Technologies such as browsers are very important, yet it is very hard to come up with a business model for funding their development in a way that does not compromise the users trust or lead to unhealthy monopolies. I think browsers should be viewed as a public service good and be funded (at least in part) by government subsidies to avoid reliance and corruption by the toxic ad-tech industry. I mean, everybody relies on browsers, they have become the de facto app deployment platform, and funding the development of the major 3-4 browsers would not even make a tiny dent in the budgets of the US or EU.
Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
161–170 of 721 posts
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me pay for Firefox, please!
I expect if Mozilla made opt-out a paid feature, then all that would happen is that Firefox would be forked without ads, and the general public use Chrome or Edge anyway.
Nobody asked for or wants that. Just let people donate directly to Firefox development, instead of towards a bloated foundation funding millions in exec salaries and project nobody wants.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#163The version prior to that will be my last firefox.
Such a shame.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google alone in royalties, that is not enough to build a web browser? Empirically, it is not. Even Microsoft gave up that chase. Browsers are staggeringly complex and expensive to build. Which may be an indictment of the Web itself, but in the absence of a simpler alternative (Gemini?), the Web we have is the Web we've got, and browsers have to meet it where it is.
Microsoft gave up developing their own engine , because that aspect doesn't make them money, and their engines were too far behind to bother investing into catching up. They're still making a browser , because it's useful even if it doesn't make them money. Mozilla's engine is modern and they have a clear revenue stream to subsidize its development with their browser revenue. But instead the browser revenue goes to d…
FirefoxOS has been dead for at least seven years. That horse is quite dead.
The VPN product probably pays for itself.
I'm not an insider anymore but aside from FirefoxOS the vast majority of the money has always gone into browser development and I have no reason to believe that has changed.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#165It's a common wish here at HN that one would like to donate directly to Firefox development. Is there a legal reason that Mozilla can't do this considering their setup having the Mozilla Corporation run Firefox development? What else could their reasons be for at least not experimenting with the option?
Because alot of people who otherwise donate to Mozilla would then donate to Firefox directly and that is not what the execs really want to happen.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, I would not mind paying 50 usd a year (it's what I already have paid in donation for mozilla).
1 user at $4.16 per month is not going to help, support and develop a competitive browser or search engine. 1mn users paying $4/m is going to be just over $40mn per year. There's no way any company can compete with MS or Google on that revenue stream. Get investors and they will enforce whatever it takes to build revenue = ads.
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Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#167By the love of all thats holy, I still don't understand how the development of an entire operating system can be reasonably coordinated by a (admittably singlularly competent) sole finnish guy in a bathrobe from home, while a comparably simple webbrowser needs a foundation, a company, a ceo, a code of conduct, all those outreach and social-action programmes etc... Or maybe, is all that cesspool of ineffectiveness and…
Modern webbrowsers are hugely more complicated to implement than a kernel with no user space and very limited driver support (as Linux was back when it was a single person operation). In fact modern webbrowsers are bordering on being an operating system in their own right. They're already a virtual machine, with their own run times, plus one of the most complicated document markup standards known to man (and to make…
This severely underestimates the complexity of the Linux kernel.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#168Firefox is intent on torpedoing that struggling ~15% market share...
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#169I stuck with Firefox when Chrome stormed the market with a faster browser. Mozilla has had a highly respected name. I'm not so convinced about that anymore...
For me the core values of the browser are:
- free software, open source, as in freedom
- independent (mozilla is weak here)
- developer friendly, good debugging/dev interface (they are slowly losing here)
- keeping up with web standards, letting me play with proposed changes
- good performance
- not tied to a advertising business model (they are weakening themselves here)
- privacy defaults
These things are very important to me and I'm not alone. The browser is one of my primary tools that I rely on to work as well as the wider open source ecosystem.
I'd be very much willing to pay a subscription fee if I end up being the actual customer, as a web developer and not a target for other Mozilla products that I don't care about and advertisements that distract me and get in my way of working. I'm already distracted enough to begin with as I'm literally working within the web...
I haven't been a fan of many of the news surrounding Mozilla as of late:
- laying off hundreds of workers
- continuing to increase C-level salaries while revenue goes down
- products I mostly don't care about
- dropping support for innovative browser tech like Servo
- now spamming their users with ads...
What do I do?
Recently there was an announcement of the replay browser (replay.io). I played around with it a bit and I'm very tempted at the moment to try it as my primary working browser. They tick some of the boxes above (developer focused browser, subscription fee => I'm the customer). Not sure about it yet.
Edit: to the paragraph above about considering the replay browser, I just checked their privacy policy and it's a big no-no...
Is there any browser with good developer experience that respects my privacy and freedom?
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#170Before you attack Mozilla….. are you using it as your primary browser? I.e are you supporting them already? Do you believe Mozilla should be able to pay its bills? If you’re not happy with this way of raising revenue, what else do you suggest?
I suggest they act like a non-for-profit and live within their means from the mountain of cash they already have.