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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#151

Post by kgraves »

fsflover wrote: post #4
kvark wrote: post #2

That's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.

Also, please make a monthly donation to Mozilla if you can. You will contribute to saving the world. https://donate.mozilla.org/

While donations is a noble cause, it is a merely a drop in the ocean in the sea of money provided by Google.

I wonder how much of their money is from donations though, does Mozilla release these numbers?

> You will contribute to saving the world.

Cringed a bit there but to each to their own.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#152

Post by MagnumOpus »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #28
sciurus wrote: post #7

250 people, roughly 25% of the company, were laid off today. This is on top of the 70 laid off in January (discussion of that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737 )

Why Mozilla has almost 1,000 employees blows my mind. Isn't this an project for an open source web browser?

It fell victim to the same problem as Wikimedia, a kind of Dutch Disease: The web browser was too good, they earned so much money in donations from it that it attracted freeloading middle managers and do-gooders who don't give a flying f about the browser, but started empire-building with vague new "missions".

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#153

Post by takluyver »

macspoofing wrote: post #73
ForHackernews wrote: post #31

ITT: "I'm fine with Chrome controlling the whole internet, as long as I never again have to read about Mozilla trying to fight racism." The irony of these folks whining about Mozilla's priorities...

Their priorities are out of wack. Firefox is their golden goose. It's the thing that gives them clout and revenue. Their job is to increase adoption because increased adoption means more clout and more revenue. You do that by constantly reinvesting in the platform and making it your core singular focus, especially performance and tooling (because developers are a big driver for browser adoption). Where is the Firefox…

Counterpoint: Firefox is the thing they're best known for, but it's been inexorably losing market share for years to a direct competitor with vastly more financial muscle and access to very prominent advertising space. At the same time, they're dependent on that competitor for most of their revenue.

It's hard to imagine they could give Firefox a significant technical edge over Chrome, no matter how much they focus on it. Even if Google plays entirely fair - not optimising things like GMail & Google Maps for Chrome at all - it has the resources to keep up with anything Mozilla can do.

Throwing all the eggs in one basket and praying is not a strategy. It makes sense for them to diversify. Inevitably there will be some failures (Firefox Phone seems like a bad idea with hindsight, but hindsight is always 20/20), but some things are having a bit of quiet success, like Firefox Send or their 'Privacy not Included' guides. How they create revenue, I have no idea, though their new VPN is one idea.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#154

Post by panpanna »

neltnerb wrote: post #149
panpanna wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was discussed recently in another post and the answer I got was basically "until Google and Apple force us we have no obligation to change anything"

I suppose even then they won't be obligated to do anything at all... I guess there's no way for them to really notice how many people don't even go to the trouble of making their websites load... that's what I observe tech newbies do rather than switch browser from whatever I installed.

This is IE6 all over again...

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#155

Post by sciurus »

Spivak wrote: post #57
shock wrote: post #30

> Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce — approximately 250 people of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have made outstanding contributions to who we are today. To each of them, I extend my heartfelt thanks and deepest regrets that we have come to this point. This is a humbling recognition of the realities we face, and what is needed to overcome them. What a load of…

You do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. She gets paid about $1m/yr which includes performance incentives. So if she just gave up her whole salary she would only have to fire 96% of the people let go today. C suite members raking in high salaries is the tiniest most insignificant issue when it comes to a large orgs finances. In most large orgs if C sites…

> 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr

Mozilla is very engineering-heavy. While I don't know other people's salaries, I do know that the fully loaded cost of a developer almost anywhere is much higher than $100k/yr.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#156

Post by burkaman »

eamsen wrote: post #131
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

How much are you willing to pay for a browser?

I would pay $100 or $5/month or something for Firefox. I don't really understand why they don't have a pay-if-you-want model. I donate to nonprofit news organizations I read even though I can get their news for free, and I pay for a couple Android apps I want to support even though the "premium" versions don't have any meaningful extra features.

I'm sure they wouldn't get enough revenue to replace Google's support, but maybe it would make a dent? Why not try it?

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#158

Post by michaelt »

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

> Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest.

Perhaps what they mean is "nobody is paying for the browser (except Google, our arch-nemesis) we need to build things people will pay for"

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#159

Post by Yoric »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #91
esarbe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a browsers requires developers, developers cost money. Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.

Yup; Google / Chrome, Apple / Safari + webkit, and Microsoft / Edge get away with it because their browser is not their product, it's an extra. For Google its original intent was to make the internet faster so that people would see more ads. Firefox needs a company behind it whose income is not tied to the browser. I don't believe you can monetize a browser, not without doing some dodgy shit like forcing search engin…

You can't by Mozilla. It's a non-profit. There are no shares.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#160

Post by konaraddi »

err4nt wrote: post #99
esarbe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a browsers requires developers, developers cost money. Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.

I wonder what percentage of their bottom line comes from goodwill donations from individuals, versus the millions they get each year from Google and various other search companies they have contracts with - in some recent past years Google has been funding like 90%+ of their budget haven't they?

There's Mozilla Foundation and there's Mozilla Corporation (the corporation is a subsidiary of the foundation). For Mozilla Corporation:

> In CY 2018, Mozilla Corporation generated $435.702 million from royalties, subscriptions and advertising revenue compared to $542 million in CY 2017.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ (I couldn't find a more up-to-date annual report)

For Mozilla Foundation:

> The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations and 2% of annual net revenues from the Mozilla Corporation, amounting to over US$8.3 million in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing

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