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They make 90% of their revenue from Google paying to have Google be the default web search on FF. A deal which is expiring in 2021 and hadn't yet been renewed.
The deal was renewed today[1], which makes the layoffs that much more baffling. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...
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i wonder when the other shoe will drop. maybe as part of the ARM and iOS/macOS consolidation. things are much more likely to go the iOS route given it's already ARM.
i wonder when the other shoe will drop. maybe as part of the ARM and iOS/macOS consolidation. There’s no other shoe. There's no known technical reason why all the major browsers shouldn't be available natively when ARM Macs start shipping in a few months.
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Why call it corporate speak, when it's plain old lying?
Many people consider that synonymous. Hell, if anything i tend to consider corporate speak to be even more damning than a lie.
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Firefox is open source and it doesn't need to be tied to Mozilla. Maybe a fork is necessary.
How do you finance its development?
It is very, very okay that ubiquitous and greatly loved projects do one or two things well.
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> The instant Google decides they're no longer useful, Mozilla is going to go poof. People keep repeating this but couldn't Bing replace Google as the default? The "default search engine" position is actually worth money.
The reason they keep going back to Google is they are willing to cut the biggest check. A few years back they tried kicking the Google habit... it didn't work. So barring new developments, Mozilla's prospects are significantly diminished should Google lose interest. Right now, it's apparently still worth half a billion a year to Google for the appearance of competition.
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For Apple, Microsoft, and Google, their open source activities are all loss leaders for their profitable ventures. Apple sells hardware, and most of their software offerings, like MacOS, their office suite, and Safari, and given away to convince people to buy that hardware. Also, it's not like they're spending a whole lot of time making Sarafi the best browser around. Microsoft's web browser was created (and bundled)…
Is open source a loss leader for Apple, really? Or is it something they mostly get for free, but have to contribute a little back to shape it how they want? The point I read from GP, at least, was that open source is cheap for these big corps because they get a ton of benefit for it, but non-profit (either orgs or individuals) are bearing the brunt of the cost.
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The deal was renewed today[1], which makes the layoffs that much more baffling. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...
Then it was a negotiation tactic. Mozilla showed that they don't desperately need the money because they are willing to cut all expenses. Thus, Google can't play the 'take whatever we offer or you will be bankrupt in 2021'-card. Firing the developers should have led to a better deal and they can now silently rehire them back.
I think they were using the funding excuse as a way to cut staff without looking like bad guys. Reality is they were already deep in talks with Google on resigning and did the job cuts before finalizing.
They're probably doomed if the exact correct choices aren't made, I'm in that unpopular crowd that believes they should find a way to graft Firefox's presentation and features on top of Chromium to save on Gecko maintenance costs, and then continue to monetize with side products like their VPN and Rust (consulting). They should sell Pocket.
Marketshare gains will take time, that's a long hard road but it'll be based on features and privacy. If Microsoft couldn't hold off Chromium with EdgeHTML, then a smaller player won't be able to. There's still Webkit if de facto standards are a worry. Mozilla isn't the well-positioned, deep-pocketed player that should be offering choice in the rendering engine market.
This shows that open-source in general is expensive for Mozilla but cheap for the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google who own their own Web browsers and have other open-source programming languages maintained by some of their employees full time. The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant sources of revenue. Maybe…
> " The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant sources of revenue. Maybe they should turn into a Rust consultancy of some sort. I don't know. " The odds of them being able to build a business that that replaces the several hundred million they get from Google (which is essentially pure profit, not even revenue) are…
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Apple, Microsoft, and Google: * Forbid alternative browser engines on their platform. * Bundle their browser in a leading operating system. * Use their massive Web properties to drive downloads of their own browser.
Microsoft and Google allow alternative browser engines. Apple does not.