I'm saddened by the sudden and intermittent disappearance of ReviewMeta, which prided itself as not inserting affiliate links into their site/extension. Reading this news leads me to believe that this is a perfect fit in accordance with Mozilla's overall mission, making this a good outcome for something that could've easily been exploited by a bad actor making the acquisition.
Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
31–40 of 384 posts
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#32I'd really love for Mozilla to focus on actually... you know... building a web browser. There are 1,000's of issues firefox needs to improve, from integrating native gnome-keyring support, to performance, to porting to rust, to... Let me PM or run Mozilla for a year. We won't buy any more companies, and we're going to focus on engineering.
I'm confused, are you assuming that this acquisition is what is preventing those things from happening?
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#33I'd really love for Mozilla to focus on actually... you know... building a web browser. There are 1,000's of issues firefox needs to improve, from integrating native gnome-keyring support, to performance, to porting to rust, to... Let me PM or run Mozilla for a year. We won't buy any more companies, and we're going to focus on engineering.
Why do you expect this from Mozilla but not Microsoft, Google, Apple,...?
Is this a serious question? Mozilla is mostly known for its web browser, and historically this was always the case. Microsoft is known for its OS and office suite, Google is known for search (and many other things), and Apple for its iDevices. None of these companies has ever been a browser-first company, so I wouldn't expect any of them to focus primarily on building a web browser.
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mediocre web browsers aren't making them money though. The search partnership royalties are. If it is still making them money, why try harder? Is Firefox-centric Mozilla still relevant in 2023? No, not really. People also assume that x is a distraction to the goal of y, but why would it be? If it hasn't happened yet, it probably isn't going to. At this point, they arguably lost the browser war, even if they made a gr…
> Mediocre web browsers aren't making them money though. The search partnership royalties are. If it is still making them money, why try harder? Wouldn't they get more royalties if they could attract more users to their web browser?
It's a coin-flip. Google could just decide to pull the deal if consumers end up using AI more than search engines. AI is the next warfront for Google.
The browser war isn't going to be won by Mozilla at this point. It's been and gone. Most consumers live in non-browser apps most of the time.
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#35Wow, Mozilla is acquiring a side-project that's actually useful? Color me pleased. Beats wasting time on an a commodity VPN service.
Their VPN is just reselling someone else's service, minimal effort invested while opening a mainstream service that actually provides an income stream. Seems like a solid strategy to me.
It also helps that the service they're re-selling is actually good.
(Mullvad, if you weren't aware)
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#36Will this acquisition enable Fakespot to focus on their core offering instead of continuing to sell user search and purchase data?
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#37I'd really love for Mozilla to focus on actually... you know... building a web browser. There are 1,000's of issues firefox needs to improve, from integrating native gnome-keyring support, to performance, to porting to rust, to... Let me PM or run Mozilla for a year. We won't buy any more companies, and we're going to focus on engineering.
This seems incredibly naive. Why can't 1500 people work on two things at once?
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
the general state of firefox suggests that they are not large enough to do more than one thing.
What state is that? I’ve been very satisfied with FF over the past 5 years.
Basic keyboard shortcuts that worked in the 90s don't work on Firefox Android.
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#39I'd really love for Mozilla to focus on actually... you know... building a web browser. There are 1,000's of issues firefox needs to improve, from integrating native gnome-keyring support, to performance, to porting to rust, to... Let me PM or run Mozilla for a year. We won't buy any more companies, and we're going to focus on engineering.
Why do you expect this from Mozilla but not Microsoft, Google, Apple,...?
Which of those three corporations are non-profits chartered for a specific purpose with an additional implied social contract with their contributors and users?
Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect Mozilla is large enough that they can do more than one thing at once. Some finance and legal people spending time on an acquisition is not the reason they haven't integrated gnome-keyring.
Yes, they can work on many things simultaneously but it is worrisome when the execution of their core product fails [1] it shows a big management failure. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+market+share&oq=fire...
Market share is not always indicative of execution. There is a reasonable argument that their browser market share decreasing or not growing should prompt diversification of their business rather than doubling down on something that is not showing great returns on investment.