Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

What could possibly be more important at "ensur[ing] the internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all" than keeping competition and choice in browsers, which forces web technology openness and standards?

We've already seen Google's web integrity moves coming, and we can no doubt expect more of that as they continue to dominate. A world with only Chromium-based browsers is one where Google can implement anything they fancy. To me the importance of that overshadows anything else Mozilla can do (that I can think of at least).

Chrome blatant spyware that scans your whole pc ever since google had the bright idea of sneaking an "antivirus" into chrome and enabling it by default. Firefox is better that chrome, but there's lots better than firefox.

Having said that, Mitchell was instrumental to several very important things, not all of them in the distant past. She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing. (I do think that $7 million per year is pretty gross, though, especially given the current "state of Mozilla".)

Having said that, $7 million for a CEO who isn't earning it really isn't Mozilla's biggest problem, and it's not even its biggest financial problem. If you really want to be critical of its spending, consider this:

The annual budget for marketing and branding every year falls between $30 and $60 million. Per year. This is Mozilla. Empirically, it may as well not even have a marketing department.

When Chrome really started eating into Firefox marketshare 10+ years ago, one of the things that Mozilla folks used to complain about (a lot) is that Chrome's effective* marketing budget was higher* than Mozilla's total budget—browser development and other software eng. included. The perverse thing is that the same is true of Mozilla: you could take its annual marketing budget, pour it into a different org that works on a different browser, and what you could get out of it is an independent browser development company. What's more is that you could without too much difficulty get that company not only to profitable status in pretty short order (given that kind of budget), but get it to usage share that matches Firefox's own (given how low that is). This would take something like 3, 4, 5 years max, provided you have competent leadership.

That's the sort of profligate spending and a lot of other poor decisionmaking at Mozilla that really needs to be addressed if Mozilla is going to turn around. (I have given up hope that this is ever going to happen. I expect it not to.) People hardly talk about this aspect of the business, however—instead focusing on how much Mitchell is getting paid, which, to reiterate, is not in any sense the biggest problem that Mozilla is facing.

-- former Mozillian