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Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#831

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They do work on it. A lot. But the issue is browsers don't make money. You can't charge for it, you can't add ads to it, etc. You're competing with the biggest companies in the world (Google, Apple), all of whom are happy to subsidize a browser for other reasons.

> But the issue is browsers don't make money. What?! Browsers might as well be money printers! Have you heard how much money Google pays Apple to be the default search engine in Safari? The higher Firefox’s user numbers, the more money Mozilla can make from search engine deals. Conversely, if Mozilla keeps trying to push a bunch of other initiatives while Firefox languishes and bleeds users, Mozilla will make less mo…

On the other hand, we typically find it unfair that Google can buy their search supremacy by being the default search engine.

We can't complain about Mozilla taking the money from Google and at the same time complain because they take the money from Google :-).

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do work on it. A lot. But the issue is browsers don't make money. You can't charge for it, you can't add ads to it, etc. You're competing with the biggest companies in the world (Google, Apple), all of whom are happy to subsidize a browser for other reasons.

You can and you should. There are people that are happy to pay for email, for search, for videos, for news, for music. I don't see why there wouldn't be people happy to pay for a browser. The idea that software is free is completely wrong and should be something that an organization like Mozilla should combat. If software is free, there can be no privacy, it's as simple as that.

> I don't see why there wouldn't be people happy to pay for a browser.

I admittedly didn't check the numbers, but a comment in a sibling thread says that if Mozilla was to replace their revenue with donations, they would have to become one of the biggest charities in America.

Is that even realistic? Like would they make that kind of money just from donations?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#833
post #827

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Fully agree with this. - Mozilla SSL Certs - for corporations that don't want Let's Encrypt - Mozilla Mail - a reliable Exchange/Google Mail alternative (desperately needed imo) - Thunderbird for iOS - why is this not a thing yet? - Mozilla Search - metasearch that isn't based on Bing/DDG/Google - Mozilla HTTPS DNS - although Cloudflare will probably always do this better All seemingly low-hanging fruit with brand al…

> All seemingly low-hanging fruit with brand alignment. Genuinely interested: are you a developer? Doesn't sound like low-hanging fruit to me. There are already many alternatives to Gmail, I don't think Mozilla would make a lot of money there. And I don't know if they are making a lot of money with their Mozilla VPN (which I understand is a wrapper around Mullvad): why would I pay Mozilla instead of Mullvad? There ar…

A reliable, corporate-friendly, with advanced support model alternative of Exchange + AD is something that could sink a titan like Microsoft in 2 decades, at least its non-cloud business (but then for cloud alone they are just one of many, nothing special there).

Literally everybody is fu*king fed up with M$ arrogance. But you can't get rid of Active Directory and Exchange. Make comparable alternative (with say 80% of most used use cases, no need to die on some corner case hill) and many many corporations will come.

This won't come from some startup, it has to be a company like Mozilla.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#834
post #790

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lots of people seem to trust apple

Apple has actually proven itself over a long period of time on this issue. Maybe Mozilla has as well (do they encrypt telemetry logs etc for people with a Mozilla login?) but I haven't heard so much about that.

Did you really forgot about Snowden's Apple slide? Also their phones are routinely mirrored at the border. Just to support the unconstitutional government agenda of policing thoughts and speech.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#835
post #718

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Firefox is still heavily used by Linux OSes as the default browser. But I think that's mostly momentum at this point. If more people knew about Mozilla's organizational challenges, then I think Firefox would get ditched.

If they like the browser, why would they care about organizational challenges? Do Google's organization challenges cost them Chrome users?

Do they like the browser, or do they like the fact that it's not owned by Google?

When I use Firefox, either it's because I don't have a choice (my distro doesn't ship Chromium in a way I like, i.e. not Flatpak) or because I make an effort to "support" Firefox. But once in a while, I need to use Chrom(ium) because the website doesn't work on Firefox. Not that it is necessarily Firefox' fault, but the fact remains that if Chrome was an independent non-profit, I would most likely use Chrome and not Firefox.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#836
post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All seemingly low-hanging fruit with brand alignment. Genuinely interested: are you a developer? Doesn't sound like low-hanging fruit to me. There are already many alternatives to Gmail, I don't think Mozilla would make a lot of money there. And I don't know if they are making a lot of money with their Mozilla VPN (which I understand is a wrapper around Mullvad): why would I pay Mozilla instead of Mullvad? There ar…

A reliable, corporate-friendly, with advanced support model alternative of Exchange + AD is something that could sink a titan like Microsoft in 2 decades, at least its non-cloud business (but then for cloud alone they are just one of many, nothing special there). Literally everybody is fu*king fed up with M$ arrogance. But you can't get rid of Active Directory and Exchange. Make comparable alternative (with say 80% o…

Are you sure of that? There have been alternatives to Microsoft Office for decades. Yet most businesses use and pay for Microsoft Office, even though their employees most likely don't need anything that doesn't exist in those alternatives.

Why would it be different with email?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#837
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know for a fact that whenever Mozilla solicits feedback for AI additions, it heavily leans negative. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-f...

Yeah, but there's a selection bias present in most feedback like this, isn't there? People are more motivated to submit feedback when something annoys them. This is speaking as someone who is also annoyed by AI features.

That's a slightly different question, but an important one: the presence of a group criticizing a feature doesn't mean the absence of a different group requesting it!

When Mozilla initially made the Connect forums, it was to solicit requests for new features. I can't stress enough how few people joined the forum to request more AI in their browser.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do work on it. A lot. But the issue is browsers don't make money. You can't charge for it, you can't add ads to it, etc. You're competing with the biggest companies in the world (Google, Apple), all of whom are happy to subsidize a browser for other reasons.

> You can't charge for it They could try. I just keep hearing people who would pay for no extra features as long as it paid for actual Firefox development and not the random unrelated Mozilla projects. I would pay a subscription. But they don't let me.

The problem I (and others that I see here) have is the lack of trust in mozilla's model, esp long term. Their economic reliance in google, their repeatedly stated goals of trying to engineer ad-delivery systems that "respect privacy", their very high CEO salaries, and their random ventures do not inspire much trust, confidence and alignment in their goals. And also the unclear relationships with their for and non-profit parts.

If they can convince me that some subscription for firefox will strictly go for firefox development, that firefox will not pivot to ads (privacy respecting or not), and all the other stuff they have, including executives' salaries and whatnot, are completely separated, I would be more than happy to subscribe.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basic tolerance, it's not that hard. You do your job and collect your paycheck at the end of the week, same as everyone else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Could you summarize this into an argument of your own?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Mozilla Search - metasearch that isn't based on Bing/DDG/Google As much hate as Brave gets overall, I think Mozilla should take a page from Brave's book if they're going to make a search engine. I think they should have their own index, possibly supplemented by Bing or Google. Let people opt-in to using their browsers to help crawl for the search engine index, like Brave does. Then add in some power-user features…

They could partner with Kagi. Pretty much everyone trusts Kagi, so if Mozilla convinces them to get on board, Mozilla must be actually serious about being trustworthy.

Meh, my trust in Kagi is kinda shot, given that they seem to have forgotten that sales tax existed[0].

[0]: https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

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