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Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

blog.mozilla.org

71–80 of 970 posts

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#71

Good for them. Currently they spend millions of dollars (that mostly come from people wanting to support their browser) on huge salaries and projects that have nothing to do with their browser. At the same time they keep on taking steps to alienate those that are donating or using their products. The bar for success is pretty low - stop wasting all them bucks, and stop alienating your users. If you could do that, the…

No, their millions of dollars dont come mostly from people wanting to support their browser. It comes from search ads on google.com

I agree that most of their money comes from Google (at least for now).

But when you load their home page (https://www.mozillafoundation.org), the first thing you are greeted with is a banner that says they have raised over $6M in their last campaign alone.

So, it seems that millions are being donated by users.

The claim that most of those users want it to go to their browser is not supported or refuted by that page, but I have read a detailed breakdown of all their donations and attempts to guess what people really think they are donating for, and it matched my original statement - though I haven't got the time to search now, what do _you_ think people are donating for?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#72
post #7

Does anyone else feel like the "Trust" angle is the only card they have left to play? Technically, Chrome is faster on JS benchmarks. Edge has better OS integration on Windows and comes by default. Safari wins on battery life on Mac. Firefox's only unique selling point is "We aren't a massive data vampire." If they clutter the browser with AI which inherently requires data processing, often in the cloud, they dilute…

>Technically.....

Since its birth, Firefox is still the only browser that manage multiple ( hundreds or in some cases, thousands! [1] ) tabs better than any browser. And in my view in the past 12 - 24 months Firefox has managed to be as fast as chrome. While Chrome also improved on its multiple Tab browsing experience.

Safari.... I dont know why this battery life argument keeps coming up because it is not the case. It hasn't been so for at least 5 - 6 years.

Mozilla could have played the trust angle when they have the good will and money. They could have invested into SaaS that provides better revenue generations other than getting it from Google. They could also have partnered with Wikipedia before they got rotten. But now I am not even sure if they still have the "trust" card anymore. Gekco is still hard to be embedded, XULRunner could have been Electron. They will need to get into survival mode and think about what is next.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/software/mozilla-firefox/firefo...

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have the "extensions that can do real ad blocking" angle.

Have you tried Brave?

It's good enough when some terrible lazy web designer only tested on Chrome. It does nothing to protect against the future when Google decides they are sick of people trying to get around their Ad Block ban and change the license because no one has any real alternatives anymore.

Also blocking is not as good as intentionally poisoning with something like Ad Nauseum

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#74
post #66
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then he went on to make Yet Another Chromium Fork, so it doesn't seem like he was particularly attached to Gecko or what it stands for in the browser engine market anyway. What's to say that Mozilla wouldn't have given up the fight and pivoted to Chromium, like Opera and Edge did, if he was still in charge?

Is there a name for the fallacy where you assume the path not taken is much better? Because I agree, this is that. Mozilla’s challenges are foundational, Eich as CEO wouldn’t have made a dramatic difference in outcomes.

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Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#75
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He gave $1000 donation to support a ban on gay marriage, to be clear.

And people don't have to all agree on the same things. People can get together to work towards cause X and then individually believe in mutually exclusive causes alpha, beta, gamma.

[flagged]

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#76
post #25

Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user? Chrome is able to capture the mass consumer market, due to Google’s dark pattern to nag you to install Chrome anytime you’re on a Google property. Edge target enterprise Fortune 500 user, who is required to use Microsoft/Office 365 at work (and its deep security permission ties to SharePoint). Safari has Mac/iOS audience via being the default on those platform (and deep platf…

Ostensibly nerds. Linux users and maybe Mac users. Technical people who understand more about the software industry than all Mozilla Corp management since Brendan.

It's difficult to monetize us when the product is a zero dollar intangible, especially when trust has been eroded such that we've all fled to Librewolf like you said.

It's difficult to monetize normies when they don't use the software due to years of continuous mismanagement.

I think giving Mozilla a new CEO is like assigning a new captain to the Titanic. I will be surprised if this company still exists by 2030.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#77
post #68

If I were the CEO, I would: - focus 100% on Firefox Desktop & Mobile - just a fast solid minimalist browser (no AI, no BS) - other features should be addons - privacy centric - builtin, first-class, adblocker - run on donations - partner with Kagi - layoff 80% of the non-tech employees I worked for them for many years, I guarantee you that Mozilla will be fine without all the non-sense people, just put engineers in c…

Donations only get you so far. Take a mid-sized project, that needs $500k per year (a few devs, very modestly paid, zero expenses). It's a lot of money. It requires a huge user base. Say you have 500k users, and 5% donate $25 per year (I'm optimistic). And that's just $500k US, a few devs, zero expenses. A project that size probably has audit requirements, hosting costs, accounting, legal, trademarks, etc. I see fina…

With 1.3b in reserves, it's enough for funding development for many years to come if they fire most of management and close irrelevant to the browser things.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#78
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He gave $1000 donation to support a ban on gay marriage, to be clear.

And people don't have to all agree on the same things. People can get together to work towards cause X and then individually believe in mutually exclusive causes alpha, beta, gamma.

Queer people aren't causes, they're people. Imagine I worked on the Brave browser, and in my personal time maintained a website aimed at discouraging personal relationships with him. This would probably make me difficult to work with, despite my personal views not impacting the quality of my work. You might say these examples aren't one-to-one, and you're right. My example doesn't actually push any legislation forbidding him from having a relationship with a consenting person, and it costs a hell of a lot less than $1000.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#79
post #8

What product or market mozilla still relevant? Of all the sites I manage, or companies I worked with in the last 5 years mozilla browsers were less than 1% of the userbase.

In Germany and France Mozilla has about the same market share as Edge, in Austria it's even more. Yes, Mozilla makes some dumb decision, but I think the bigger problem is that computer literacy has declined overall. Most people don't even realize they have a choice. Things like ad-blockers and privacy should be taught in schools.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#80
post #47
post #7

Does anyone else feel like the "Trust" angle is the only card they have left to play? Technically, Chrome is faster on JS benchmarks. Edge has better OS integration on Windows and comes by default. Safari wins on battery life on Mac. Firefox's only unique selling point is "We aren't a massive data vampire." If they clutter the browser with AI which inherently requires data processing, often in the cloud, they dilute…

Well, that's kind of their whole point-- can AI be done in a way that guards privacy. It's not impossible even with cloud processing. And "Trust" should be a big deal-- unfortunately most people don't care and Chrome has a much bigger marketing budget (and monopoly on Android).

Confidential compute (intel, amd and nvidia) already is a thing and has nothing to do with mozilla. Without such drastic measures, no, it IS impossible with regular cloud processing.
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