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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#331

Post by mcv »

ghusto wrote: post #68
herobird wrote: post #17

It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.

Which alternatives though? On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives.

There are a ton of Firefox forks, especially in order to keep Firefox but without these sort of shenanigans.

The only problem is: what's the difference between the forks, and which is the best? I have no idea.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#333

Post by jamespo »

tjpnz wrote: post #203
concinds wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't monetize a browser. They have to keep trying to create new products, but they inevitably fail. Pocket, FirefoxOS, Persona, all dead. This new stuff will fail too, because Mozilla has no USP and no way to create a best-in-class product in any market. So they rely on imitating what everyone else is doing, but with more "crunchy" vibes ("values", "trust", "we're a nonprofit") because that's the only angle they…

Fork Firefox, bundle uBlock Origin, Sponsor Block et el and sell it is a consumer web security product (that's not complete shit) with a monthly subscription. Use some of the proceeds to support the devs working on the underlying tech, similar to what Valve are doing for Wine, Proton and Fex. Bonus points: 1. Multi layered approach to dealing with ads and other malware. 2. A committment to no AI or other bloat - that…

Charging for a browser died with Netscape in 1998

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#334

Post by rightbyte »

mrtksn wrote: post #305
MindDraft wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while i may agree with the first line, rest are little skewed perspective. > People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions. hate subscription?? may be. if it's anything like Adobe then yes, people will hate. that constant update, is something planted by these corporates, and their behavior manipulation tactics. People were happily paying for perpetual software, which they can "…

People weren't happily paying, there was huge pirate business that was run on porn, gambling ads and spyware revenue. Then there were organizations with lots of lawyers paid by the "pay once use forever" companies to enforce the pay part because people didn't want to pay. One time fee software ment that once your growth slows down you no longer make money and have plenty of customers to support for free. That's why t…

> One time fee software ment that once your growth slows down you no longer make money and have plenty of customers to support for free.

What do you mean. Support contracts were not included by default. Consumers had some initial support to fight off instant reclamations.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#336

Post by mrweasel »

colesantiago wrote: post #38

The state of Mozilla's current 'products': Firefox Mozilla VPN Mozilla Monitor Firefox Relay MDN Plus Thunderbird - Some of these products are just repackaged partnerships. - Firefox - Funded by Google with the search partnership bringing in $500M in revenue. (free) Mozilla VPN - Repackaged Mullvad VPN and using Mullvad servers. Mozilla Monitor - Repackaged HaveIBeenPwned. (free) Firefox Relay - No different to Simpl…

Part of the "problem" is that people don't care about any of those products, except Firefox.

Mozilla needs to figure out how much they need to maintain Firefox, nothing else. I suspect that's not the entirety of the $200 million they currently spend on "development costs". Everything else they receive in donations and partnership fees should go directly into an investment portfolio which will be used to keep Firefox development active in the future.

If they didn't care about anything else, the Google money could fund Firefox for at least two years per yearly fee.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#337

Post by tziki »

arnaudsm wrote: post #328

There's an elephant in the room: why is maintaining a web browser costing $400M/y? The web standards are growing faster than non-profit engines can implement them. Google & Apple are bloating the web specs in what looks like regulatory capture. If Blink/Webkit dominate for long enough, they will lock everything down with DRMs & WEI. Maybe it's time to work on lighter protocols like Gopher & Gemini that don't need 20G…

Having a "lighter standard" simply means people will have to write native apps, one per platform. I understand Apple wants this, but for Mozilla that should be the antithesis of what they're trying to achieve.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#338

Post by shaky-carrousel »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #280
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like how he assumes that a free internet must be ad-supported. The ad-supported web is hideous, even with their ads removed. A long, convoluted, inane mess of content. On the other hand, the clean web feels more direct, to the point, and passionate. I prefer to read content written by passion, not by money seeking purposes.

If something is free (en masse), you are probably a product. If you don't want to be a product you need to give something out instead, like ads.

That's not correct. Linux is free, almost all open source is, many projects, websites are done out of passion.

I contribute to open source projects and nobody "gave me something", as I did it because I wanted to make it better. Like me, there are many others. Nobody is "the product" there.

What the saying you are misrepresenting means is "carefully check free things as you may be the product". Not "free things cannot exist, you either are the product or you pay".

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#339

Post by eesmith »

concinds wrote: post #43
dom96 wrote: post #6

Genuinely can someone with knowledge of the business explain why they aren't simply doubling down on making Firefox better? Is there an existential problem facing them that they are trying to solve by adding AI into the browser?

You can't monetize a browser. They have to keep trying to create new products, but they inevitably fail. Pocket, FirefoxOS, Persona, all dead. This new stuff will fail too, because Mozilla has no USP and no way to create a best-in-class product in any market. So they rely on imitating what everyone else is doing, but with more "crunchy" vibes ("values", "trust", "we're a nonprofit") because that's the only angle they…

What they could do is get funding from sovereign tech funds.

I don't think the rest of the world likes their dependencies on US companies and their love for surveillance.

Of course, to do it right means ensuring there's enough non-US organizational structure with the know-how to take over the project should things go pear-shaped, and oversight to spot of the pear is taking shape.

But that's what governments can do, assuming they don't want to be under the thumb of the US. ("Oh, you think tariffs are bad? We'll do to you like we did those ICC judges and shut off all your accounts.")

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#340

Post by Raed667 »

lxgr wrote: post #41

>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission. > It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”. Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M US…

I have seen these discussions in companies where privacy is the selling point.

These kind of questions usually come from non-engineers, people in product or sales who see privacy as a feature or marketing point, and if the ROI is higher they don't give a fuck and would pitch anything that would make a buck

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