Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lunduke.locals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 349 posts

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

#261

Post by mort96 »

Osmose wrote: post #210
mort96 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the general critique is: the performance of a CEO should be tied somehow to the performance of the company, yet year after year, the company performs worse while CEO compensation goes up.

Right, but part of my point with #2 and #3 there is that "browser share" is a really poor choice for the performance metric in question to tie compensation to. Browsers just duking it out on features and ease of use is not how the browser market works—Google can and does leverage their dominance in non-browser markets to boost their browser, and Mozilla is not going to raise their browser share against tactics like t…

I think you've more or less hit the nail on the head. Computer/FOSS nerds (like myself) want to see Mozilla do good engineering and also gain browser market share; that's "good performance" to us. Investors want more revenue and better and more diversified revenue streams; that's "good performance" to them.

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

#262

Post by lern_too_spel »

freedomben wrote: post #157
woodruffw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this?

Not linkable, just my memory from a podcast interview at the time. IIRC the firing wasn't the only reason to go Chromium-based, but it made the decision a lot easier

If it were any reason at all, Brave would have chosen Chromium to start with. It didn't.

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

#263

Post by chiefalchemist »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #149
chiefalchemist wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. What would be lost if they used Chromium as well? Sure, there would be a lack of competition but at this point the browser is the fuel of the internet. We don't have multiple different type of gasoline, or home heating oil. The browser - sans Google Chrome's "spyware" - is a commodity. I'd rather see Mozilla focus on privacy, etc. My dream is for them to add a privacy-centric email product, a robust enough off…

> We don't have multiple different type of gasoline We have diesel and gasoline at least. However the key difference ethere is somewhat different: We have independent supply lines, starting at different oil fields, going through different refineries, into different distribution networks, which ensures that there is some competition (even oligopolic is better than plain monopoly) and supply chain attacks on one vendor…

Perhaps, but Firefox is an independent and it has trouble. Now. Right?

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

#264

Post by wannacboatmovie »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #89
harpiaharpyja wrote: post #76

I feel like this question is a decade too late, but FF is open source right? Why hasn't Mozilla been jettisoned years ago?

Because despite what everybody seems to think, Mozilla spends several hundred millions of dollars every year developing Firefox, and that's not the kind of thing the community can just fork and replace.

WHAT? That seems like a gross misuse of funds because they're definitely not spending hundreds of millions fixing bugs. They must be spending it on useless changes like the 300th UI refresh no one asked for. Firefox still sucks in every way imaginable and it's not measurably getting better. That number is shockingly unbelievable. Their crapware is not worth that budget.

For comparison, look at what the OpenBSD team has accomplished (and continues to accomplish) with a small core team and they surely do not have hundreds of millions.

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

#265

Post by woodruffw »

sharps1 wrote: post #258
woodruffw wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right; nobody is claiming that Firefox is doing well. But that downward trend is not proportionate with the claimed global downward trend; it's much smaller.

Firefox has lost over 20 million users in 2 years. Jan 3 2021 210,085,100 Jan 1 2023 193,199,300 Dec 17 2023 185,599,100

I can read. The point is that the number doesn't translate: 7.5 million lost users over 2023 doesn't correspond to a 0.75% decline in global browser presence. 7.5 million is a tiny fraction of that.

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

#266

Post by sjfjsjdjwvwvc »

PsylentKnight wrote: post #223
sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to believe that.. Same as next year will be the year of mass adoption of Linux by consumers. Yet history and trends point in the other direction

The recent Unity-Godot debacle would seem to indicate to me that titans aren't invincible. They can do a lot of harm to themselves when they overestimate how much people want or need their product. Switching from Chrome to Firefox isn't even nearly as difficult as switching from Unity to Godot (or say, from Windows to Linux). For the average user, Chrome and Firefox are functionally identical. If Chrome kicks off Adb…

Agreed it’s not a fair comparison. And I would love if Firefox gets more adoption (again)!

I have converted a lot of people in my bubble - also in general FF seems a lot more popular in EU than in the US, not sure why…

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

#267

Post by Osmose »

mort96 wrote: post #261
Osmose wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but part of my point with #2 and #3 there is that "browser share" is a really poor choice for the performance metric in question to tie compensation to. Browsers just duking it out on features and ease of use is not how the browser market works—Google can and does leverage their dominance in non-browser markets to boost their browser, and Mozilla is not going to raise their browser share against tactics like t…

I think you've more or less hit the nail on the head. Computer/FOSS nerds (like myself) want to see Mozilla do good engineering and also gain browser market share; that's "good performance" to us. Investors want more revenue and better and more diversified revenue streams; that's "good performance" to them.

To be clear, Mozilla has no investors, the corporation is wholly-owned by the non-profit foundation. The value of a diversified revenue stream here is the ability to sustain the Foundation/Corporation and all of its projects, including Firefox, for the foreseeable future without the risk of Google just deciding to not renew their search deal and cripple the corporation any time it wants.

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

#268

Post by NegativeLatency »

nottorp wrote: post #207
NegativeLatency wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is fine (if you have a Mac), it’s great on battery life and I actually use it for web dev. If you’re happy with Firefox I’d say just keep using it.

It's not. No uBlock Origin.

Yes that’s true, I do miss it but I’ve found 1Blocker and adguard home to be sufficient

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

#269

Post by squarefoot »

waterhouse wrote: post #214
jqpabc123 wrote: post #52

To the casual observer, it appears the CEO is being paid/rewarded to shed Firefox users. Who would want them to do that?

Well, nearly all of Mozilla's revenue (I see numbers around 80-90%) comes from Google. And Google presumably doesn't mind if Firefox users switch to Chrome. I'm not sure if anyone involved actively considers this the goal, but it's possible that this creates some perverse incentives.

I just don't see how having their biggest revenue coming from their #1 competitor wrt browser adoption, can't create a plain and simple conflict of interests.

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

#270

Post by jeroen »

CharlesW wrote: post #53

Governments have been creating web/native/mobile apps for some time, which is a trend that continues to accelerate. Firefox continues to limp along but seemingly can't even retain its most ardent fans, and there's no sign of this changing. What if the EU were to fork Firefox (Openfox?) and fund its evolution of a privacy-first alternative? Among other benefits, this would: • Help ensure that key digital infrastructur…

- Keep Firefox alive as an alternative to Chrome. It doesn't feel like Mozilla is achieving that.

This has been on my mind for a long time. It would be good for everyone to have a real alternative to Chrome and it would be good for Europe to be less dependent on the US, as you mentioned.

In time, it might be possible to fund this off donations, but a bit of EU funding would go a long way to getting this off the ground. Unfortunately, the workings of EU funding programmes are a mystery to me.

Post reply on HN