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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

#921
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 am trying to think what other role can use this excuse of factors out of my control and failure to move the top line metric (in fact moving the other direction) but yet rewarded with a 400% increase in pay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#Acquisition_by_Mi...

"As of June 2013, Nokia's mobile phone market share had fallen from 23% to 15%, their smartphone market share gone from 32.6% to 3.3%, and their stock value dropped by 85% since Elop's takeover."

"Controversy arose around Elop receiving a €18.8 million bonus after Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft and he stepped down as the CEO. The controversy was further fueled after it was revealed that his contract had been revised on the same day as the deal was announced."

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

#922

I am convinced that the recent "news" against Mozilla's org are nothing more than a smear campaign from Google to destroy the relatively recent renewed support for Firefox against Chrome. Firefox is an alternative to Chrome, and I don't care how much the CEO is making, as long as I can get rid of Chrome in my computer.

> relatively recent renewed support for Firefox against Chrome.

I have not seen this. Where have you seen this? Firefox has no marketshare and is still losing marketshare.

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

#923
post #15

Shit like this pisses me off. I care for Firefox and the team behind it but how do you get rid of these vampires sucking the company dry? You've got executive pay going up, usage going down. Pivotal leaders being ousted, good workers being released, good features being removed and shit features being added. It's like managers and executives somehow dig their bureaucratic teeth into a successful company/project and th…

Lots of people on this thread are complaining about Mozilla doing too many "unrelated side projects". Honestly as a dev that sounds to me like a culture where engineers are too able to run free. If anything. But of course swiftly kicking people out to staunch the bleeding - as happened recently - can cause a lot of pain and backlash too. New executives usually cause strategy/org thrash which sucks for everyone at the…

This is not a case of gallivanting engineers running free.

All of the moonshot projects are done at the direction of executive leadership in the hopes to open new profit streams.

In fact some of the more technically promising projects (like Servo) had their whole entire team laid off recently to "refocus" on more of these executive-sourced profit grab moonshots

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

#924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New FF also feels significantly slower. Can't really put my finger on anything specific but it is no longer fluid. Even Edge is now chromium based, I think it's a lost battle.

I've noticed the opposite. New FF flies for me on the websites I use, such as HN and Stack Overflow. What sites is it slow for you? Note also that many of the redesigned plugins will be slower than their older, mature counterparts. Give the plugin authors some time to optimize their plugins, and try to cull the amount of plugins you currently use. I've using only Adblock Plus, Tree Style Tab, and Tridactyl.

It's faster to me once loaded. What sucks for me is that I switch between apps constantly. When I reopen firefox, it takes about 20 or 30 seconds for the app to load.

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

#925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. Not anymore! To be consistent with their business screw ups, they addressed this with the latest updates. Now the mobile app a mess like the rest of Mozilla.

I can't even figure out which is the correct one to install. Google's Play store has at least 4 versions: * Firefox Browser * Firefox Focus * Firefox for Android Beta * Firefox Nightly Can anybody tell me what I'm supposed to install?

First one is the main browser.

Second is Firefox where all the privacy settings are on and the browser keeps no history.

Other two are for people looking to test new features.

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

#926
post #851

Market share is down but revenue is generally way up. Not saying it's acceptable just because of this, but that spike in 2017 might have been in response to what they thought was an infinite gravy train. Year Total 2010 $123 million 2011 $164 million 2012 $311 million 2013 $314 million 2014 $420 million 2015 $420 million 2016 $520 million 2017 $562 million 2018 $436 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corpo…

That revenue has nothing to do with business, it's virtually all a payment from google, plus a tiny marginal revenue (<15%) not sourced from google.

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

#927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. Not anymore! To be consistent with their business screw ups, they addressed this with the latest updates. Now the mobile app a mess like the rest of Mozilla.

This, I have been a long time FF on Android user, mostly due to the ability to run add-ons (ublock etc). Latest update complete botched it. Couple of hnags/restarts every day, jittery UI, unintuitive button placement (e.g. new tab)... I want to use Firefox (or any decent browser not based on chrome), for several reasons, but this way it gets harder and harder to justify to myself. What alternatives do we have for non…

It still works fine on iOS, but that's probably because underneath every browser is Safari. People complain about Apple's draconian choices, but the end result is mostly good for consumers. If people don't like it, there's Android and Tizen.

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

#928
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe they shouldn't have let Brendan Eich go in the first place, who seems to be doing quite well with Brave right now. Maybe a good CEO isn't defined just by the salary he or she receives?

Eich didn't lead Mozilla in its prime of browser market share, yet he is often brought up as if it were so.

He was CTO during that entire period, there are product leadership responsibilities associated with that position.

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

#929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see Eich with his own browser vision and executive style over at Brave, where he is unencumbered by legacy bureaucracy or codebases. He wouldn’t have been as free if he were at Mozilla.

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…

>Linus explained, "It's the fairness. Fairness is good, but fairness is usually bad for performance

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

#930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could save a lot of jobs by cutting into the CEOs salary, jobs of people who actually do something productive.

If the numbers in these threads are correct (CEO compensation at $2.5m/year, 250 employees laid off) then the entirety of executive compensation would only cover $10k/year of each laid off worker's compensation.

I rather have 20 good developers and 1 500k CEO than a 2.5m CEO and 0 developers.
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