6 ms·

why dont DuckDuckGo? IMHO it would be a better fit

by _lce0 12y ago

themartorana 12y ago
Money. Google splits advertising revenue with browsers that send users to Google (to some degree). Mozilla made a good deal of money from their relationship with Google, but for several reasons (that include Chrome and no payment for truly anonymous searches) Mozilla decided to jump ship - but they still need that sweet search $. Yahoo! is likely paying well. I can't imagine DDG could come close to competing with the money Yahoo! or Google could pay.
- geoka9 12y ago
  > no payment for truly anonymous searches What's a "truly anonymous search"?
  - skriticos2 12y ago
    You travel to a country on a different continent, buy a new tablet and do no modifications to it. Connect to a local Internet coffee-shop network and do a search. Then you repeat this process in a few other countries (preferably with different native languages) and then aggregate the search results into a common list?
spikels 12y ago
I like DDG too but I bet thay can't afford to pay Mozilla enough to survive. Google was paying them close to $300 million. Hopefully Yahoo can afford something similar or Mozilla will need to cut back on spending. Long-term given the switch to mobile where FireFox is almost nonexistent (and to a lesser degree their decline in desktop market share) they may need to cut back if they can't find new sources of funds.
- dpcan 12y ago
  Serious question, what are they burning $300 mil on? AND, if they are getting $300 mil from Google every year, why on earth is it asking me for donations on my Firefox start tab? To help answer my own question, Googled it. Got this: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/f...
  - Danieru 12y ago
    Developers. Plain and simple Mozilla pays market wages and has lots of developers.
    - dpcan 12y ago
      They'd have to be paying 2000 developers $150,000 per year to hit $300 million. Are there really that many developers working on this?
      - quonn 12y ago
        According to the NYT they have more than 1000 employees. Usually costs are approximately 2*salary, so assuming $100,000 per developer, we get $200 million, which is what they claim as software development costs. So at least the order of magnitude seems right. I guess the salary and costs are actually less, but there are even more employees.
  - frik 12y ago
    In general, I find the Mozilla corp/foundation great. But I dislike what their UI designer did with Firefox and that Aurora theme. Mozilla needs more developers (Rust, Thunderbird would need you), less people that change product designs for the sake of change (Mozilla is not Microsoft).
    - bad_user 12y ago
      Aurora on OS X looks much better for me than the old theme. The only thing that bothers me is that they could have been more space efficient, but otherwise I like it. They also just made slight adjustments to Firefox on Android and I hope they keep them coming because on Android Lollipop Firefox's UI is starting to look out of place.
- tribaal 12y ago
  Yahoo is only in the US. Baidu is now default in China, and Yandex in Russia, likely to have similar deals in place. So instead of one source of income, they now have 3. And I don't see why people switching their search engines back to Google (with all the Europeans whose defaults don't change AFAIK) would not still generate revenue from Google. I think it's a pretty wise move.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

why dont DuckDuckGo? IMHO it would be a better fit

by _lce0 12y ago

why dont DuckDuckGo? IMHO it would be a better fit

Money. Google splits advertising revenue with browsers that send users to Google (to some degree). Mozilla made a good deal of money from their relationship with Google, but for several reasons (that include Chrome and no payment for truly anonymous searches) Mozilla decided to jump ship - but they still need that sweet search $. Yahoo! is likely paying well. I can't imagine DDG could come close to competing with the money Yahoo! or Google could pay.

geoka9 12y ago
> no payment for truly anonymous searches What's a "truly anonymous search"?
- skriticos2 12y ago
  You travel to a country on a different continent, buy a new tablet and do no modifications to it. Connect to a local Internet coffee-shop network and do a search. Then you repeat this process in a few other countries (preferably with different native languages) and then aggregate the search results into a common list?

spikels 12y ago

I like DDG too but I bet thay can't afford to pay Mozilla enough to survive. Google was paying them close to $300 million. Hopefully Yahoo can afford something similar or Mozilla will need to cut back on spending. Long-term given the switch to mobile where FireFox is almost nonexistent (and to a lesser degree their decline in desktop market share) they may need to cut back if they can't find new sources of funds.

dpcan 12y ago
Serious question, what are they burning $300 mil on? AND, if they are getting $300 mil from Google every year, why on earth is it asking me for donations on my Firefox start tab? To help answer my own question, Googled it. Got this: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/f...
- Danieru 12y ago
  Developers. Plain and simple Mozilla pays market wages and has lots of developers.
  - dpcan 12y ago
    They'd have to be paying 2000 developers $150,000 per year to hit $300 million. Are there really that many developers working on this?
    - quonn 12y ago
      According to the NYT they have more than 1000 employees. Usually costs are approximately 2*salary, so assuming $100,000 per developer, we get $200 million, which is what they claim as software development costs. So at least the order of magnitude seems right. I guess the salary and costs are actually less, but there are even more employees.
- frik 12y ago
  In general, I find the Mozilla corp/foundation great. But I dislike what their UI designer did with Firefox and that Aurora theme. Mozilla needs more developers (Rust, Thunderbird would need you), less people that change product designs for the sake of change (Mozilla is not Microsoft).
  - bad_user 12y ago
    Aurora on OS X looks much better for me than the old theme. The only thing that bothers me is that they could have been more space efficient, but otherwise I like it. They also just made slight adjustments to Firefox on Android and I hope they keep them coming because on Android Lollipop Firefox's UI is starting to look out of place.
tribaal 12y ago
Yahoo is only in the US. Baidu is now default in China, and Yandex in Russia, likely to have similar deals in place. So instead of one source of income, they now have 3. And I don't see why people switching their search engines back to Google (with all the Europeans whose defaults don't change AFAIK) would not still generate revenue from Google. I think it's a pretty wise move.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]