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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

#351

Post by DoingIsLearning »

alberth wrote: post #156
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…

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)…

Again not diminishing Firefox's efforts but it's difficult not to compare with other _leaner_ open-source projects.

As an example the Linux foundation [0] had 270M in expenses in 2023. Of which even we aggregate international operations and corporate operations the expenditure is less than 21M in G&A equivalent activities.

[0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/hubfs/Reports/lf_annualrepor...

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

#352

Post by KingMob »

Hyperboreanal wrote: post #335
yummypaint wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much money is routinely set on fire by the US tech industry, this is a bargain for the best web browser currently in existence. What alternative do you suggest? Google and Microsoft are certainly worse. Firefox is vastly superior to the offerings of these multi billion dollar companies. Chrome and edge are exactly the prisons that these companies designed them to be. What specifically should laypeople…

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

#355

Post by TimByte »

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…

Makes you wonder where all that extra administrative cost is really going.

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

#356

Post by vlad-roundabout »

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…

Even better than Brave is a "no-name" browser like Ungoogled Chromium made to protect actual privacy, not the interests of some company!

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

#357

Post by TimByte »

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…

I still think having an independent browser matters... especially as Google tightens its grip on the web

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

#358

Post by Happily2020 »

magicmicah85 wrote: post #142
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…

I use Firefox for Container tabs. It’s useful for sites where I can’t have multiple tabs opened to same site but different login. That’s my main reason for sticking to Firefox.

Container tabs and specifically Temporary Containers are the two things I always miss on non-Firefox browsers

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

#359

Post by cmcaleer »

hu3 wrote: post #212
alberth wrote: post #156

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.

Imagine if a competent CEO had been at the wheel. Instead of spending quite literally billions on who knows what (certainly not a significantly better, more competitive Firefox), Mozilla could have instead transitioned to an endowed foundation model and built a sustainable, long-term future that could weather a scenario like today’s DOJ case which was not impossible to foresee (US v. Microsoft was in 2001 after all).

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

#360

Post by subsistence234 »

hofrogs wrote: post #348
Hyperboreanal wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> nobody wants to ... If you don't want something, don't think everyone else thinks the same as you. From my observations, if something is being called "woke", that means it's probably a good thing, actually.

"Nobody" is an exaggeration since there are a few people like you. Most people want Mozilla to focus on making a good browser.

If Mozilla had used the Google billions on improving Firefox instead of fart sniffing, Firefox would be a better browser now and its market share would be above 2.62%.

The misspending was (implicitly) part of the deal: the Google money would stop if Firefox started to seriously threaten Chrome's dominance.

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