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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#111

Post by swiftcoder »

earthnail wrote: post #21
boobsbr wrote: post #7

The Mozilla Corporation has earned around USD ~500 million in 2023. The Mozilla Foundation has received around USD ~26 million in 2023 in donation from the Mozilla Corporation (~70%) and other sources (~30%).

For someone not in the loop, can you explain the difference between the two orgs and maybe even explain what each org uses the money for?

The Foundation owns the trademarks, and mostly does evangelism. The (subsiduary) Corporation actually develops the browser (and accepts a bunch of revenue from Google for Search placement)

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#112

Post by takluyver »

kuschku wrote: post #72
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.

I agree with all the people saying it would drive a lot of the remaining users away, and I hope they don't do it. But I'm not remotely surprised that they considered following what their biggest competitor (Chrome) already did.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#113

Post by matwood »

kuschku wrote: post #72
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.

Part of being CEO/running a business is considering all options, but it doesn't mean it will ever move beyond the ROI/risk phase. Ever read one of the risk assessments in a companies public filings? It's the same thing.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#114

Post by Iolaum »

The web without ublock origin is a hellscape. Whenever I try another browser, I immediately go back to firefox.

Do these people even know their users?

For example: Fedora Silverblue default Firefox install had an issue with some Youtube videos due to codecs. So I tried watching youtube on Chromium. Ads were so annoying I stopped watching by the second time I tried to watch a video. Stopped watching youtube until I uninstalled default firefox install and added Firefox from flathub. If the option to use a good adblocker gets taken away I 'll most likely dramatically reduce my web browsing.

P.S. Maybe someone ports Vanadium to desktop Linux? If firefox goes away that 'd be my best case desktop browser. Using it on my mobile ;)

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#115

Post by mrtksn »

shakna wrote: post #85
mrtksn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money and everything was great until every corner was taken, the land grab was complete and the time to recoup the investment has come. Once the users were trapped for exploitation, it doesn’t make sense to have a browser that blocks ads. How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and…

> The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money Huh? Nexus was funded by CERN. Newsgrounds was never investor funded. Yahoo! Directory was just two guys, and you paid to be listed. There were no investors involved. WebCrawler was a university project. Altavista was a research project.

That was ine inception age when very few people were online, its not the stage of mass adoption. The mass adoption starts with the dot.com era with mass infrastructure build up.

But sure, if you think that we should start counting from these years you can do that and add a "public funded" era at the beginning.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#117

Post by littlecranky67 »

You can't kill ad-blockers in a browser, unless you don't allow running AI models in browsers (which will become very soon an integral part of your browsing usage - for some of us it already is, mostly through extension).

I will one day just add "Remove all ads on the page I am browsing" into my BROWSER_AI.md file.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#118

Post by nikanj »

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?

Society doesn't get improved by doing incremental work on a browser, and Mozilla's mission is to improve society
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