[HN Gopher] Mozilla revenue 2021 increases 20%
___________________________________________________________________
Mozilla revenue 2021 increases 20%
Author : illiac786
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-11-18 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mozilla.org)
| pmarreck wrote:
| Firefox is a fantastic browser. Switched to it from Chrome about
| a year or 2 ago and haven't looked back. I run Nightly and it's
| the only browser installed on my main dev machine, a NixOS
| behemoth from System76 (Thelio Major).
| gamjQZnHT53AMa wrote:
| Threads about the finances of Mozilla are always full of
| criticism and begrudging. Yeah, they take money from Google, and
| that keeps them alive. Yeah, they would love to not be so reliant
| on them. This is old news. But while they are alive, and while
| Firefox continues development, Google have slightly less of a
| grip on the internet. That is undeniably a good thing. Mozilla
| getting paid by Google is a better scenario than Firefox being
| abandoned and Google controlling the browser engine space
| entirely.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >Look Mr. Government, we're not a monopoly. We have a
| competitor! *
|
| *Who were funding and have neutered to the point where they've
| lost 90% of their market share in the last 10 years. Have fired
| all their developers and are spending the money on spending
| that looks a lot like what GFX did.
|
| Mozilla is a dead weight around the neck of the internet. The
| best thing that can happen is that it dies and something new,
| run by people who actually make things, is created again.
|
| When was the last time anyone was excited about a firefox
| update?
| dzikimarian wrote:
| > Mozilla is a dead weight around the neck of the internet.
|
| How exactly are they dead weight?
| speed_spread wrote:
| Updates to existing browsers should not be exciting. I
| actually dread Chrome updates because they keep taking useful
| stuff away.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Almost nobody uses Firefox - it's Safari that keeps balance in
| the browser world.
| soperj wrote:
| Only because people are forced to.
| ianbutler wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
|
| To be fair, you are correct in the mobile space, and that is
| now the lion share of devices, but Firefox does have a
| healthy 7.5% usage in the desktop space if the metrics on
| this page are to be believed.
| tpush wrote:
| Why not just look at market share across all devices? Which
| makes chrisseaton's point: Firefox sits at 3.26% as opposed
| to Safari at 18.61%.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Even 3% of market share could be hundreds of millions of
| people. Browser market size is extremely large. That's
| hardly irrelevant.
|
| https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
| ianbutler wrote:
| Because mobile and desktop are different markets
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Because all browsers are Safari on the mobile platform
| that has 60% of market share in the US.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Well yeah that's a fact that supports the point. Why
| exclude it?
| [deleted]
| pmarreck wrote:
| I use Firefox across all my devices. It's fantastic. The
| people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps,
| "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely
| moved on from Chrome.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I use Firefox across all my devices.
|
| I'm sure you really tip the scales.
|
| > The people who actually care about browsers (and,
| perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all
| largely moved on from Chrome.
|
| Well then clearly most people don't care do they?
|
| Isn't that the point? Firefox isn't having a significant
| impact. They aren't achieving what they say they want to.
|
| Safari's having much more of an impact.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| > Safari's having much more of an impact.
|
| So what? Is there a limit to the number of browsers in
| the world?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| So what is it's Safari keeping balance not Firefox. The
| original comment wasn't right. You can't keep balance
| with single-digit market-share.
| roenxi wrote:
| They have a billion dollars in assets and are making $600
| million/annum if I'm reading their financial statement
| correctly. That is well into the 'corrupt until proven
| otherwise' range of wealth. Firefox's development needs orders
| of magnitude less than that, the browser's market share
| collapsed and it is notable that Eich [0] of all people went on
| to develop a browser based on Chrome after thinking about what
| would be the best base for a company. And Brave is at least
| trying things - it probably won't work but there is a vision
| there of reshaping the internet and toppling Google's
| advertising model. That could be Mozilla. It isn't.
|
| There is a lot of room here to criticise this project. It seems
| to be off the rails, and it is likely to go further off the
| rails.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
| chomp wrote:
| $600 million in revenue (across all subsidiaries), $200
| million on software development, $100 million on management,
| are you upset at Mozilla for running a healthy balance sheet?
| I'm confused about your complaint. Should Mozilla be packing
| itself to the gills with software developers for Firefox? It
| seems like they are trying to broaden their holdings and
| assets to build wealth for the company and Foundation so that
| they can become less reliant on Google.
|
| Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and was in a
| better position in 2015. I'm not seeing how this is can be
| made to an indictment of Mozilla corruption.
| rascul wrote:
| > Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and was in
| a better position in 2015.
|
| Actually they chose Gecko in 2015. Chromium came later on.
|
| https://brave.com/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/
| roenxi wrote:
| > ...are you upset at Mozilla for running a healthy balance
| sheet...
|
| Charitable foundations aren't supposed to be corporations.
| If we've got an entity like Mozilla running a healthy
| balance sheet it should be a public corporation that we can
| all be shareholders in. So yes, I am upset by that too
| although that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
|
| They've set up a situation where they are going to be
| corrupted. A billion dollars in assets attracts charlatans
| and they won't have sufficient defences to stop the money
| being siphoned off into pet projects and general
| shenanigans. There will probably turn out to be fraud
| involved sooner or later.
|
| > ... Eich chose Chromium because Webkit is dominant and
| was in a better position in 2015...
|
| As far as I care, their purpose is to make a good web
| browser. This is absolutely an indictment of Mozilla.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| >Charitable foundations aren't supposed to be
| corporations. If we've got an entity like Mozilla running
| a healthy balance sheet it should be a public corporation
| that we can all be shareholders in. So yes, I am upset by
| that too although that wasn't the point I was trying to
| make.
|
| >They've set up a situation where they are going to be
| corrupted. A billion dollars in assets attracts
| charlatans and they won't have sufficient defences to
| stop the money being siphoned off into pet projects and
| general shenanigans. There will probably turn out to be
| fraud involved sooner or later.
|
| It is very confusing what you want - you want Mozilla to
| be publicly traded so that you can share in its success
| (and open itself up to being corrupted), yet have an
| issue with it not being publicly traded?
|
| Do you just want to be upset?
| roenxi wrote:
| I don't want anything in particular, I walked away from
| Firefox a while ago so the failures of the Mozilla
| corporation don't affect me. Most former Firefox users
| are in the same boat if the stats are accurate. They
| could wind the whole foundation up and almost nobody
| would need to notice.
|
| But I don't think you can dispute the basic point here -
| there is a huge honeypot here to attract people with bad
| intentions, and they have failed to use it to promote any
| useful aims given the magnitude of the amount involved.
|
| > Do you just want to be upset?
|
| You've got me, I was bluffing. I'm not really upset. I
| just think it is bad form, philosophically. The
| foundation is failing at its goals, they shouldn't be
| trying to make a profit. If they want to make money they
| should start a normal company and have shareholders.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| > But I don't think you can dispute the basic point here
| - there is a huge honeypot here to attract people with
| bad intentions, and they have failed to use it to promote
| any useful aims given the magnitude of the amount
| involved.
|
| They may attract people with good intentions as well - or
| do you have to be starving to be pure of heart?
|
| PS: I don't see how they haven't promoted "any useful
| aims" - Firefox continues to exist, Rust exists, Let's
| Encrypt exists, and they are healthy. Those seem like
| promotions of useful aims.
|
| >The foundation is failing at its goals, they shouldn't
| be trying to make a profit.
|
| Profit is just what is left over after what needs to be
| paid for is spent. Would you rather they have no money
| left at the end of every day? How do you imagine that
| that works?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think I mostly agree. But let me play Satan's Lawyer for a
| moment:
|
| Google wants to avoid resembling a monopoly on browsers. But
| they also don't want competition. Keeping Mozilla on palliative
| care may actually be worse than letting it collapse, the
| monopoly becoming obvious, and regulatory bodies forcing
| corrections of the situation.
|
| (but who am I kidding, that won't happen... maybe in Europe)
| [deleted]
| heather45879 wrote:
| It's actually in Google's best interest to help keep Mozilla
| alive. Mozilla is an innovator and helps push the envelope
| with technologies like Rust and WASM. Friendly competition
| helps prevent stagnation and encourages innovation on both
| sides.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Mozilla may have been an innovator, but the servo team was
| fired, and so was a security team, while the CEO's salary
| roared and the market share dropped further[1].
|
| Maybe things have changed, idk.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865, contains
| all the links.
| 0x6c6f6c wrote:
| Re: Salary increase
|
| Their reasoning, whether or not you care to accept it,
| was that the executive level salary was _nowhere near_
| competitive in the market to hire or retain someone
| talented in that role.
| yoasif_ wrote:
| The Twitter post your link references has been deleted.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-
| changing-...
|
| ... laying off 250 staff:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mozilla-
| cutting-250-jobs...
| yoasif_ wrote:
| From CNET:
|
| >Mozilla restructured its security functions "to better
| ensure the security of Mozilla and its users," Mozilla
| said of the cut. "Some positions were eliminated as a
| result of this effort, but the teams responsible for the
| security of the Firefox browser and Firefox services were
| not been impacted."
|
| Seems relevant.
| yakubin wrote:
| Safari has a bigger influence when it comes to stopping
| Google from total dominance. Firefox is irrelevant market
| share-wise, however much I like its developer tools.
| soperj wrote:
| This is pretty much what they said about Microsoft w/r to
| Apple in the 90s no?
| pluc wrote:
| It's real odd to be the only alternative to Chrome yet be
| almost entirely funded by it. Google _allows_ Firefox to exist,
| and Google can decide it 's tired of sponsoring competition
| tomorrow morning. I don't like that Mozilla allows that to be
| their (and ours, and the web's) reality and isn't more
| adventurous in monetization. Also that they pay their CEO an
| outrageous amount of money, but I guess you're free to pick
| what your kneepads are going to be made of.
| therusskiy wrote:
| I want to love Mozilla and Firefox as it promotes diversity and
| standards for the web, but god do I hate Mozilla's marketing.
|
| It's completely outrage driven and feeds on fearmongering:
| "google bad, we good, give us money".
|
| Having spoken to people who work at Mozilla they say the
| management is pretty toxic which makes me think they are being
| hypocrites with their message.
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| 7.4M out of their 600M revenue is from contributions. I don't
| really see them soliciting donations either, so really they
| could have 0 donations starting tomorrow and be perfectly fine.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Some of the stuff on their blog feed is just very negative.
| Like why would you write a blog post about how to delete an
| account from another service? Just seems petty and vindictive
| and not really any of your business. Why do it?
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/how-to-delete-s...
|
| Then they have an apparent advert for Disney?
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/disney-and-pixars-turni...
|
| Remember when they forced an a creepy advert for some random TV
| show into everyone's browsers?
|
| It's all just a big unhinged.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Curiously, I actually like their reasoning behind the blog
| post:
|
| > With our lives so online, our digital space can get messy
| with inactive and unnecessary accounts -- and forgetting
| about them can pose a security risk.
|
| This is a good message about web hygiene. It does feel a bit
| negative, though, you're right. I wish they'd focus on more
| balance between "big tech bad" and "try this cool open source
| alternative" because there are SO many cool projects out
| there to help you manage a music library, or personal
| streaming, etc.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >"It's completely outrage driven and feeds on fearmongering:
| "google bad, we good, give us money"."
|
| Indeed and yet they don't have any problem taking hundreds of
| millions of dollars from Google in exchange for letting Google
| be their default search engine.[1] Talk about cognitive
| dissonance.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't think it's cognitive dissosance, if anything it
| showcases their point. Google is so dominant that even its
| competitors essentially exist only by virtue of being kept
| around by them.
|
| basically the browser version of the "you critize society,
| yet you have a phone" meme.
| gretch wrote:
| > its competitors essentially exist only by virtue of being
| kept around by them
|
| Just this competitor though...?
|
| Apple and Microsoft certainly don't exist purely by virtue
| of being kept around by Google.
| ygjb wrote:
| I mean, no, they don't. But Google pays $15B/year to be
| the default search engine. That's a hefty bill to keep
| Apple out of the search game.
| orra wrote:
| Microsoft don't write a browser engine. Apple lets theirs
| stagnate, and IIRC make a lot of money from the iOS
| default search engine.
| rascul wrote:
| > Microsoft don't write a browser engine.
|
| Well, they did, but they let it stagnate.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| they're not competitors. Apple leverages its equivalent
| position in the hardware/os space to _not compete_ (also
| has the same search deal as Firefox to the tune of
| billions anyway), and Microsoft ships you a reskinned
| chrome with its OS.
|
| Competitors was honestly a mistake on my part because
| you're right. Just this competitor as Firefox is the
| _only independent competitor left_ with significant
| usershare at all.
| cbtacy wrote:
| The Mozilla that sows fear and asks for money is Mozilla
| Foundation. The Mozilla that takes hundreds of millions for
| Google is Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla Foundation owns
| Mozilla Corporation, but with one exception they don't share
| employees and have very different cultures and have
| independent marketing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Sounds legit then, like FTX and Alameda.
| [deleted]
| pmarreck wrote:
| Taking money for a thing that most people would probably set
| to the default anyway is pretty much "free money" and I
| wouldn't fault them for taking it.
|
| Is there any search engine that approaches the quality of
| Google search results yet, or ideally, improves on them?
| bogomipz wrote:
| So you might as well take their money because they're a
| near monopoly anyways and in exchange for that money we
| will continue to make sure they stay a near monopoly? You
| don't see anything self-perpetuating in that? Why not
| duckduckgo or even startpage.com to least have an
| intermediary if they really care about these things?
| yoasif_ wrote:
| They had Yahoo! as a default for a decent amount of time.
| The got out because promised quality improvements didn't
| materialize, according to court filings.
| tomcam wrote:
| I vote they spend some of it on a drop-in HTML/CSS/JavaScript
| rendering lib
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
| opendomain wrote:
| what was the driver of this growth?
| sciurus wrote:
| To clarify for the sibling comments - Firefox active users
| hasn't grown.
|
| https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
|
| Revenue has grown, though. While I worked there, it fluctuated
| mostly based on how well Google was able to monetize ad clicks.
| Mozilla is selling more of their own ads since I left, and that
| seems to be paying off.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Manifest v3 is the only thing I can think of that spawned a lot
| of "I'm switching to Firefox" online conversations over the
| last year.
|
| But that's in the nerdiest, most niche programming circles, so
| I can't believe its impact is actually measurable.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| and yet, Firefox is switching to Manifest v3, too, just on a
| more delayed timeline than Chrome.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| They're not getting rid of the old blocking API, though.
| artificial wrote:
| _crosses fingers_ Hopefully people escaping Chrome monoculture
| and users fleeing the looming ad blocking nerfing. Mozilla
| seems to fit the user agent role better.
| sorwin wrote:
| I get that Mozilla is far more than just Firefox, but what are
| they actually spending so much money on?
|
| They have 750 employees, yet Firefox (their main product) barely
| sees any impactful updates.
|
| Either there is a lot of bloat, money mismanagement, or just bad
| leadership (which covers the previous).
| mradek wrote:
| Been using Firefox since I switched to Debian full time for my
| Linux box and backend development. Really happy 4 them.
| CyanBird wrote:
| I love our fox-people
|
| Wishing them the best, always :)!
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| 530M out of 600M of their revenue is from royalties, so from a
| certain perspective Mozilla's primary business is actually
| serving Google to FF users :/
|
| They spend 111M out of 340M on managerial overhead, or about a
| third. This is on the higher side, but not too much out of line
| with the general industry (not saying that it's a good thing, but
| that's how the world works).
|
| I have to wonder though, how much of that money is actually spent
| on Firefox? 530M in royalties, how much is that per FF user?
| chomp wrote:
| There's a line item that suggests approximately 200 million
| goes to the software development program (which is the
| Foundation, MZLA, and Mozilla Corp combined), but I can't tell
| how much is spent on Firefox itself.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It's a sad state of the large, useful search engine industry
| that they're faced with a lesser-of-two-evils choice for
| default search engine (thus driving royalties), between Google
| or Bing.
|
| Unless anybody is smoking something really strong and suggests
| something like baidu search or yandex search.
| djbusby wrote:
| Did I read that right? 1B in assets? Mozilla is a unicorn?
|
| Edit: and 43M less on software engineering.
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| Not just a unicorn, since they actually have 1B in assets. Most
| unicorns can't even claim a tenth of that in revenue. They have
| 600M in revenue and 340M in expenses, and their cash flow looks
| strong.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Yet didn't they lay off a lot of their next gen rendering
| platform team? Hmmm
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865
|
| They did lay off Servo and a Security team not too long
| ago.
| open592 wrote:
| sciurus wrote:
| There's some analysis of this and an interview with Mozilla's CEO
| at https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/mozilla-looks-to-its-
| next-...
| pmarreck wrote:
| Not sure if anyone from Mozilla is here to comment, but now that
| Google has decided to abandon support for the otherwise-promising
| JPEG-XL standard in Chrome, will Firefox press on with support
| for it?
| none_to_remain wrote:
| Crossing my fingers while I read this lest my soul be consumed
| also
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-18 23:01 UTC)