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Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

calpaterson.com

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Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#141
post #58
post #13

There's a quote from the CEO saying that they looked at the market and felt like they were being underpaid. And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked. Their executives are clearly failures. But with such high pay, they're cashing out. Buying themsel…

The solution to being underpaid is to find a new job. Not to suck the organization dry...

Sucking the organization dry is a perfectly valid solution for those who have the power to do so.

It's bad for the organization, but the leadership doesn't really care about that.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#142
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mozilla execs could all make more money at FAANG companies just down the road from Mozilla HQ. If they left, it would probably be pretty hard to replace them with anyone capable of saving Firefox who would settle for less. The same is true for most of the engineers at Mozilla. They could go to FAANGs and increase their compensation quite a bit. So while I agree that the leadership has been bad, executive pay was…

> The Mozilla execs could all make more money at FAANG companies just down the road from Mozilla HQ. I mean, really? After their record of poor performance at Mozilla? > Hiring leaders who could make better decisions certainly won't be any cheaper. It's been blindly obvious for years what they should do, but let's state it again: (1) Build up a fund instead of throwing away the money, so they can be financially indep…

It’s that many executives do? Leave on a golden parachute to go destroy another company?

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox OS never made sense unless Mozilla was prepared to pay the backroom bribes and incentives to get it preinstalled on hundreds of millions of phones. And they weren't.

Or maybe they where just too early. Look at the Chinese Manufacturers having trouble to deploy Android due to tech embargos. If those could just install a free os made by an indendent Organisation...

Or too late.

It would not help to overcome embargoes if said independent organization is established in California.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#144

From my perspective - first and foremost question is - why the usage is going down so much? What makes people pick Chrome?

For people who don't particularly care about privacy, Firefox has nothing to offer and has a worse overall experience to Chrome.

I made the switch from Chrome to Firefox a year ago when for whatever reason Chrome started stalling. A year in, Containers all the rage, I still hate Firefox because its autocomplete sucks and if I type a/b in the search bar it tries to load http://a/b, what kind of logic is that? This isn't 1995. They literally fixed only this 2 versions ago.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox OS never made sense unless Mozilla was prepared to pay the backroom bribes and incentives to get it preinstalled on hundreds of millions of phones. And they weren't.

Or maybe they where just too early. Look at the Chinese Manufacturers having trouble to deploy Android due to tech embargos. If those could just install a free os made by an indendent Organisation...

I do not imagine that would help improve Mozilla’s image.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#146

I really want Mozilla to succeed. But I just can't bring myself to use Firefox as a daily driver. Just open a few tabs on a top of the line macbook, and a twitch stream and things get very laggy. I've seen numerous people craving for better container support, which is definitely a killer feature for people going forward towards a more private web. Why isn't Mozilla more actively developing this? Developers were the p…

I'm using Firefox on Linux as a daily driver and it's very snappy even with very many tabs opened, playing videos, multiple complex chat UIs and so on. Never really cared to use Chrome even when it was all hyped in the past and Firefox was indeed slower. Today it's a non issue, at least on Linux.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure The Guardian is the best example of economic success.

I think you need to qualify that statement

Their news operations are subsidised to the tune of ~£30m/yr by the charitable trust that owns them. Not in and of itself problematic, but accumulating a sizeable enough endowment to sufficiently fund operations isn't an option for most orgs.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/07/guardian-broke...

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#148

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. That must be a real comfort to all the people they laid off. This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.

Does Mozilla have a board? Who gets to fire the CEO in this organization?

Seems like Mitchell is both CEO and board member https://wiki.mozilla.org/Board is that even legal?

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#149

Why exactly is the revenue stream from Google a problem (everyone seems focused on that)? I don't see Google ending the partnership if just to protect itself from anti-trust action. I suspect that Mozilla could just consider that near guaranteed income while they worked on other things as long as the browser stayed alive.

People don’t particularly like a privacy-focused company making most of its money from the support of a privacy-invasive giant. Not only is it ironic, it’s always subject to terms and such that may limit Mozilla.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#150
post #119

This: "Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, [..]. Payments to Baker have more than doubled in the last five years." and this at the same time: "Mozilla recently announced that they would be dismissing 250 people." It's shameful. Specially for a "non profit".

That argument is senseless: the organization is nonprofit, the workers are definitely not, nor should they be.

Not sure what you are trying to say here.

We have an organization where, at the same time they don't have revenue enough for keeping its workers, the decision makers increase their salary. Never mind the legal structure of the organization, that doesn't look to me very ethical.

At the same time, non-profits are suppose to have the mission of improving the world. I understand that the janitor doesn't care about the mission and just want to be payed, but the management should care, at least, about the optics. I, for sure, would not donate (1) to a non-profit if I think that my money is going to be used for buying Ferrari or houses in the Hamptons.

(1) - https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

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