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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#71

Post by homarp »

colesantiago wrote: post #38

The state of Mozilla's current 'products': Firefox Mozilla VPN Mozilla Monitor Firefox Relay MDN Plus Thunderbird - Some of these products are just repackaged partnerships. - Firefox - Funded by Google with the search partnership bringing in $500M in revenue. (free) Mozilla VPN - Repackaged Mullvad VPN and using Mullvad servers. Mozilla Monitor - Repackaged HaveIBeenPwned. (free) Firefox Relay - No different to Simpl…

people do pay for Kagi.

the question is more "how to replace the free money from google by real clients,and still get the same margin as google free money"

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#72

Post by kuschku »

lxgr wrote: post #41

>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission. > It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”. Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M US…

You wouldn't calculate the expected RoI of killing adblockers if killing adblockers was never considered.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#73

Post by erk__ »

jfrifkfnfofifmk wrote: post #5

Mozilla rebranded itself as a "crew of activists". Browser is just a side business to generate revenue!

Is the whole issue not that they are less of a band of activists than they used to be. Now it is suddenly no longer about free and open source software, but more of means to run the whole machine, which is why they probably have profit oriented CEO as bad as that is.

IMO they need to be more a crew of activists than they are now. Fight against stuff like intrusion of AI in every single part of our lives and such.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#74

Post by xenator »

lxgr wrote: post #41

>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission. > It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”. Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M US…

Imagine you are in a marriage and your spouse say: "I can sleep with other people, doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission".

I don't understand context, but my honest reaction will be: "WTF, you just said? What type of relationship you think we have if we discuss such things?"

I definitely understand why people worry. This is just crazy to weight trust in money. If this is on the table and discussed internally, then what we are talking about?

'T' in Mozilla Firefox means 'Trust'.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#75

Post by MrAlex94 »

TurboSkyline wrote: post #49
major505 wrote: post #9

Well, is no mistery that today the best versioins of Firefox are the non official versions like waterfox and zen. NObody trusts mozilla anymore, specially after they turned into an add company and started paying their CEOs exorbitating ammounts, considering what was being invested in their core business (supposedly making a better browser).

I'm not familiar with Zen, but how do you reconcile that Waterfox frequently lags behind upstream Firefox in terms of security fixes? Yes, you get a perceived gain in privacy, but is that worth potentially exposing yourself to additional vulnerabilities?

> lags behind upstream Firefox in terms of security fixes

I’m not sure why this has become a thing - usually I either release Waterfox the week before ESR releases (the week the code freeze happens and new version gets tagged) or, if I’m actively working on features and they need to coincide with the next update I push, I will release on the same Tuesday the ESR releases.

You can check the GitHub tag history for Waterfox to see it’s been that way for a good while :)

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#76

Post by buran77 »

hu3 wrote: post #31
herobird wrote: post #17

It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.

Mozilla has pressure from their sugar daddy, Google, to weaken ad-blockers.

The only reason Mozilla matters in the eyes of Google is because it gives the impression there's competition in the browser market.

But Firefox's users are the kind who choose the browser, not use whatever is there. And that choice is driven in part by having solid ad-blockers. People stick with Firefox despite the issues for the ad-blocker. Take that away and Firefox's userbase dwindles to even lower numbers to the point where nobody can pretend they are "competition". That's when they lose any value for Google.

Without the best-of-the-best ad-blocking I will drop Firefox like a rock and move to the next best thing, which will have to be a Chromium based browser. I'll even have a better overall experience on the web when it comes to the engine itself, to give me consolation for not having the best ad-blocker.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#77

Post by gvurrdon »

shantara wrote: post #58
herobird wrote: post #17

It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.

Ditto. A fully functional uBlock Origin is the only remaining reason why I'm still sticking with Firefox despite everything

Containers are also very useful indeed; I have to log into various different Google and Github accounts and can do this in a single browser window.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#79

Post by RobotToaster »

concinds wrote: post #43
dom96 wrote: post #6

Genuinely can someone with knowledge of the business explain why they aren't simply doubling down on making Firefox better? Is there an existential problem facing them that they are trying to solve by adding AI into the browser?

You can't monetize a browser. They have to keep trying to create new products, but they inevitably fail. Pocket, FirefoxOS, Persona, all dead. This new stuff will fail too, because Mozilla has no USP and no way to create a best-in-class product in any market. So they rely on imitating what everyone else is doing, but with more "crunchy" vibes ("values", "trust", "we're a nonprofit") because that's the only angle they…

They already do monetize it, every search engine included by default paid to be there. They forcefully remove those that don't pay from existing installations without the user's permission, as they did with yandex.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#80

Post by lopis »

K0nserv wrote: post #10
dom96 wrote: post #6

Genuinely can someone with knowledge of the business explain why they aren't simply doubling down on making Firefox better? Is there an existential problem facing them that they are trying to solve by adding AI into the browser?

No knowledge of the business. But I think it's because of the underlying question that plagues Mozilla: How will that make money?

I'm not sure how well know this is, but besides their contract with Google to be the default search option, Firefox does earn money through revenue share with all other default search options. A normal healthy company would just rely on those. Growing the user base would therefore grow the amount of rev-share income. So improving the product by itself, and thus attracting users, does make money - and probably enough to run Firefox and Mozilla. Just not enough to pay their CEO.
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