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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#71

Post by hu3 »

Spivak wrote: post #57
shock wrote: post #30

> Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce — approximately 250 people of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have made outstanding contributions to who we are today. To each of them, I extend my heartfelt thanks and deepest regrets that we have come to this point. This is a humbling recognition of the realities we face, and what is needed to overcome them. What a load of…

You do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. She gets paid about $1m/yr which includes performance incentives. So if she just gave up her whole salary she would only have to fire 96% of the people let go today. C suite members raking in high salaries is the tiniest most insignificant issue when it comes to a large orgs finances. In most large orgs if C sites…

4% might be just a number to you but to those people it would mean the world.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#72

Post by pricecomstock »

fsflover wrote: post #4
kvark wrote: post #2

That's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.

Also, please make a monthly donation to Mozilla if you can. You will contribute to saving the world. https://donate.mozilla.org/

Do this! I procrastinated on switching from Chrome to Firefox for several months because I wasn't sure how much time and effort it would take. I set up a monthly donation to Mozilla during this time because it was easy and supported browser diversity.

When I did finally switch, it turned out to be pretty easy and fast to transfer my bookmarks and passwords to Firefox, and there are some features like the built-in containers and add-ons like Tree Style Tab [0] that I find pretty valuable.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#73

Post by macspoofing »

ForHackernews wrote: post #31

ITT: "I'm fine with Chrome controlling the whole internet, as long as I never again have to read about Mozilla trying to fight racism." The irony of these folks whining about Mozilla's priorities...

Their priorities are out of wack. Firefox is their golden goose. It's the thing that gives them clout and revenue. Their job is to increase adoption because increased adoption means more clout and more revenue. You do that by constantly reinvesting in the platform and making it your core singular focus, especially performance and tooling (because developers are a big driver for browser adoption). Where is the Firefox version CEF? Where is a competitive option to v8/node.js? Why is MS Edge (and every other independent browser) based on CEF and not Firefox? Why has Firefox performance lagged behind Chrome for years now?

Since they ousted Eich (and maybe even before that), they've been focusing on everything except Firefox, and as a result they've steadily lost market-share. They screwed up.

Case in point:

>New focus on product. Mozilla must be a world-class, modern, multi-product internet organization.

What do you mean 'multi-product internet organization'? You have Firefox, and ... what else? Nothing. Firefox is the only thing that keeps them relevant and provides employment for their people. But let's instead focus on everything else?

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#74

Post by dblohm7 »

fsflover wrote: post #4
kvark wrote: post #2

That's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.

Also, please make a monthly donation to Mozilla if you can. You will contribute to saving the world. https://donate.mozilla.org/

While donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox.

If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium.

[1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#75

Post by kgraves »

Did anyone find anything in this post about Mozilla refusing to take money from Google?

I can’t find it.

Mozilla, stop taking money from Google and letting them be the default search engine!

Please don’t enable and legitimise surveillance capitalism.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#76

Post by Nightshaxx »

While I definitely think Mozilla is great for the internet, their main product is terrible from a business perspective. Trying to monitize a piece of free software that you are selling on this privacy benifits is a loosing battle. The reason free software is free is _because_ it can sell more valuable ads by using your data. Products that you pay directly for don't need to worry about selling ads so they don't have to do tracking and such.

A paid browser at this point is realistically impossible to sell at any sort of scale because chrome is free. IMO Firefox Mozilla needs to make a new product that is paid. Someone on HN suggested email and/or other services that compete with Google's user product suite? At that point you are selling server space so its easier to get people to pay for it.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#77

Post by ecmascript »

calcifer wrote: post #45
user1980 wrote: post #21

"New focus on economics": It was bad enough seeing terrible clickbait in the "Recommended by Pocket" section displayed on every new tab. Now I have to go into settings to opt-out of Sponsored Stories so I don't have to see ads for Honey. All to fund the so-called "internet activist movement"? I just want a web browser, not an ideology.

> I just want a web browser Excellent! How much are you planning on contributing?

Well, there is no way to contribute economically since donations go pretty much to everything except the browser it seems like.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#78

Post by shock »

fsflover wrote: post #4
kvark wrote: post #2

That's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.

Also, please make a monthly donation to Mozilla if you can. You will contribute to saving the world. https://donate.mozilla.org/

I wonder how many more people would donate if they knew the donation would be spent on making Firefox better and not on political activism.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#79

Post by dblohm7 »

tmaly wrote: post #41
kvark wrote: post #2

That's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.

I donate $20 a year to Mozilla. I like the product. I hope they will keep focus making great browser and not get distracted with other things.

While donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox.

If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium.

[1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#80

Post by dblohm7 »

marmshallow wrote: post #55

If this makes you sad or pissed off, the best thing you can do is donate. I just donated for $15 for the first time. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

While donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox.

If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium.

[1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

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