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Say Hi to Kit

firefox.com

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Re: Say Hi to Kit

#31

Post by latexr »

lapcat wrote: post #20

The criticism of this in the other comments is so strange. If Mozilla can raise some money independently of Google by selling merchandise, all the better! And it's not like software engineers are spending time on this instead of working on Firefox. That's not a real tradeoff. It's an effort that pays for itself and doesn't take away from Firefox development.

> If Mozilla can raise some money independently of Google by selling merchandise, all the better!

Agreed, but did they need a new mascot to sell merchandise? It’s not like the old logo wasn’t already cool.

> And it's not like software engineers are spending time on this instead of working on Firefox.

But Mozilla is still spending money and resources on it. The issue isn’t this rebranding specifically, but that this is yet another distraction which won’t produce any real result.

> It's an effort that pays for itself

Is it? That’s not a given, and we definitely can’t say either way yet. Considering all of Mozilla’s past efforts, pretty much all of which they abandoned, I’d be very wary of calling this one a success so early on.

Re: Say Hi to Kit

#32

Post by jesse_dot_id »

pluc wrote: post #10

Well at least there's no AI involved. Take your wins where you can

Yeah there is...

> The Firefox brand is getting a refresh and you get the first look. Kit’s our new mascot and your new companion through an internet that’s private, open and actually yours.

Your new companion...

Re: Say Hi to Kit

#33

Post by noir_lord »

chrismorgan wrote: post #21

I pressed the “play animation” button, and the fox disappeared and nothing else happened. If I hadn’t had video autoplay disabled, the fox would just not have been visible in the first place. > Media resource https://assets.mozilla.net/video/kit/pop-up-800.webm could not be decoded, error: Error Code: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) > Details: auto mozilla::MediaChangeMonitor::CreateDecoderAndInit(MediaRawD…

Works fine on the mainline version of FF - nightly and firefox are always fun with multimedia on linux/codecs.

Re: Say Hi to Kit

#35

Post by jonesjohnson »

AnonC wrote: post #27

I love this. It’s good to see Mozilla trying different revenue generating approaches (edit: the merch with Kit), even if they may seem too small compared to what it gets from the default search engine arrangement with Google.

Took me a while to realize you're talking about the merch.

Re: Say Hi to Kit

#37

Post by bananapub »

jm4 wrote: post #22

Even with $400M in "revenue" gifted to them by Google, Mozilla can't muster even 4% market share. This project is dead. There is no path to increased market share. They have no viable plan to generate revenue beyond what they get from Google. Outside of features like container tabs, which only appeal to a small niche, they don't have much going on. The browser has dramatically higher power consumption in an age where…

this is a very dumb take; having an independent browser be at even 4% is great, since it has almost fully stopped the web collapsing down to Webkit/Blink-compatibility fully replacing any actual standards.

Mozilla does seem poorly run overall but this work is very important.

Re: Say Hi to Kit

#38

Post by noir_lord »

latexr wrote: post #14

Finally! All these years everyone has been complaining about this or that missing feature or lingering bug in Firefox, or how Mozilla has been hostile to users and pulling stupid stunts which only waste money and alienate even their most passionate fans, but by far the number one grievance everyone had was how Firefox was missing a mascot. At last I can make my mother switch to Firefox. I’m messaging all my friends r…

Indeed if those graphic designers hadn't been wasting time drawing a cute fox they'd have been waist deep in 15 year old code fixing bugs.

Orgs can do multiple things at the same time.

Re: Say Hi to Kit

#40

Post by mythz »

Their latest 2023 results, shows Mozilla still has enough revenue to do something [1]:

  - Total revenue: $653 million
  - Revenue from Google 85% ($555 million)
  - Total expenses $496 million (Software Development Expenses $260 million)
But even after spending 1/2 Billion annually I'm not expecting them to regain relevance. They'll likely keep the existing board until the money runs dry, axe more technical talent and promising projects.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

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