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Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

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

#291
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know your intention is probably well placed but we do though need to factor in revenues: Year Revenue ---- ------- 2007 $75M 2023 $653M I bring this up because G&A of big companies (in general) always outpaces R&D once they hit scale ... and in an ideal situation - your revenues should outpace R&D expense because you're getting economies of scale (which further dilutes the R&D to Other Business Function comparison)…

2023 $653M That's almost all Google money. CEO's largest accomplishment since 2007 was to put Mozilla on the brink of shutting down anytime Google's money stops flowing in.

FWIW, in 2022 it was about 86.00% of their revenue while in 2023 it was 75.79%.

That's a massive difference. Their revenue grew by $60m while the amount of money they got from Google decreased (by ~$15m).

Things do seem to be going in the desired direction

EDIT: some more history

  2023: 75.8
  2022: 86.0
  2021: 87.8
  2020: 88.8
  2019: [^a]
  2018: 95.3
  2017: 95.9
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out the percentage is around 91%

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

#292

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left. Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox. Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced…

> On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile

I'm not too sure why it's majorly relevant. The fact that it's not popular doesn't make it any less of a desirable option

> From a privacy preserving perspective, Firefox has no unique value

Similarly, the fact that it's not unique is somewhat irrelevant. Though the thing that's scary is what they removed from their terms and conditions.

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

#293
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m wondering why Chrome forks don’t just maintain a shared patch enabling MV2.

That said, uBlock Origin works best on Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

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

#294
post #176

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…

How much of that $260m is invested in Firefox? The docs don’t say.

Put it this way: there are a lot more than “a few dozen” engineers working on Firefox.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been bringing this up in every single thread about Chrome and Manifest V3 pops up. I'm been using Firefox, 100% of the time, on three different operating systems, for probably six years at this point. I can remember a single time I had to swap to Chrome for something, and it was three years ago, and involved some flavor of WebAssembly, I believe. If anyone can point out a current website that is acting up under…

> "Firefox is inferior" argument isn't a decade old echo. IMO this isn't the argument. Firefox users aren't discussing superior or inferior, but sites that accidentally or purposefully break or over-optimize for Chrome, making Firefox users second class citizens. I commented about YouTube and Google Suite on another thread, but your webassembly example reminds me of the GCP dashboard and in browser virtual machine, w…

I do agree with you about what the argument actually is, I should have worded it differently. Any time someone brings up Firefox, it always seems to be an ex-Firefox user talking about compatibility issues. Even your GCP, I've personally used GCP with Firefox with no issues, but I have no doubt you spent more time in it than I have. But it does make me wonder if maybe there are platform specific issues with Firefox.

It's still interesting to contrast my personal experience re: Firefox with everyone elses when it comes to the "Manifest V3 ! Abandon ship, but to where?" conversation.

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

#296

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left. Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox. Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced…

Chrome users are often really familiar with Chrome's devtools and think Firefox is behind because they have trouble finding their way around FireFox's devtools. Truth is that Firefox built a reputation for itself amongst developers specifically because of it's very advanced devtools. Chrome has mostly caught up, but I'd still place Firefox ahead here

Besides that, uBlock Origin, Bypass Paywalls Clean, and AdNauseum working have been enough of an argument for me to be able to convince my friends to make the switch.

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

#297
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is no longer a developer default Web developer here, and Chrome dev tools suck balls. I exclusively use Firefox.

Yeah, the chrome dev tools seem to have gotten worse over the last 10yrs. Basic CSS editing stuff breaks all the time.

Firefox has always been ahead of the game when it comes to devtools. It's pretty recent that Chrome has differentiated itself from Safari-tier crap devtools

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

#298
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Safari nor -B- are opensource. Brave is even chromium based. EDIT: Brave is opensource

While Safari is not open source, WebKit is[0]. [0] https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit

Yup, Bun uses WebKit. And even credited it for why it was able to achieve such better performance than Node

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

#299

I donated a lot of time, code, and at least a little money to early Mozilla and Firefox. They were a lot more dynamic and engaging when they were a small nonprofit. Now it feels like thanks to Google money they have become fat and lazy. Unable to take risks because it might threaten their income stream or their relationship with Google. It makes me sad and angry to see what they have become. Maybe a diet will help, b…

They've been pretty hard at work to offer services that will let them wean themselves off of Google money. This is how much of their income came from search royalties yearly according to their independent auditor reports

  2023: 75.8
  2022: 86.0
  2021: 87.8
  2020: 88.8
  2019: [^a]
  2018: 95.3
  2017: 95.9
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out (which is normally at or near zero) the percentage is around 91%

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know your intention is probably well placed but we do though need to factor in revenues: Year Revenue ---- ------- 2007 $75M 2023 $653M I bring this up because G&A of big companies (in general) always outpaces R&D once they hit scale ... and in an ideal situation - your revenues should outpace R&D expense because you're getting economies of scale (which further dilutes the R&D to Other Business Function comparison)…

Mozilla is the underdog, though; they're just not acting like it anymore.

More like a lapdog I'm right
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