Mozilla needs some of that Brave and Opera energy. They have their issues too, but at least they try not to be just a worse chrome.
>that Brave and Opera energy
Closed source adware and crypto scams?!
Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
251–260 of 851 posts
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Because Chrome was built by the world's biggest advertising company. If the World Wildlife Fund started selling ivory to pay the bills, would that not be surprising?
That analogy doesn't really work, though: Mozilla's goal is not specifically to fight against online advertising. Ad-blocking is connected to their goals, definitely, but they clearly have to make compromises, and I'm not that surprised that they'd think about that one.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#253Mozilla CEO compensations
2018: $2,458,350
2020: Over $3 million
2021: $5,591,406.
2022: $6,903,089.
2023: ~$7m
Mozilla declined to detail the CEO's salaries for 2024+
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox has a market share around 3%. Even most technologists stopped using it long ago. Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. Nothing can kill Firefox, because it’s already dead for all practical purposes.
This 3% number is deceptive. The whole desktop market is cratering. I was talking to a reddit mod a few months ago. He was looking at the subreddit stats. 95% of his users were on mobile. Think about that. We desktop users are dinosaurs. So FireFox having a 3% market share might actually mean more than half of desktop users are on FireFox.
I can't imagine browsing the web on my phone and tablet without Firefox mobile. That would honestly be the biggest loss once this CEO takes this nonsense to the logical end.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#255I'm going to repost/merge a few comments I made about this a while ago:
I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
Mozilla has hired a lot of execs from Meta and bought an ad company, looking through a lot of their privacy policy at the time, a lot of it involves rewriting it to say that they can serve you sponsored suggestions when you're searching for things in their search bar and stuff and sharing out some of that data with third parties etc.
Firefox was bringing in half a billion a year for the last decade, if they would've just invested that money in low risk money market accounts (instead of paying their csuite executives millions of dollars in salary and putting the rest on non-Firefox related related social causes), the company would be able to easily survive off the interest alone.
I've been using Firefox since 2006 and have defended it for decades even when they've made questionable decisions that have gotten everybody upset with them. But this time it wasn't just making stupid decisions to try and fund the company, this time they actuality sold out their own customers.
In public announcement in the above link explaining why they removed "we don't sell your data" from the FAQ, the rationality was that some jurisdictions define selling data weirdly, they cited California's definition as an example but California's definition is exactly what I would consider the definition of selling my personal data.
They're justifying this by saying that they need it to stay alive since they're not going to be getting money from Google anymore, but I argue that you shouldn't sell out your customer base on the very specific reason anyone would choose you. I would rather pay a monthly fee to use Firefox to support them, but even if you gave them $500 million today they would just squander it away like they've done since forever so I really don't have any solution I can think of which frustrates me.
I switched to Orion (and use Safari if a site doesn't work in Orion), which can be a little buggy at times but I'm happy that it's not based on chrome at least.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#256This Mozilla fiasco has convinced me that being a nonprofit isn't enough. We need a web browser that is actively hostile towards corporations and surveillance capitalism.
Starting with a strong copyleft license helps a lot. See Blender being GPL.
How so? Corporate and surveillance capitalism's infrastructure is built on copyleft software. The equivocation of license dogmatism with social good and sustainability that those movements were never actually aligned with is part of what's left socially minded technologies and communities so vulnerable to the predation that led the web to this current mess.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interpretation is not the problem. Whether he will do it, is actually secondary to the fact that he thinks cutting adblock can bringing in money. No, it will just kill the browser. The fact he thinks otherwise tells me how out of touch he is.
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I don't think HN comments have an irrational burning pit of hate for Mozilla. If Mozilla was shaped more like the Tor foundation in their words and actions I think a lot more people would be supportive.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the current state of the Chrome family of browsers and the anti adblocker stance from Google, i'd think that alone would guarantee Firefox a steady user base. Not sure how users cope with Chrome-based browsers and intrusive ads.
That's just a wishful thinking. Too many ordinary users accept ads as inevitable annoyances and don't even know about the very existence of adblockers.
Maybe because they don't know any better.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their Google dependency is their existential problem. They're limited by what they can do with "making Firefox better" while effectively being a client state. An off the books Google department. Doomed to forever being a worse funded Chrome because they can't do too much to anger their patron. By selling browser UI real estate to AI companies[0] they reduce the power Google has over them. If they get to the point whe…
Is there any prove for Googles influence on their development you outline here?
Google pay Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars each year to place Google as the default browser. It's by far their biggest income stream. In 2023 it was reported as 75% of their revenue.
There's no world in which 75% of your revenue coming from Google doesn't influence what you do. Even if it's not the main driver of all decisions, pissing off Google is a huge risk for them.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#260Mozilla needs some of that Brave and Opera energy. They have their issues too, but at least they try not to be just a worse chrome.
>that Brave and Opera energy Closed source adware and crypto scams?!
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own,”
Bruce Lee