Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

mozillapetition.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 469 posts

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

#301

Post by culi »

rightbyte wrote: post #25
_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.

How about not involving governments in how Firefox is run. Especially not those keen on backdoors and "Chat control". It could be a stand alone association ruled by its members or a classic free-for-all whatever goes code talks FOSS project.

They don't have to tell them how to run it. But it would be for the benefit of everyone if they could give grants to Mozilla to help them wean off of Google

Mozilla has been less and less dependent on Google and is now working on a VPN, MDN Plus, and other revenue streams that are also helping it become more independent. But the truth is that if all Google money suddenly stopped today, there would be no more Mozilla

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

#302

Post by culi »

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!

This seems like a weird time to be making noise about this. Mozilla has been trying to become less Google-dependent for a long time. In this past half decade especially they've made huge strides with less and less of their total revenue coming from Google royalties:

  2023: 75.8% of revenues from Google royalties
  2022: 86.0%
  2021: 87.8
  2020: 88.8
  2019: [^a]
  2018: 95.3
  2017: 95.9
This data is based on their independent auditors reports.

[^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

#303

Post by culi »

kebokyo wrote: post #115

Something that this petition does not mention at all are possible alternatives to Google search as the default search engine. If Google isn’t the default, who should be the default?

Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Startpage, etc. Plenty of privacy-respecting and non-profit search engines

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

#304

Post by culi »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

"Firefox needs new revenue streams to be sustainable. New products and services under Mozilla’s umbrella should reflect the same commitment to privacy that defines Mozilla." This is admirable, but how what would Mozilla replace the 85% ( $555M) revenue with by ditching Google? I'm assuming a portion of the 15% of revenue is from Mozilla VPN, MDN Plus, etc and also the pay packets of the executives needs to significan…

In 2023, it was 75% of their revenue that came from Google.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...

  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

#305

Post by notpushkin »

charcircuit wrote: post #168
Sander_Marechal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium is also stripping manifest v2. Firefox isn't. Chromium is open source, but it's not an open source project. It's a Google project.

It's cheaper to extend v3 with additional features than to maintain another browser engine.

It is. Browser engine diversity is important for a myriad of other reasons, though.

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

#306

Post by boomboomsubban »

culi wrote: post #291
hu3 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

>Did they get a $338m grant?

That was the year their lawsuit with Verizon finished and they got paid their remaining due for the Yahoo search deal. Related, I think most their money from 2017 also came from Yahoo.

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

#307

Post by gigatexal »

Marc Andreesen owes his riches to Netscape whose ashes became Mozilla. I don’t understand why he doesn’t give the Mozilla foundation and endowment such that the interest on the endowment would fund work solely on the browser. They could then just work on the browser and nothing more.

No need to do marketing, have a venture arm, millions for management, etc. it could be a group of 10 or 20 really awesome engineers and maybe a bunch of passionate open source folks contributing.

Will he do it? No. Do I wish he would? Yes. Would I if I could? Hell yes because there needs to be a viable alternative to chrome and how is that possible when chrome butters their bread and pays their bills?

Or! The some hundreds of millions they did get from Google they just out in an endowment and then shrink staff (start with management) until they can live comfortably off the interest…

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

#308

Post by makeitdouble »

derkster wrote: post #295
makeitdouble wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.…

I think having a browser managed by one of the most powerful company in the world is the core of the issue, albeit in indirect ways.

I have no insight into Firefox' technical foundations, but to your point I've been using it since the IE days and never had critical performance issues or compelling reasons to use another browser short of company specific sites: Google properties is one: while Firefox works, Google has obviously no incentive to make it work better than Chrome, and potentially incentives for the opposite.

Companies' internal sites and tools are another: fixating on one specific browser has been an (unwise) long lasting trend, and for a company Chrome being backed by Google has a lot more appeal than Firefox. That was the same dynamic that cemented IE6 in it's position.

Perhaps Firefox missed the V8/electron train that would have made it in the same position as Linux: a platform to run other things on. But I don't know the history around that.

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

#309

Post by logifail »

rurp wrote: post #204
delusional wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like feminist AI conferences in Africa. According to their 2023 form 990 (the 2024 one isn't published yet) those sort of donations are usually on the order of 15k. You don't get much browser for that money.

That's hardly an isolated example though, plus who knows how many staff hours went into evaluating various proposals and facilitating the conference. The big question is why. It's not like there are a dearth of social justices non-profits out there. It couldn't be easier to donate directly to such projects. Why can't we have a single non-profit focused entirely on preventing a total browser monopoly?

> The big question is why. It's not like there are a dearth of social justices non-profits out there. It couldn't be easier to donate directly to such projects.

Managers like to build empires?

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

#310

Post by chilldsgn »

wackget wrote: post #196
iteratethis wrote: post #79

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…

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

Same. I absolutely hate using Chrome dev tools. It's because of the dev tools I still use Firefox.
Post reply on HN