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Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

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Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#71

Post by ChuckMcM »

feelin_googley wrote: post #6

"Mozilla ditched Yahoo recently however in favor of Google, two years before the five year contract would be up for renewal. The terms of the new deal with Google have not been revealed yet, and it remains to be seen whether this new deal will give Mozilla's revenue another boost in 2017." Apparently Firefox 57 when it is installed tries to switch the users default search engine to Google. Whether it asks for user pe…

Maybe? It certainly continues to raise the cost to Google for the search traffic provided by Firefox. When Firefox switched to Firefox it boosted Yahoo!'s organic share of search [1], which if it held up at the 2% speculated would represent about (16.8B * 2%) 336M searches in Feb '17 [2] attributable to the Mozilla deal. One would need to work backward from the revenue per thousand (RPM) to see what sort of ROI that gave Yahoo!.

The story at the time was that Google walked away from the deal when Mozilla wanted more than they thought their traffic was worth, and now Google is back 2 years before the contract expires makes me wonder if Mozilla was more accurate in the relative value of their ability to generate search traffic. So now I'm curious to see how much Google's traffic acquisition costs have gone up (TAC) with this switch.

[1] https://www.digitalreachagency.com/blog/firefox-deal-boosts-...

[2] https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/comScore-Releases...

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#72

Post by jcranmer »

bigbugbag wrote: post #45
staktrace wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, if that's the case, then it's a bug. If you could file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org it would be much appreciated. Even though it already happened we can try and ensure it doesn't happen again.

What do you mean much appreciated ? My experience with bugzilla is that it is a place where users are ignored and told they are not part of a large enough portion of the user base to be significant for using linux, or for using alsa or for needing an option to keep the previous interface. I do not dare going close to mozilla's bugzilla, it has been a waste of my time almost every time and taking abuse and frustration…

Judging from your comment, it sounds like the only bugs you filed are "YOU CHANGED THIS AND BROKE ME CHANGE THIS BACK NOW" kind of bugs, and probably for things that were consciously and intentionally done. That's not going to go anywhere because, quite frankly, they're not bugs, and most of the bug filers/commenters are unwilling to do anything constructive, like offer to maintain something.

My experience has been, rather, that Mozilla has had one of the most fantastically responsive bug filing systems. Actually getting bugs fixed in a timely manner is a different question, but that's independent of bug tracking systems.

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#73

Post by groby_b »

staunch wrote: post #23

The Mozilla Treasurer and Chair are still taking $1M each, right? Why is this scandal going unreported? Are there really no experienced managers willing to run this potentially great organization for $300k/year? Why would we want people who are willing to take so much money from an open source project? Why are there 1200 people at Mozilla and so little product to show? Why do they constantly spend all of their revenu…

If you have the skill required to manage a 1000+ people org, you could easily make a lot more than $1M. Blame the ridiculous salaries in the Bay Area.

And no, there are no experienced managers who want to work in the Bay Area for $300K. You can fairly easily make more than double that if you're able to run a 50-person group.

As for "spend all their revenue", I suggest actually reading the financial statement: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Au...

"A competent and uncorrupt Mozilla could have built a Google Search competitor by now"

That... is funny. From launch to two years in (that's all I can find), Bing cost $5.5B[1] - or 11 years of Mozilla's revenue.

[1] https://www.geek.com/news/bing-has-cost-microsoft-5-5-billio...

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#74

Post by bigbugbag »

briffle wrote: post #69
bigbugbag wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice logic but somehow it fails short of explaining why they are paying much more, from several tens of millions to several hundreds of millions, for a service that has lost a lot of steam, from 33% of market share at peak to 6% at the moment. How could that be a sound business transaction ? Then again your saying "one of your customers" as if google was not over 85% of mozilla revenue and had not been the case since…

> as if google was not over 85% of mozilla revenue and had not been the case since the beginning. This is not true, Yahoo has been their partner the last few years.

You're missing part of the picture here.

Yahoo has been the default engine in firefox... for the US market. it was still google everywhere else in the world except Russia where they went with yandex.

Mozilla got a lot of flak in Europe for not replacing google in the part of the world that mattered the most , where they have the most market share and where there is a good local alternative that actually respect privacy and was willing to do business with them (qwant).

And the reason for the yahoo deal is that yahoo was trying to sell and needed this firefox deal to better negotiate their own sale at a time when mozilla was actively trying to move away from google (well maybe not that actively).

To my knowledge there was not a time when google was not default search engine in firefox at all.

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#75

Post by Feniks »

leeoniya wrote: post #43
CaptSpify wrote: post #21

I tend to voice a lot of upset opinions about Mozilla, but I am still grateful for the work they do. It's nice to see that they have such a big resource pool to work with, as they are one of the few groups that I think genuinely cares for it's users. It's also nice to be able to show other groups: Yes, you can be a "do good" company, and make a good living.

> It's also nice to be able to show other groups: Yes, you can be a "do good" company, and make a good living. ...so long as a "don't be evil" mega-corp continues paying for it

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if Google sees Mozilla as a PR tool and a lightning rod.

Still whatever: I think we can all agree that the world is better with an alternative to Chrome.

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#76

Post by bigbugbag »

jcranmer wrote: post #72
bigbugbag wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean much appreciated ? My experience with bugzilla is that it is a place where users are ignored and told they are not part of a large enough portion of the user base to be significant for using linux, or for using alsa or for needing an option to keep the previous interface. I do not dare going close to mozilla's bugzilla, it has been a waste of my time almost every time and taking abuse and frustration…

Judging from your comment, it sounds like the only bugs you filed are "YOU CHANGED THIS AND BROKE ME CHANGE THIS BACK NOW" kind of bugs, and probably for things that were consciously and intentionally done. That's not going to go anywhere because, quite frankly, they're not bugs, and most of the bug filers/commenters are unwilling to do anything constructive, like offer to maintain something. My experience has been,…

Well maybe you should not judge from comments then.

Reporting bugs and HN discussion is obviously not the same, at all. I know how to make bug reports and have not had bad experience like those on mozilla's bugzilla anywhere else, well maybe on gnome bugzilla and occasionally here and there because over 20 years of reporting bugs you are deemed to have the occasional bad experience.

I'm not saying your experience was bad or even close mine, I'm only talking for myself here. Maybe I have been impacted with some of the most controversial bugs and you've not, maybe I'm actually more in a niche segment of the user base than you are.

Anyways thanks for judging and misjudging my person based on assumption, it always nice to be targeted by passive aggressive online message from a random stranger.

The fun part in your comment is that constructive minded people do not expect or ask of bug reporters to offer to maintain something for they understand that reporting bugs is actually very constructive in itself, a helpful and much needed activity. Instead of antagonizing bug reporters try working with them, as "we're both in this working together to improve something for everyone". Assume good faith instead of malice and to understand that this an actual person reporting the bug and cut the patronizing, it will help. If you do not feel capable of doing that, just say nothing it will be more constructive.

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#78

Post by thomastjeffery »

khedoros1 wrote: post #24
neonhomer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to ask the same thing. But also why are people still using Google? I've been using DuckDuckGo for years and only use Google when I'm forced to (like in Chrome on iOS).

Because fairly frequently, I'll search for something on DDG, not find what I was expecting, and try on Google as a backup. And because in many people's minds, Google is search.

Put a !g in the front of your search.

DuckDuckGo is awesome.

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#79

Post by bigbugbag »

bigleagueposter wrote: post #44
bigbugbag wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are deeply mistaken if you really think those are enemies. First apple is a hardware vendor of overpriced gadgets, totally unrelated to google market which is an advertising network. Second the ship has long sailed on the feud between Google and Facebook, they now have ceased fighting and are each back on focusing on their own thing. Do you have a recent example of google fighting microsoft ? heck even apple was…

Google is moving stuff from the Microsoft controlled desktop to the browser.

What are you referring to ?

google docs happened a while ago and it's been some time since microsoft has started moving its office suite to the cloud with office365.

Actually microsoft has been moving from the desktop to cloud for a few years now.

Re: Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016

#80

Post by rahimnathwani »

slededit wrote: post #12
mintplant wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Links to the audited financial statements are available at the bottom of https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/

I think the point is they should have shown a cash flow statement.

You don't need a cash flow statement to show revenue. And if the cash flow statement is prepared using the indirect method (start with net profit, and adjust non-cash items) it may not even show revenue at all.
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