Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up • Hacker News Board

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

#771

Post by ufmace » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #671

behnamoh wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia? He did an awesome job in reducing Nokia's marketshare (and hence, its market capital) to make the company ready to be acquired by his mother company, Microsoft, at a very low price (cheaper than just one app—WhatsApp which was sold to Facebook). Or remember Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer? She also did a great job at making the company ready to be sold out to Verizon at low price.…

Oh no. While I am absolutely pissed ( to say the least ) that Nokia was sold to Microsoft and Yahoo couldn't turn its ship around. I dont think both CEO were doing in their own interest or another companies interest. Nokia refused to use Android. ( Which was what really killed Nokia ) That was only two possible outcome, either go full force with Symbian or partner with Microsoft. I mean there are so many wrong with N…

Absolutely this. I was a Nokia/Symbian fan back when it actually was the industry best. The real problem was that iPhone and Android came around and started executing like 100x faster than Symbian ever did. Nokia was too used to working with software on a Symbian timeline, and it took them too long to see that their only options were to learn to execute on Symbian improvements at that speed (probably not practical), give up Symbian and adopt Android (becoming essentially a vassal of Google), or get buried.

They dawdled and ignored the problem for too long, and were left with selling to Microsoft and adopting their mobile OS as the only semi-plausible way to maintain a strong market position. Both Nokia and Microsoft's efforts ended up being too little, too late.

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

#772

Post by gpsx » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #698

This article has many problems. One of the main problems is that the immediate reason for Firefox losing market share is totally outside the control of the CEO or anyone else at Mozilla: Google pouring billions into Chrome, both actual billions of dollars and similar resources "in kind", like free advertising on the world's most popular Web properties (i.e. Google's). The best CEO in the world can't magically come up…

I think Mozilla should have worked on a cloud application suite, like Google and Microsoft have. And possibly they could have done a better job extending it into an ecosystem for other application providers. This is very natural for the company that invented javascript and is a leading contributor to web assembly. It also would have had excellent revenue potential.

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

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Post by buzzert » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

lightgreen wrote: post #148

ekianjo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Mitchell Baker’s link on that page is now a broken link?

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

#774

Post by cs702 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #757

cs702 wrote: post #623

Judging by the numerous projects Mozilla has launched and then abandoned in recent years, it seems the people running it are searching for new hit products, instead of investing for the long term on development of services and infrastructure that will benefit humankind for years and decades to come. Quoting from the OP: "In recent years Mozilla has created: * a mobile app for making websites * a federated identity sy…

On the internet, "recent" is not an very useful word. Even 5 years ago is literally a different era of the web already, so holding someone to account for shuttering things that for all the world seemed a great idea 5 years ago after only a few years because the web itself stopped being interested in those things is kind of missing the point. All those things are attempts at doing exactly what you're accusing them of…

Please don't attack a straw-man. I agree with you: they are "searching for new hit products" -- that's in fact what I wrote above. But that's what profit-seeking businesses do. Is Mozilla a profit-seeking business, or is it a non-profit, or is it neither, or is it both? Is Mozilla truly trying to "put people before profit," as its website currently claims?[a] The answer today, I think, is no. "Sustainability" (i.e., profit under a different guise) is the overriding goal.

[a] https://web.archive.org/web/20200916125550/https://www.mozil...

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

#775

Post by intherdfield » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: 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…

This narrative ignores the fact that many of the executives have been replaced whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

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

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Post by runarberg » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #748

latexmex wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Brendan Eich's homophobia All we know is that Eich supported one political movement with money. Show me where he has come put publicly as fearing homosexuals. We are in a dangerous world of viewpoint discrimination. A belief on a particular moral or political issue does not represent the totality of an individual. We all disagree on things; some of us on things we consider core unalienable rights and values. But at…

How is supporting anti-gay movements not an act of homophobia?

I guess you are arguing semantics here, that you have to be literally afraid of homosexuals to be considered a homophobe. Well—though technically correct—this is not how most people use this word, and you know it. In current speech homophobe is anybody that acts maliciously against an LGBTQ+ person or the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.

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

#777

Post by late2part » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #358

dotancohen wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we have the person who arguably most understands the domain of web browsers, online privacy, and all the legal and ethical aspect thereof, working on another Chromium-based browser. I do not need to elaborate on why a diverse browser ecosystem is important, there are enough threads on that already. Mozilla had this jewel, exactly what it needed to succeed and make the web a better place. He was at…

Sorry, but you're not going to paint Eich as a victim over what is a totally self inflicted wound. And there is no argument from utility to be made here either along the lines of 'oh Eich may be a bigot, but look at that nice browser he gave us'. He has to work with the people around him and that scenario would have likely not panned out. Instead, a large chunk of Mozilla/FireFox' employees may have walked if he had…

I've often been troubled at the level of commensurate activism on polygamist rights. What is Mitchell Baker doing to help them?

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

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Post by importantbrian » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

jeltz wrote: post #513

culturestate wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a problem that she is both on the board and CEO, which effectively makes her impossible to hold to account Is this really a problem? The CEO is often a director, and even as chairwoman I doubt anything in the bylaws prevents the board at large from removing her if they wanted to. Instead, it seems like the board itself is the issue, since they allowed Mozilla to stray so far from its core mission.

Is that common in the US? Because here in Sweden it is regarded as bad practice for medium sized companies and up. The CEO is almost never part of the board here except for in tiny companies.

It's so common here that I never even considered the possibility of having a CEO who wasn't also a member of the board. It's pretty common for them to also be chairman of the board. Especially for founder CEOs.

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

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Post by numpad0 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #100

> 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.

This is my kneejerk but why do a CEO ever has to be replaced by an engineer?

I mean, when company fails, isn’t the cause that the corporate failed to lead the company, right? They sucked at their job, not at someone else’s job.

Letting managers pretend their lack of some stinky nerdy ability outside of their job description was the direct cause of their failure don’t sound right to me.

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

#780

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

sam_goody wrote: post #564

They had a GREAT CEO. Brendan Eich. He not only was heavily involved with destroying IE's monopoly, he was able to start Brave in a punishing market (competing against Google, Apple, and his own FF) and made it a contender. But, he wasn't woke enough. And for that, everyone will now pay dearly. I daresay, learning that someone else is entitled to a competing view is difficult. Allowing others to have a view other tha…

He didn't just make a small donation once. He made a donation to a political campaign that called thousands of people sexual predators in campaign ads because it didn't actually have anything truthful to say in opposition to gay marriage. It was one of the most shameful and disgusting political campaigns in US history. And Eich made his donation after they started running those ads, so he was aware of how his money was going to be used.

And that was why it was an issue that he made the donation. Not because he opposed gay marriage (many people did and still do), but because he supported the wholesale slander of thousands of people.

If the Prop 8 campaign had been run differently, his support would not have been an issue.