Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

401–410 of 1001 posts

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

#401

They were doing fine until Chrome ate up all the market share. Google shouldn't have been allowed to do that. It's very anti-competitive for them to have a browser that defaults to Google search and disables plugins that support adblocking. Google is destroying Mozilla. Their monopoly is making the web worse.

> They were doing fine until Chrome ate up all the market share.

Like, 10+ years ago...?

> Google is destroying Mozilla. Their monopoly is making the web worse.

What in the heck are you talking about. Google doesn't directly make money from Chrome - it's free!

In fact, Mozilla's bills are being paid in large by Google paying for them to use google.com as the default browser.

Mozilla has always struggled to make money. This is not some new phenomenon with the company, and certainly is not because of Google making a good browser.

> Google shouldn't have been allowed to do that. It's very anti-competitive for them to have a browser that defaults to Google search and disables plugins that support adblocking.

I mean... what? They shouldn't have been allowed to do that... because why? Because a browser defaults to a specific search engine?

C'mon now. Google built a great browser that users loved, and they flocked to it. It was faster than all the competitors at the time - including firefox - and had much better word-of-mouth traction. Firefox always had a "techie expert" connotation back in the day, and it bit them in the butt when it came to the average joe deciding which browser to use.

End of story.

There's no sinister anti-competition plot here. For heaven's sake, Google pays loads of Mozilla's bills, and collaborates with them on loooooads of projects!

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

#402
post #392

I wonder if rustc developpers have been fired

When I worked there, there were basically 4 people working on Rust. And these people were making sure Rust would not need Mozilla to survive. Very smart people. Rust will be fine.

Also, Rust now has open source autonomy/community. Mozilla could go away tomorrow and it would survive. There are some pretty big names invested and interested in it.

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

#404
post #312

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).

They already do this. The default new tab stuff you see is sponsored. Just not overly so..

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

#406
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked there, there were basically 4 people working on Rust. And these people were making sure Rust would not need Mozilla to survive. Very smart people. Rust will be fine.

Also, Rust now has open source autonomy/community. Mozilla could go away tomorrow and it would survive. There are some pretty big names invested and interested in it.

Exactly

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

#407

The cost of building and maintaining a competitive browser is huge and it's hard for Mozilla/Firefox to compete with Google/Chrome. Firefox saw its monthly active users go down by ~14% in the last 8 months [1]. I think Mozilla should consider stopping Firefox development and fork Chromium to focus on accessibility and privacy (both in and out of the browser). It's far from ideal--there'll only be one popular browser…

That's 20 months, not 8.

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. KaiOS is in the ultra-low-end smartphone/feature-phone market that Microsoft/Google/Apple don't care a…

>Like Firefox OS before it, actual KaiOS devices were not well-received, because of poor performance and lack of apps. As of Q1 2018, 23 million KaiOS devices were shipped. It stood second in terms of market share in India due to JioPhone(even ahead of iOS). It seems future Jio Phones would be Android, especially considering Google is now invested in Jio(It's an investor in KaiOS as well). Mozilla had recently signed…

> As of Q1 2018, 23 million KaiOS devices were shipped.

Like I said, remarkable.

> KaiOS team saw where Firefox OS would fit well and they brought it to fruition; Something I feel Mozilla could have pulled off too.

You mean they could've pulled off getting investor money to develop a bad product into an even worse product and unload it on markets in the developing world, where people are presumably used to bad products?

I don't think that's in their "mission statement".

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sometimes it feels like there are people out there who want Mozilla to fail and gleefully seek ways to make that happen (even by doing something as simple as amplifying misinformation), even though it is not really in their interests to do so.

Who are these people who want Mozilla to fail?
Post reply on HN