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Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

mozillapetition.com

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Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#121

Post by st3fan »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #50
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #27

Not looking to grind an axe but facts matter in this case. Let's look at Mozilla's financial statement for 2007 and 2023 [0][1]: > Expenses 1. Program 'Software Development' 2007: 20.7M | 2023: 260M 2. Management 'General and Administrative' : 2007: 5.1M | 2023: 123M I am purposefully excluding marketing and fundraising costs. Because arguably you can't get away from those expenses. Let's ignore inflation and COL and…

The good news is that development could easily be funded by donations. It's only a few million. Enough to keep a few dozen people employed. The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code, offices they don't need, commercial produ…

> The good news is that development could easily be funded by donations. It's only a few million. Enough to keep a few dozen people employed.

These numbers are highly unrealistic.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#122

Post by dralley »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #111
apeace wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Brave survive financially?

> How does Brave survive financially? Crypto [1]. [1] https://brave.com/wallet/

Also it's just a Chrome / Blink derivative. They don't actually have an independent web stack like Mozilla does. That independent stack requires a lot of developer effort to maintain.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#123

Post by dralley »

pseudalopex wrote: post #84
iteratethis wrote: post #82

This polls suggests that there's some decision holding back Mozilla from ditching Google, and that with enough pressure, they'll finally do it. They're long aware that they should. They made the strategic announcement some 7-8 years back if I remember correctly. Since then they tried to diversify and failed miserably. Sure enough incompetence is involved but we should also consider how very hard it is. Making hundred…

> Since then they tried to diversify and failed miserably. I wish my miserable failures brought in $65 million annually.

>I wish my miserable failures brought in $65 million annually.

HN users complain about that $65 million constantly. Mozilla is stuck in a spot where the same angry nerds that want them to diversify away from Google won't actually let them spin up diverse sources of revenue.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#124

Post by notpushkin »

regularjack wrote: post #112
raincole wrote: post #24

So who are going to fund them? Sorry for being cynical, but this "petition" sounds like telling depressed people to "just be more positive." Sure, just find more revenue streams. Just be sustainable. It's so easy!

The petition should instead be asking Mozilla to allow people to directly donate to Firefox development.

This is a good idea. I don’t think I should change the petition now that it’s signed by a significant number of people, but I agree targeted donations could help somewhat (although mainly I think we need to urge Mozilla to direct its other income into Firefox development, too).

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#125

Post by dralley »

noirscape wrote: post #38
whoopdedo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they're cozying up to ad-tech is because they're trying to ditch Google.

If they're turning to ads to replace Google, then maybe Mozilla deserves to die as an organization. Modern adtech goes entirely against their core values.

The whole point of their foray into adtech was to figure out a privacy-preserving way to do it that doesn't involve wholesale selling people's browsing history.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#126

Post by notpushkin »

krunck wrote: post #91

Can't sign the form as nocodeform.io seems to be having problems.

Sorry for that! There was a nasty bug which I’ve worked around for now (and tomorrow I’ll switch over to a backend I host myself).

Does it work now? If you’re still running into errors, please let me know your name / website and I’ll add you to the list! (or send to mozillapetition@ale.sh)

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#127

Post by [deleted] »

nativeit wrote: post #108
theandrewbailey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code, offices they don't need, commercial products that flop, monetization schemes that fail, etc. Mozilla already solicits donations, but I wonder if people who donate to them know tha…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#128

Post by AlotOfReading »

dralley wrote: post #125
noirscape wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're turning to ads to replace Google, then maybe Mozilla deserves to die as an organization. Modern adtech goes entirely against their core values.

The whole point of their foray into adtech was to figure out a privacy-preserving way to do it that doesn't involve wholesale selling people's browsing history.

How is that fundamentally different than what Google's done with chrome and the topics API? If you don't trust Google's solution, why would you trust Mozilla's?

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#129

Post by qwerpy »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #103
qwerpy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Brave and am satisfied with it. The occasional hassle involved in turning things off when a new unwanted feature shows up or when I have to install it on a new machine is worth it for uBlock Origin and the Chromium performance and compatibility. However the theoretical downside of Brave is that as Google continues changing Chromium's codebase, there's incentive for them to make it harder and harder to maintain…

Brave does not need manifest v2 for it's ad blocker to work. It is not implemented as an extension. It is built into the browser itself.

Right but in my non-scientific test I found uBlock to work better so I don’t use the Brave blocker. My prediction is that Brave will eventually say that it’s too costly to maintain v2 in their fork and that people should just use the Brave blocker.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#130

Post by marginalia_nu »

dismalaf wrote: post #87
_ink_ wrote: post #8

IMHO the EU should step in. Having a browser that is not controlled by big tech should be part of an effort to reduce the dependency on the US.

There's already an independent Europe based browser... Vivaldi.

Vivaldi is just a chromium wrapper as far as I understand.
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