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Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

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Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#51

Post by myko »

shooper wrote: post #32
saosebastiao wrote: post #5

I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Last time Mozilla's contract was up for negotiation, they caused bidding war that increased their value over the previous contract...it wasn't Google's generosity. You are a fool if you think Mozilla is beholden to Google.

I think a better argument is that Mozilla needs to diversify its revenue sources. Chrome is taking away marketshare from Firefox thanks to advertising and paying a lot to be bundled with Java, Flash, Acrobat etc. updates or just being shipped as default by the PC OEMs. It makes sense for Google because then they needn't pay out so much to Mozilla. For many non tech folks where I had replaced IE with Firefox, I now se…

> For many non tech folks where I had replaced IE with Firefox, I now see them using Chrome, and when I asked if they installed it, they usually have no idea how it got on their computer.

Chrome probably got there the same way Firefox got there - a well meaning individual (you, in the case of Firefox) installed it and told them to use it because it is "better".

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#52

Post by johansch »

untog wrote: post #25
ebbv wrote: post #2

If I were at Mozilla my #1 priority would be fixing this situation. Google has been less and less "not evil" lately, and this is not a position that I'd feel comfortable in long term. Alternative revenue models are needed. Unfortunately, reducing costs is probably also necessary.

Alternative revenue models are needed. Their current revenue model isn't "Google", it's "the search box on Firefox". Now, you can debate whether it is sensible to rely on the search box, but it isn't tied to Google. Microsoft or Yahoo would probably love to get there instead.

But would Firefox users tolerate that?

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#53

Post by judk »

coldtea wrote: post #43
saosebastiao wrote: post #5

I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Last time Mozilla's contract was up for negotiation, they caused bidding war that increased their value over the previous contract...it wasn't Google's generosity. You are a fool if you think Mozilla is beholden to Google.

> I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Well, even if he could shop around for another job, relying on MS like that means a sudden firing combined with an illness/mortage and/or worsening job market conditions can seriously hurt him.

Mozilla signs time-specified contracts with Google. Not at-will.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#54

Post by Tloewald »

saosebastiao wrote: post #5

I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Last time Mozilla's contract was up for negotiation, they caused bidding war that increased their value over the previous contract...it wasn't Google's generosity. You are a fool if you think Mozilla is beholden to Google.

I don't get your argument at all. Clearly no-one would expect a senior employee of Microsoft not to further Microsoft's interests, so your analogy contradicts your thesis.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#55

Post by skarayan »

saosebastiao wrote: post #5

I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Last time Mozilla's contract was up for negotiation, they caused bidding war that increased their value over the previous contract...it wasn't Google's generosity. You are a fool if you think Mozilla is beholden to Google.

We can reason subjectively from the perspectives of Mozilla/Google, or we can reason objectively from the perspective of people.

The concern from people is always about too much power (control) in the hands of a select few.

What choices will they make?

Will they be the best choices?

How will we know?

How much transparency will there be?

Some of these might not apply directly to the open source world, but Google is at the forefront of decisions on the internet.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#56

Post by judk »

manishsharan wrote: post #14

what other options exist for funding this organization ? If I were to brainstorm, I would recommend that Mozilla folks start go after enterprise market; almost every bank I have consulted for uses awful and poorly made GUI application using Swing or C# and most are struggling with Mobile. Since Mozilla is crossplatform and secure , I do think there is opportunity to offer training and support for customizing and hard…

It had been so man years that modern browser technology can probably easily emulate the ActiveX/ie6/winforms or whatever crap those enterprises run.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#57

Post by booruguru »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #42
shooper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't backing them with $300M/year because Mozilla is pumping out good open source software. They are doing it to maintain their dominance in search and keep Bing, DDG, Blekko at bay. For example, they have a similar deal with the closed source(till recently) Opera browser. I wish Mozilla would stick to its principles and switch the default to a privacy conscious search engine like DuckDuckGo and give it a muc…

Mozilla cares a lot more about happy users than about your principles. They're not going to switch to dramatically worse search results just to appease the tin hat crowd.

> They're not going to switch to dramatically worse search results just to appease the tin hat crowd.

Calling them the "tin hat" crowd would suggest that they are delusion when, in fact, the U.S. government has repeatedly admitted that they are spying everybody and they don't understand why anyone should complain.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#58

Post by judk »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #42
shooper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't backing them with $300M/year because Mozilla is pumping out good open source software. They are doing it to maintain their dominance in search and keep Bing, DDG, Blekko at bay. For example, they have a similar deal with the closed source(till recently) Opera browser. I wish Mozilla would stick to its principles and switch the default to a privacy conscious search engine like DuckDuckGo and give it a muc…

Mozilla cares a lot more about happy users than about your principles. They're not going to switch to dramatically worse search results just to appease the tin hat crowd.

Mozilla is a nonprofit with its own principles in is charter. It isn't just a business.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#59

Post by dragonwriter »

shooper wrote: post #39
abhididdigi wrote: post #8

I am surprised by this. Mozilla is literally pumping out good open source software and no other company except Google is backing them?

Google isn't backing them with $300M/year because Mozilla is pumping out good open source software. They are doing it to maintain their dominance in search and keep Bing, DDG, Blekko at bay. For example, they have a similar deal with the closed source(till recently) Opera browser. I wish Mozilla would stick to its principles and switch the default to a privacy conscious search engine like DuckDuckGo and give it a muc…

> I wish Mozilla would stick to its principles and switch the default to a privacy conscious search engine like DuckDuckGo

Which of Mozilla's principles (rather than yours) would this be "sticking with"?

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#60

Post by eigenvalue »

huxley wrote: post #31
untog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two points: Mozilla is pumping out mostly user facing open source software, which will probably attract less money than, say, Red Hat. Also, it's not that no company except Google is backing them. It's that they get a huge amount of money from their search box - currently paid by Google. Microsoft might well be happy to become the default and pay just as much.

Microsoft wasn't interested in paying anything near that much, nor was Yahoo, that's why talks collapsed during the negotiations. Google does consider the search engine placement valuable but it is probably also funding Mozilla as a hedge against anti-trust lawsuits.

That's probably because it's not worth nearly as much to MS or Yahoo. I'm sure a non-trivial percentage of users would change the default search away from Bing.
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