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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#561

Post by betterunix2 »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #506
nugget wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like an addict, Mozilla became dependent upon the revenue they earned from their Google and Yahoo search deals. Search compliance requirements then prevented them from innovating in the areas you mentioned (and others). Mozilla had an opportunity to reduce the search dependency and transition to a subscription business around 2014-2015 when the paid consumer VPN market started to scale, but based on the internal ince…

While this seems largely factual, it's certainly not a generous interpretation. I view Mozilla as a privacy leader in a very small market dominated by giants. Microsoft gets users for free thanks to Windows, Apple does the same twice as well thanks to iOS, Mac and the browser not being complete cancer. Chrome has Google and YouTube to drive its users, not to mention first mover advantage in the industry. What does Mo…

Ironically streaming services work hard to detect and block VPN endpoints in order to enforce geofencing.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#563

Post by elric »

cglong wrote: post #445
elric wrote: post #353

The cynic in me can't help but wonder if this "new focus on making money" is why they suddenly decided to cripple the android version of firefox.

Can you elaborate?

The new FF version for android is a toy. All advanced features have been removed. Virtually no addons are available. No more about:config. The home screen is a joke ("collections" instead of my previously opened tab? What's that about?). Opening a new tab does not place the focus in the address bar, and the "new tab" button and the address bar are on opposite ends of the screen, resulting in very awkward finger movements. I got so angry in the first hour of using it that I uninstalled it. It's the worst browsing experience I've had since before IE4.

It's so bad that maybe it's deliberate in an attempt to sell the missing features as addons or a pro version or something? At least I hope that's what it is, otherwise I don't understand the move at all.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#564

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

0xcoffee wrote: post #299
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #121

I wish they would get their "Send" feature up & running again. It's so simple for one-off's, better than DropBox. https://send.firefox.com/

I agree, this is the only Mozilla service I ever used. However https://transfer.sh/ is a good alternative.

Just looked at transfer.sh, and it seems like a much WORSE alternative. The best thing about Firefox Send was the simple end-to-end encryption where I could upload the file, then just send someone the (secure) 1-time only download URL. Looks like transfer.sh doesn't support any encryption on its own, you have to do all your encryption/decryption on your own.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#565

Post by notriddle »

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

As long as most of Firefox's users interact with Google web properties, Mozilla are screwed. Google properties work better in Chrome, and will even directly advertise Chrome.

I'm pretty sure this was their direct reason for buying Pocket. It gives something for Firefox users to interact with that isn't actively and passively trying to get them to switch off.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#566

Post by adventured »

segphault wrote: post #432

Over the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME. They also ended up following rather than leading on key privacy issues like third-party cookie behavior. In every case, they defended these decisions by saying that they couldn't risk losing users, arguing that these issues weren't h…

> And now, because Mozilla didn't choose a hill to die on, they are going to die on no hill at all.

The part you get wrong is that they were always going to die, hill or no hill. It has been a slow grind downward as Firefox has practically vanished as a product among mainstream Internet users. It's merely slowly going to the same grave as Opera and IE. Chrome won, on both the desktop and mobile. The only major holdout is the Apple ecosystem with Safari, because Apple can do what it likes.

What else is Mozilla other than Firefox? Not much in terms of revenue sources.

I've been using Firefox daily for 15 or so years, and I've watched as everyone I know stopped using it one after another. Chrome is a good browser for most purposes, the average user - which is what Firefox requires for Mozilla to stay alive financially - doesn't care about the things you apparently think they do.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#567

Post by toomuchtodo »

kibwen wrote: post #507
renewiltord wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

> Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. Precisely this, and it's been apparent for a long, long time. The lesson that organizations should learn from watching Mozilla's reception in tech circles is this: never, ever, ever market to power users…

> never, ever, ever market to power users; casual users are more numerous and less demanding.

Truth.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#568

Post by btown »

zobzu wrote: post #298
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

After several years at Mozilla I eventually realized that the leader, not to name them, cares about fame, power and money, even more than "evil big corporations". That it makes a browser that is good for the web is a side effect. The people that brought balance got gradually left go or left out of disgust, allowing that leader to grow their compensation unchecked (2.5M a year now). I had a lot of respect for them whe…

Not the parent poster, but I'll provide https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo... (page 52) as accompanying evidence specifically for the $2.5M claim. Mitchell Baker's compensation totalled $2.48M in 2018, with the second-highest-paid executive, Mark Surman, making only $322k.

That page does note that Baker was "paid only by related for-profit" - but at best that introduces a conflict of interest.

As I've never been at Mozilla, I can't confirm any of the other details. And I'll say that any large-scale technology company needs to strike a balance between product focus and the degree to which it controls the conversation around its space, and Mozilla's investment in things like Rust will have a lasting positive impact on the software engineering discipline. But it's also clear that the environment was toxic enough to make at least one person (the parent poster) feel this way, and that itself is a yellow flag.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#569

Post by MikusR »

yborg wrote: post #467
zobzu wrote: post #376

Mozilla 2010: "join us, don't work for the man, work for mankind!" (this was their actual slogan) Mozilla 2020: "well actually, work for the man" (or woman in this case) Sadly, even with Mozilla Foundation getting 40M in donations they need the Corporation to pay the bills (including Mitchell Baker's 2.5M/y salary) The fact that this makes it less likely Firefox continues to be competition for Chrome is bad news for…

The "new focus" isn't that new, it's been the same since Baker became CEO, and it's a focus on making Mitchell Baker really, really rich. Mozilla's privacy branding is in direct conflict with Baker's vision of some kind of corporate entity that can pay her a lot of money. Apple can do this because they are filthy rich themselves, Mozilla's puny market share means that increasing their revenue will require them to use…

Funniest thing is that LibreOffice itself will soon also need a fork.
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