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Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

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Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#41

Post by dralley »

hn_submit wrote: post #12

I love Firefox but feel little pity for Mozilla which receives $400+ million a year on search placement in their browser but spends only a tiny fraction on its development. The rest is wasted on greedy management and frivolous projects to give that same management an excuse to give themselves multi-million dollar payouts. Everyone's only in it for the money. There are no good or bad people anymore, only...unfortunate…

HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death.

Rust was a side project, asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM, IIRC LetsEncrypt was a side project (or at least a side project of Mozilla engineers, if not official), significant parts of the initial R&D for AV1 and Opus came out of Mozilla, Servo was largely a side project at the point that it got cancelled (the parts that had been largely successful had already been merged into Firefox, the rest was either nowhere near ready or being completely rewritten or both, and the main application for it at the time was some attempts to make a browser for running web apps in VR headsets at high framerates). Thunderbird was a side project.

But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money, like the branded VPN service. Or projects like FirefoxOS, which ultimately failed but still resulted in a lot of improvements to Firefox and web standards. And it wasn't a bad idea either, it just put the cart (mobile OS) before the horse (the web APIs that are needed to make a browser-based mobile OS successful, like access to GPS and IMU hardware, which didn't exist at the time) without the heft to really push through the barriers while competing directly with Apple and Google.

It seems like people define "frivolous side projects" as "anything Mozilla did that didn't end up being incredibly successful" and anything that did become incredibly successful gets taken for granted. "What did Rome ever do for us" rewritten as a tech parable.

(don't tell me that "we're going to create a whole new language to fix security issues in our web browser" didn't sound a bit frivolous in 2012)

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#42

Post by JoshTriplett »

SilasX wrote: post #17
hn_submit wrote: post #12

I love Firefox but feel little pity for Mozilla which receives $400+ million a year on search placement in their browser but spends only a tiny fraction on its development. The rest is wasted on greedy management and frivolous projects to give that same management an excuse to give themselves multi-million dollar payouts. Everyone's only in it for the money. There are no good or bad people anymore, only...unfortunate…

They also could have used those payments to build up an endowment that makes them not dependent on others.

Agreed. Put half of it in investments every year, and after a few years they'd have had enough to sustain a browser nearly indefinitely.

That said, the terms of the contract are not public, and it's possible that it was restricted in a fashion which did not permit such usage.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#43

Post by cgyvbunji »

dleslie wrote: post #34
freedomben wrote: post #25

Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in. However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely o…

Firefox will continue to exist and be maintained by open source efforts. I often wonder if the current model has been driving away contributors, since it _feels like_ contributing effort to support someone else's paychecque.

Continue to exist in what form? Seamonkey aka Netscape Navigator still exists. Firefox can keep existing but not get updated enough to be a viable alternative to Chromium anymore.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#44

Post by mempko »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
freedomben wrote: post #25

Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in. However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely o…

Not at all, the golden age of FOSS is gone. It might appear that FOSS has won, however in reality what happened is that corporations have managed to control the message thanks to business friendly licenses.

Exactly, and now that these same businesses have LLMs, the savings they got using open source is no longer relevant. I expect we will see far more personal open source projects and a divestment from larger ones. More 1 or two people open source projects and less 100+.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#45

Post by pydry »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #32
stackskipton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree. These payments are clearly massive tent pole of maintaining the monopoly and I think it was right for competition authorities to appeal them. In fact, IMO, Metha ruling was way to favorable for Google. Basically like, well, they did the crime but it's too much to disrupt so I guess we will nibble at the edges accomplishing little.

Yeah, they should be forced to split Chrome into a separate business and stay out of the browser business permanently. Anything short of that either won't help or will further strengthen their monopoly.

Chrome isnt viable as a separate business. Its entire function is to be a loss leader / feeder for search.

Google should still be split, but along lines which are cohesive, financially viable and would level the playing field for competition, e.g.

- google workspaces / gmail / maps / search / chrome / youtube

- search index / cloud / datacenters

- youtube

- android

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#46

Post by fancyfredbot »

irishcoffee wrote: post #31
freedomben wrote: post #25

Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in. However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely o…

How is firefox essential to the open web?

Firefox provides one of two browser engines.

If there's only one browser engine the Web immediately closes up like a giant impenetrable clam. All of humanity will be left outside, doomed to scrape forlornly on the shell with our nails and dream of the pearls within.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#48

Post by concinds »

stackskipton wrote: post #19
concinds wrote: post #10

Judge Mehta's reasoning is obviously correct. > US federal and state competition authorities recently asked the court of appeals to overturn the part of Mehta’s ruling that permits these payments. You get the "competition authorities" you pay for. Decades of government-bashing, bureaucrat-bashing, sidelining and shit pay give you this level of institutional competence.

Strong disagree. These payments are clearly massive tent pole of maintaining the monopoly and I think it was right for competition authorities to appeal them. In fact, IMO, Metha ruling was way to favorable for Google. Basically like, well, they did the crime but it's too much to disrupt so I guess we will nibble at the edges accomplishing little.

The Firefox-Bing experiment proved that the amount of search engines the "free market" can sustain is one (1). You won't get more without proactive government interference and proper legislation. Meanwhile Firefox loses funding.

"Nibbling at the edges" is what the competition authorities are proposing.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#49

Post by Klonoar »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #46
irishcoffee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is firefox essential to the open web?

Firefox provides one of two browser engines. If there's only one browser engine the Web immediately closes up like a giant impenetrable clam. All of humanity will be left outside, doomed to scrape forlornly on the shell with our nails and dream of the pearls within.

Blink and WebKit have diverged enough that there are minimum 3 engines now, not 2.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#50

Post by ChrisArchitect »

Amicus brief? Wasn't that like a year ago?

Not their first foray into this case I suppose:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_b... (May 2025)

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/defendin... (Sep 2025)

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