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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

#431

Post by gigatexal »

notpushkin wrote: post #398
gigatexal wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The money would be a gift to a foundation where he couldn’t control it. A no strings attached 100% tax deductible gift to the foundation with the only strings that they focus on the browser and survive on the interest, and lay off unnecessary management (10-20 dedicated web engineers and a PM and an HR person what else do you need). But do you also want the browser beholden to the parent company of its direct…

10-20 dedicated web engineers doesn’t sound like – but Mozilla Foundation already has money for about 350–700 full-time developers.

If it does go the foundation model as I’ve suggested (purely paying bills on the interest earned by the endowment and by donations) then perhaps it can’t afford to pay for 350+ engineers. That’s just the facts.

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

#432

Post by BearOso »

Suppafly wrote: post #253
internetter wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of Mozilla's $653 million in 2023 income, $496 million was spent, but only half was on development ($260). Fair enough. But realize mozilla does not exclusively develop a web browser. Instead, they also make Pocket, Firefox Relay, Firefox VPN, Mozilla Monitor, AI products, ect. So probably only 1/3rd of their income is going to browser development, which is pretty bad.

>So probably only 1/3rd of their income is going to browser development, which is pretty bad. Only because you assume that they should only be working on browser development.

> Only because you assume that they should only be working on browser development.

Why not? This isn't Oxfam, this is Mozilla. To an outsider, the assumed point for all these other endeavors was to be profitable to provide more money for browser development. When that money doesn't primarily provide for that something seems sketchy.

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

#433

Post by jqpabc123 »

maleldil wrote: post #217
jqpabc123 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you believe in the open source concept, the current situation calls for nothing less. Let's be real, Mozilla leadership is not going to slaughter their cash cow. They have no incentive to place anything above the needs of Google. It's already proven --- the user base and market share have been effectively abandoned for lack of impact to the bottom line. Plaintive demands from users now carry no real weight an…

How would the fork be funded? You can't expect a complex program like a browser to be developed exclusively by volunteers in their free time.

How would the fork be funded?

There are options:

1) Non-personalized (aka context sensitive) advertising. Advertising by itself is not the inherently evil part --- the collection of personalized data is. Context sensitive advertising doesn't require any personal data.

2) As an alternative for those who prefer it, allow users to pay a small annual fee for AD BLOCKING.

I'd pay for something that is truly private and blocks personalized ads and the associated data collection. Given a little reasonable incentive, I think there are others who would too.

Google's vision of the web is a choice, not a requirement. Mozilla could put forth a real alternative vision --- but they won't for obvious reasons.

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

#434

Post by afavour »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #273
afavour wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is my takeaway as well. Folks in this discussion are saying “why can’t Mozilla just focus on making Firefox” and my response would be “because that’s the path to eventual death”. Firefox is, what, 3% of the browser market today? It isn’t because it’s a bad browser. It’s because people are using OSes with tightly integrated browsers they never think to change. Making Firefox faster or adding vertical tabs o…

People still download Chrome onto Windows. Used to be they did that for Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix.

I would argue the reason so many people do that is because every time you visit a Google property it prompts you to do so. Mozilla doesn’t have the advantage of owning sites that are part of people’s daily routines either.

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

#435

Post by timbit42 »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #429
timbit42 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of whether people know it exists, the world where it exists is much better than a world where it doesn't and there is only one option.

So open source doesn't work? Alternative browsers are available based on Firefox source code. The same is true with Chromium.

Sure, but they would all cease to exist if Firefox or Chrome ceased to exist or even ceased to be worked on because they don't have the labour to keep their project going without the parent projects doing most of the work.

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

#436

Post by paulryanrogers »

derkster wrote: post #263
paulryanrogers wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snyk

Any feature specifically? I added a project+repo, and it scanned and reported successfully - but this is only the free tier.

IIRC it was related to viewing vulnerabilities or integrations.

ZenDesk is another, related to their SSO logins.

Unfortunately once bitten I become twice shy. These kind of works-in-popular-browser circumstances pushed me to making my own browser navigation switcher, so I never have to worry about any one site again. Of course that also means that even if they fix it in Ff then I won't notice. (It also doesn't help that Manifest V3 has taken a while for me to support and Apple keeps changing things.)

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

#437

Post by paulryanrogers »

account42 wrote: post #406
econ wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I think will bring in users is search. Full text history search with some modest depth crawling for the domain and external links. The easy Google money makes it unattractive. It will take some time for enough users to be blown away by how useful this is. I wrote a simple user script one time that subscribes me to all discoverable rss feeds I run into while browsing. It seemed rather random but I was blown…

A good start would be to not delete old history without warning like Firefox does now.

Shame they hide the option to keep history forever in about:config. At least there are some add-ons to help set that.

I can understand the default not keeping forever, for privacy, storage, and performance reasons.

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

#438

Post by notpushkin »

gigatexal wrote: post #431
notpushkin wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10-20 dedicated web engineers doesn’t sound like – but Mozilla Foundation already has money for about 350–700 full-time developers.

If it does go the foundation model as I’ve suggested (purely paying bills on the interest earned by the endowment and by donations) then perhaps it can’t afford to pay for 350+ engineers. That’s just the facts.

They’ve made $37.5M from investment income in 2023. [1] (That’s where I’m getting the 350 engineers figure from: $37.5M / $100k = 375.)

I’m not sure how risky their investments are. Also, I’m excluding donations altogether. If you can help prepare a more realistic model I’d be happy to share it!

[1]: https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/File:501c3_2023_990_Mozi...

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

#439

Post by bad_user »

simpss wrote: post #426
bad_user wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla gave up that identity when it became an ad-tech company whose business model... I hope you realize that happened in 2006. Recent developments can only improve the situation, actually, if it makes Mozilla more independent.

Just a few days ago, they updated their android application info and stated they're going to share location data with third parties for "Advertising or Marketing" purposes...[1] They also removed a promise to "never sell your data" in their FAQ[2] 2 weeks ago. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43326230 [2] - https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

Sure, but my point is that Firefox has been funded by Google since 2006, and by having it as the default search engine, Firefox has been sending suggestion queries and searches to Google.

Of course, the nuance here is that this was part of a user action, i.e., the user probably wants to search, so they expect data to be sent to Google (although the address bar suggestions are a gray area IMO). However, what hasn't been expected, and the whole purpose of the GDPR, is that Google does store your search history for advertising purposes without user consent.

So, even if it was unavoidable, Firefox has already been selling user data to Google by simply making it the default search engine and getting paid to do it.

BTW, the GDPR is really strict, and I'll know that Firefox actually sells my data (in a way that I don't expect) when I'll see a GDPR interstitial about it for getting my consent. For instance, when you first open Microsoft's Edge in the EU, they inform users that they're going to share their data with the entire advertising industry.

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

#440

Post by hnuser123456 »

ptx wrote: post #158
hnuser123456 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like EU defined "sale of data" to mean a lot of other things besides selling data, like transferring information. And now Firefox cannot so definitively say they don't "sell your data", because they allow you to transfer webpages over the network.

Where are you getting this? All Mozilla says is that "the LEGAL definition of 'sale of data' is extremely broad in some places". They don't that it's the EU and definitely not that the EU has defined "sale of data" to include any use of a computer network, which would be absurd.

Sorry, I was recalling from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
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