago
HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. Rust was a side project, asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM, IIRC LetsEncrypt was a side project (or at least a side project of Mozilla engineers, if not official), significant parts of the initial R&D for AV1 and Opus came out of Mozilla, Servo was largely a side project at the point that it got cancelled (the parts that had been largely successful had already been merged into Firefox, the rest was either nowhere near ready or being completely rewritten or both, and the main application for it at the time was some attempts to make a browser for running web apps in VR headsets at high framerates). Thunderbird was a side project. But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money, like the branded VPN service. Or projects like FirefoxOS, which ultimately failed but still resulted in a lot of improvements to Firefox and web standards. And it wasn't a bad idea either, it just put the cart (mobile OS) before the horse (the web APIs that are needed to make a browser-based mobile OS successful, like access to GPS and IMU hardware, which didn't exist at the time) without the heft to really push through the barriers while competing directly with Apple and Google. It seems like people define "frivolous side projects" as "anything Mozilla did that didn't end up being incredibly successful" and anything that did become incredibly successful gets taken for granted. "What did Rome ever do for us" rewritten as a tech parable. (don't tell me that "we're going to create a whole new language to fix security issues in our web browser" didn't sound a bit frivolous in 2012)

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

sylens 2mo ago

Mozilla should start exploring a subscription business and tout its continued support for the full uBlock Origin among other extensions. I would pay a small amount annually to support its development and I bet I'm not alone.

ranger_danger 2mo ago
I think Mozilla asking people for more money is the last thing users want. They have more than enough money to be better, and focus more on development, they just... don't.

QuantumNoodle 2mo ago

Mozilla has been killing itself. $400mil a year and very little to show for it in the browser. I still rep Firefox but ladybird could not come sooner.

throwaway27448 2mo ago

At this point I want Mozilla to fail. They're actively draining resources from people who want to protect the open internet.

yoavm 2mo ago
How are they actively draining resources from people who want to protect the open internet?
- throwaway27448 2mo ago
  ? They make $680M a year and use it to shill for the very company responsible for destroying the open internet. Firefox hasn't been easy to recommend for over a decade now. Where on earth is that money going if not to drain money from projects that actually work for humanity? I'm aware that this very revenue is what Mozilla is complaining about. But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual business model instead of just being a parasite.
  - dralley 2mo ago
    > But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual business model HN would complain (and indeed has complained) every time they try to find a non-Google source of revenue. The advertisement for the Disney movie with a Red Panda got flamed despite being completely innocuous, Pocket and Mozilla VPN and Lockwise got flamed for being "distractions" or whatever, etc. "Focus on the browser", everyone says, except that browsers are the most commoditized market you could possibly immagine, where their competitors (3 of the richest companies in the entire world) literally spend billions of dollars pushing their own browsers as loss-leaders, and also they come pre-installed on billions of devices by default. What kind of "business model" do you expect, exactly? Do like Brave and build a crypto scheme around in-page ad replacement?
    - throwaway27448 2mo ago
      > except that browsers are the most commoditized market you could possibly immagine There's just blink, webkit, and gecko. What are you referring to? > What kind of "business model" do you expect, exactly? If Mozilla pays me $5M I can do better than "beg google", "ads", and "AI". It's like these mea freaks who run the organization haven't bothered to use their own brains for thirty straight years

freedomben 2mo ago

Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in. However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely outcomes in your opinion if Mozilla went down? Do you see a big corp (which it increasingly seems is the only way to keep up with the needed pace for a browser) stepping up?

irishcoffee 2mo ago
How is firefox essential to the open web?
- cgyvbunji 2mo ago
  How is firefox not essential to the open web?
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  If what is left are Chrome forks, the Web is gone, replaced by Chrome OS Platform.
- JoshTriplett 2mo ago
  We've seen what happens when almost everyone uses one browser engine (Internet Explorer): that vendor gets undue influence over the direction of the web, and their proprietary extensions make it difficult for others to compete. We would end up in the same place if everything is based on Blink/WebKit; arguably we're partway there already. Hopefully Servo will provide a competitive browser engine and full browser in the future as well, with the bonus of being great for embedding. But it's not quite there yet. And other potential competitors have their own problems. Firefox is, for the moment, the most popular and only viable browser not based on Blink/WebKit.
- fancyfredbot 2mo ago
  Firefox provides one of two browser engines. If there's only one browser engine the Web immediately closes up like a giant impenetrable clam. All of humanity will be left outside, doomed to scrape forlornly on the shell with our nails and dream of the pearls within.

mirmor23 2mo ago

for all the PR that mozilla floats about them being the guardian of free internet, i would wager that, today, most non-tech folks will have hard time configuring firefox properly. it used to be simple back in the days, now they have made it so complex to tie all of them together. also, previously on android, when apps were cleared from desktop, the browser used to quit. now you need to go to menu->quit. otherwise it will keep opening new tabs. a non-tech friend of mine was once complaining about their phone being very slow. i looked at their chrome and -- i kid you not -- it had 800 tabs open. non tech folks are a goldmine for the data stealers, and firefox likely implemented that 'enhancement request' to make it easy for them, not for the user.

hn_submit 2mo ago
I've given up on technical solutions to internet spying and tracking. Even with NoScript, uBlock Origin and "Enhanced Protection" in Firefox turned on I always have the feeling Google and Facebook still know everything about me and sell it to the entire internet. I believe we need to get legislation in place to ban the selling of customer information to third-parties.

rustcleaner 2mo ago

[flagged]

ChrisArchitect 2mo ago

Amicus brief? Wasn't that like a year ago? Not their first foray into this case I suppose: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_brief/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_b... (May 2025) https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/defending-an-open-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/defendin... (Sep 2025)

devsda 2mo ago

Chrome should be split, Firefox or its forks (if Mozilla continues to mismanage) should be able to receive funds from Google but Chrome should not be allowed to be paid for Google search engine placement at least for the next 5-6 years. I'm sure many other players will play top dollar to be the default on a browser that virtually commands all the market. That'll let us discover the real price of search engine defaults because the Mozilla payout is partly due to antitrust reasons. In that case, I think we'll also see a visible decrease in "bugs" affecting Firefox on Google's properties.

VCFundedGenYer 2mo ago

Sounds like poor prior proper planning enabling piss poor performance (the 7 Ps) on Mozilla's part. They need to figure out how to break away from Google. It's clearly an abusive relationship. Mozilla also manages itself horribly. They need to do things differently. For one, stop paying the CEO an inappropriate amount of money. Second, stop loading up the browser with garbage features, hyperfocusing on side quests nobody cares about (VPNs, Pocket, AI garbage, etc), and get back to basics. What they were doing in the 2000s was glorious and they need to return to that.

AudreyWilson289 2mo ago

[dead]