341–350 of 1001 posts
> Economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue This is baffling. How? You make a web technology and everyone is stuck at home.
People aren't clicking on ads to buy things because they've all been laid off. Economies are circular.
While I really hate to suggest this, the best way to make money might be to sell space on newly opened tabs (with an option to turn off ads for something reasonable like USD$24.95 per year).
[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…
I may be rapidly downvoted but what strikes me as an outsider (reading most of the comments in this thread) is the collective psyche in the US is viscerally against any entity rising to the top that does not have profit as its sole goal. What they want is for Mozilla to solely focus on Firefox, on the technicalities, and shut up about everything else. And yet no one will actually pay for it as a product. The tragedy…
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Notes:
1. "Pocket: It gets worse the more you use it" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... and "Pocket: The worsening continues" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/688oc9/pocket_... There's been some progress and backsliding, most of the complaints still apply.
I understood how bad Mozilla, for lack of a better term 'sucked' at making money when I saw how the small team of KaiOS picked up the remains of Firefox OS and not only turned it to be a viable business but did so in the ruthless, hyper-competitive market of Smartphone OS ecosystem where even Microsoft had failed.
IMO Mozilla should have gone full throttle on Thunderbird Enterprise with support structure, Something for Microsoft Teams equivalent and finally embracing DDG with open hands.
4.5 months severance for the laid off employees. Doesn't say anything about any cuts to executive compensation however. https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-...
Lay off 25% of your company? Enjoy your 50% pay cut.
Have to lay off 50%? Enjoy working unpaid for a year while you rebuild.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A common refrain, but is anything but obvious. Focusing on the browser could be a losing strategy. I'd argue it probably is. The trajectory is terrible: the tech is being commoditized (WebKit, Chromium) and the market share picture is bleak. The opportunity cost is huge: maintaining a web engine, one which basically just tries to keep up with the others put out by Google et al, takes armies of people that could perha…
Counterpoint: Apple when Jobs came back. Sometimes the answer to a company which is trying too many things at random is to drastically reduce the dispersion of effort, and focus ruthlessly. It's very hard to do psychologically, though. IMO Mozilla would probably be better served, business-wise, as being "the customizable Chrome". It would be a much smaller business (i.e. less IP under development), but it could be pr…
Amen. And not send each and every keystroke to Google.
On the other, I'm excited about the products that may end up coming out of this. I'm already paying for the Mozilla VPN + Browser Extension (I think that totals something like $8/mo), plus another few dollars for additional storage on my personal Google account at the moment. I would be immensely enthusiastic about putting that (and more) money towards a privacy-respecting Mozilla-hosted email/calendar/file storage system instead.
That obviously not an insignificant engineering challenge, but there's a bunch of open-source work in that area already that could probably be used as a template. I only hope that whatever products they put out, they spend some time making sure they're not damaging the enormous amount of goodwill they've built up in the community about privacy and Internet ethics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is a losing strategy because this is a rearguard action. There are only losing strategies, nothing will turn Mozilla around to be some kind of powerhouse besides what it already is. And that's fine . It doesn't need to be the next singing, dancing platform with bells and whistles. It's a tool. It should do one thing and do that one thing well. FireFox is not a failing product, it is the only product they have…
I loved Firefox Send and really hope they can find a way to address the malware problem [1]. It was the only large file sharing service I fully trusted both because of the encrypted zero-knowledge aspect of the system and the organization behind it; I used it several times a month personally and told others about it. To me it was a "win" under the Mozilla/FF brand. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-suspends-f…