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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

#91

Post by sinkasapa »

huxley wrote: post #64
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.

What if 90% of a politician's campaign funds came from one source? It doesn't have to be overt, I doubt Mozilla makes many decisions by asking themselves, "will this make Google happy or unhappy?" But consider that Mozilla knows what Microsoft and Yahoo's top bids were. Their ability to switch from one funder to another is dependent on how high those bids were.

Well, it must be different. The two companies compete directly on a number of products and Mozilla's decisions on whether to adopt things like NaCl, for instance, can't be too pleasing to Google.

Yet, I think you'd be right to question the independence of a politician who got 90% of their funding from Google. Maybe it is different because people interested in entering politics have less integrity and produce nothing of value so they are more in thrall to their biggest customer. ;-)

Maybe it is more like the academic projects I've worked on. 100% of the money is from the US Government but none of us are patriotic in the least. We just care about doing the research.

Or how about the US government, which gets most of its funding from US tax payers and China and never seems to do anything that pleases either group.

Or children that get all of their basic needs met by their parents and still grow up to rebel and hate them.

I think politicians are just a special case in being particularly worse than the average human being in terms of ethics, morality and intelligence. :-)

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

#92

Post by huxley »

tyree732 wrote: post #66
huxley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if 90% of a politician's campaign funds came from one source? It doesn't have to be overt, I doubt Mozilla makes many decisions by asking themselves, "will this make Google happy or unhappy?" But consider that Mozilla knows what Microsoft and Yahoo's top bids were. Their ability to switch from one funder to another is dependent on how high those bids were.

That is not the same situation. With a politician, one source can contribute X, and another source can contribute Y, and both of their contributions influence the politician. In other words, if the politician loses a source of donations equal to 90% of his or her donations, there is probably nothing that would replace that donation. The only supply is percentage of the politician's time so to speak, which might effec…

Not sure what you mean by high demand, it has certainly has had strategic value, but the grand total of companies that would be interested in the search box are Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

I wouldn't be looking forward to the next set of negotiations if I had Microsoft and Yahoo as my fallback positions.

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

#93

Post by huxley »

sinkasapa wrote: post #91
huxley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if 90% of a politician's campaign funds came from one source? It doesn't have to be overt, I doubt Mozilla makes many decisions by asking themselves, "will this make Google happy or unhappy?" But consider that Mozilla knows what Microsoft and Yahoo's top bids were. Their ability to switch from one funder to another is dependent on how high those bids were.

Well, it must be different. The two companies compete directly on a number of products and Mozilla's decisions on whether to adopt things like NaCl, for instance, can't be too pleasing to Google. Yet, I think you'd be right to question the independence of a politician who got 90% of their funding from Google. Maybe it is different because people interested in entering politics have less integrity and produce nothing…

Google is an advertising company that owns and develops a spectacular search engine and a few other great products as loss leaders.

Mozilla is a non-profit foundation that sells its search box to fund a corporation that develops a free web browser.

They don't compete.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

judk wrote: post #50
shooper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On a purely market basis, 400k buys talent comparable to a senior manager / director of the Chrome or Safari team of ~100 people, not a VP or CEO of a company with $100m annual revenue. $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn.

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by jldugger »

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.

What happens to that bidding war if Microsoft CEO Elop spins Bing off into it's own company?

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

#96

Post by Someone »

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.

The problem here is that Mozilla gets a large part of its income from a company that almost makes the exact same product.

That should make Mozilla feel uncomfortable whenever their agreement with Google is up for extension.

On the plus side, they know they can get money elsewhere if Google were to drop out; they could jump to the Bing camp. That's about their only alternative, though.

Also, their ability to get a good new contract depends heavily on their market share.

Imagine that that software engineer at Microsoft was becoming less productive and knew that Microsoft was hiring young engineers and that there was only one other company he could get a job, and that that company was also hiring young engineers. That should make him worried.

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

#97

Post by brianpgordon »

Someone wrote: post #96
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.

The problem here is that Mozilla gets a large part of its income from a company that almost makes the exact same product. That should make Mozilla feel uncomfortable whenever their agreement with Google is up for extension. On the plus side, they know they can get money elsewhere if Google were to drop out; they could jump to the Bing camp. That's about their only alternative, though. Also, their ability to get a goo…

Yahoo and DuckDuckGo give money to Linux Mint for including them in its default Firefox configuration. I imagine they'd be interested in expanding that to all Firefoxen if Google and Microsoft weren't buying.

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

#98

Post by thrownaway2424 »

judk wrote: post #58
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An incorrect albeit widespread misconception. Mozilla is _both_ the Mozilla Corporation, an ordinary business, _and_ the Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit organization.

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

#99

Post by judk »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #98
judk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An incorrect albeit widespread misconception. Mozilla is _both_ the Mozilla Corporation, an ordinary business, _and_ the Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit organization.

True, but not in contradiction with my earlier statement.

The corporation's charter is to support the Foundation's goals through market activities not allowed for nonprofits, not to generate profit as a traditional joint-stock corporation.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

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

#100

Post by judk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #71
judk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a purely market basis, 400k buys talent comparable to a senior manager / director of the Chrome or Safari team of ~100 people, not a VP or CEO of a company with $100m annual revenue. $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn.

> $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers ...and the President of the United States [1]... > and traditional industry local small business owners earn. [1] http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/pensionFARQ.html

The President's benefits package is mind-bogglingly rich. Besides the incredible pension and almost all expenses paid while in office and on vacation and campaigning, the job is a golden ticket to $millions in "speaker fees" afterward.
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