[HN Gopher] Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google
___________________________________________________________________
Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google
Author : notpushkin
Score : 115 points
Date : 2025-03-12 08:25 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mozillapetition.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mozillapetition.com)
| colesantiago wrote:
| "Firefox needs new revenue streams to be sustainable. New
| products and services under Mozilla's umbrella should reflect the
| same commitment to privacy that defines Mozilla."
|
| This is admirable, but how what would Mozilla replace the 85% (
| $555M) revenue with by ditching Google?
|
| I'm assuming a portion of the 15% of revenue is from Mozilla VPN,
| MDN Plus, etc and also the pay packets of the executives needs to
| significantly decrease.
|
| But this isn't enough to fill the 85% hole for when Mozilla
| ditches Google.
| notpushkin wrote:
| This won't happen overnight, of course - in the meantime
| they'll have to try and be leaner (which isn't a bad thing, if
| you ask me).
|
| Basically, I think that's the only way Firefox even has a
| fighting chance: the alternatives are (1) always be the 5%
| browser Google wants it to be or (2) come crashing into the
| ground if the DOJ does go through with the search payment ban.
| kome wrote:
| sorry, very random, but the effect on your personal website
| looks great!
| notpushkin wrote:
| Thank you so much! Just don't leave it running for too long
| - it's not the most optimized piece of code I've ever
| written :-)
| jisnsm wrote:
| Maybe they will find out you don't need $555M a year to make a
| web browser. First good step would be to fire that useless CEO.
| exploderate wrote:
| Can you explain how? Or is your argument "One guy in a
| basement in Bulgaria could build Firefox for 50 Stotinki."?
| ItsBob wrote:
| Let's do some back-of-a-napkin maths here and see if we
| could... Just for fun of course :D
|
| === ANNUAL COSTS ===
|
| 20 developers at $150k each = $3M
|
| Other staff costs, like pensions etc. = $1.5M
|
| Someone in charge of overall project = $250k (this doesn't
| have to be the case. He could easily be a dev on $150k but
| lets run with it)
|
| Infrastructure for testing and whatnot. Lets say Azure
| (expensive!) = $1M
|
| 2 x Marketing peeps = $250k
|
| Other expenses (travel, rubber ducks etc.) = $1M
|
| I literally pulled these figures out my ass (as you can no
| doubt tell!) but lets add it up:
|
| $3M + $1.5M + $0.25M + $1M + $0.25M + $1M = $7M per year.
|
| That's really, really expensive imo and you could do it for
| way less, but given their current revenue stream that's 80
| years of development if they took in no more money ever!
|
| Now, I don't know how many it would take to program a
| browser but it's already written so it's not as hard as
| doing it from scratch so I reckon 20 good devs would give
| you something special.
|
| Honestly, if someone said to me "Mick, here's $560M, put a
| team together and fork Firefox and Thunderbird. Pay
| yourself 250k and go for it"... I'd barely let them finish
| the sentence before signing a contract :)
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Firefox has _way_ more than 20 developers. Looking at
| https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/mots/index.html,
| if I'm not mistaken in my count, there are currently 147
| module owners and peers alone. Some of those might be
| volunteers, but I think the large majority of them are
| Mozilla staff. On top of that there are probably a number
| of further Mozilla staff developers who aren't owners or
| peers, QA staff, product managers, sysadmins and other
| support staff...
| ItsBob wrote:
| I know they have way more than that but I'd argue that
| you don't need that many.
|
| Hypothetically, if I was given the money and asked to
| build a team to fork Firefox I'd be more focused. Way
| more!
|
| The current devs work on stuff I'd scrap like Pocket,
| telemetry, anything with AI, and so on. I bet there is a
| load of stuff in there that I'd want out! There's
| probably a bunch of things in Firefox Labs they're
| working on too.
|
| So, I'd argue that 20 good devs (again, a number I pulled
| out of the air!) split into, say, 4 smaller teams could
| achieve a shit load of work under the right
| circumstances, with the right leadership and so on.
|
| I'm currently a senior architect with over 50 devs below
| me. Most are mid-level at best (not a slur, just where
| they are in their career!) but the few good ones are very
| good. A team of 20 of those could pull it off!
|
| It'd be a tall order building a browser from scratch with
| 20 devs maybe but it's already built.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Vivaldi have 29 developers.[1] They produce an unstable
| Chromium fork. They couldn't commit to keeping uBlock
| Origin working.
|
| [1] https://vivaldi.com/team/
| j_maffe wrote:
| Mozilla is much larger than the browser.
| mrweasel wrote:
| True, but they only have like maybe three products that
| most people care about: Firefox, Thunderbird (maybe), and
| the MDN.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Just to provide one example, if Firefox suddenly no
| longer has bookmark/history/password syncing because
| Mozilla has refocused on its core products
| (Firefox/Thunderbird/MDN), suddenly you'll see Firefox's
| market share dwindle even more, because ordinary users
| are accustomed to every browser having a bunch of bells
| and whistles like profile syncing.
|
| The set of features people expect from a modern browser
| is _really big_ now. To their credit, the Mozilla web
| standards people actively fought against a lot of the
| scope creep like "webpages should be able to flash
| firmware to USB devices" or "webpages should be able to
| talk to MIDI keyboards" but they lost, and now those are
| things a web browser is expected to do.
|
| Keeping up with all the scope creep is expensive.
| aragilar wrote:
| I'm not sure how sync for firefox isn't part of focusing
| on firefox?
| kevingadd wrote:
| I've seen people argue that Mozilla shouldn't be offering
| cloud services and should just build a browser that never
| phones home to any servers at all, whether it's
| telemetry, automated updates, or profiles. I think all of
| those are part of shipping a modern browser, personally.
|
| Maintaining all those cloud services raises your
| company's operational costs a lot, you now need people
| on-call 24/7 to maintain everything, you need webdevs who
| can wrangle postgres or redis or whatever, you need
| security experts to make sure the cloud stack is secure
| end to end, etc. So I think it's also fair for people to
| call this cloud stuff out as a cost center for Mozilla.
| fsflover wrote:
| Isn't most of the money goes to the browser anyway?
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| A very large portion of the money goes directly into the
| pockets of senior managers who, based on Mozilla's dismal
| and falling market share, add absolutely no value to the
| business.
|
| More than 1% of revenue (not profit; revenue) goes
| straight into the pocket of the CEO.
| homebrewer wrote:
| And that's precisely the problem people have been talking
| about for a decade now. If it was just the browser, maybe
| it wouldn't have lost 90% of its former market share.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Firefox lost market share because of factors outside
| their control. They'd have to have owned a _popular_ OS
| or conglomerate of dominant web services.
| acdha wrote:
| Or we need effective antitrust regulation. Firefox would
| be in a very different position if Google hadn't been
| allowed to make the YouTube experience worse for Firefox
| users (promises around WebM, proprietary web components)
| along with the heavy marketing push.
| redserk wrote:
| Word of mouth worked fine in Firefox's favor for a few
| years.
|
| I switched to Chrome years ago because it ran so much
| smoother than Firefox, and anecdotally I know of many
| others who did the same. With the switch, so did the
| recommendations.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| This was before website's and OS's were consistently
| nagging people to switch to their own browser. And when
| the everyday browsing experience varied more among
| different browsers.
| noirscape wrote:
| Firefox lost market share because they kept antagonizing
| their users. It's easy to read Chrome as the boogeyman to
| blame for Firefox' failure, but that's... also not
| correct.
|
| Mozilla is, rather frustrating for those that lead it I'm
| sure, chosen largely based on principles that people
| found they couldn't get from Google. Things like "don't
| profit from me the user", "don't track me" and "don't do
| things in my browser without me knowing about it". These
| aren't things people point towards the Chrome browser
| with because if you expect any of this to not be done by
| Google, then you're kidding yourself.
|
| Mozilla meanwhile has a pretty wide history of just...
| doing things that break this promise[0][1][2] (listed is
| mostly recent stuff, but they have been doing it since
| forever, going back to the forced Pocket integration).
|
| Chrome users don't care about this stuff (since they
| already use a Google product), Firefox users _by virtue
| of picking Firefox_ did. And when it comes to
| optimization, Chrome does beat Firefox pretty handily, so
| people started abandoning Firefox because at that point,
| both Mozilla and Google offer the same value proposition.
|
| Their recent ventures into adtech are probably going to
| annihilate their biggest potential userbase gain, which
| is Google tightening the screws on adblockers and uBlock
| Origin in particular not playing ball with them on it.
| (UBOL is a joke and the UI by design makes it look like a
| "kiddie"/unprofessional adblocker.)
|
| Google didn't kill Firefox (they want it alive to avoid
| antitrust lawsuits). Mozilla did.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-
| robo...
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497051
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Normal users like my parents were completely unaware of
| all of these shenanigans. They do notice sites and their
| OS's nagging them to use Chrome/Edge/Safari.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| They lost a lot of users because websites were getting
| heavy and Firefox used to be single-threaded when Chrome
| appeared and was blazingly fast due to its multi-process
| design.
|
| I still vividly recall the frozen UI as another tab
| loaded or did work. And if one tab crashed they all went
| with it. Annoyed me every time.
|
| After many years[1] they sorted it out, but in my view
| it's clear that's what really killed their momentum, as
| it was such a sacrifice to stay with Firefox compared to
| using Chrome.
|
| [1]:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/08/02/whats-
| nex...
| 7speter wrote:
| And now things are kind of going full circle, because
| part of the reason why Mozilla/Firefox increased their
| scope was to create services that would capture
| marketshare from a specific audience; which seems to be
| those who care about their privacy, though executive pay
| isn't apart of that, and I don't know if theres a viable
| defense for that.
| jisnsm wrote:
| And I don't care about anything but the browser. They
| should stop wasting money on things that I don't care
| about.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Maybe they will find out you don't need $555M a year to make
| a web browser.
|
| The only other browser spends significantly more than that.
| If it's so much cheaper, you'd expect organizations like
| Microsoft to have stayed in the game.
|
| >First good step would be to fire that useless CEO.
|
| The one who stepped down a year ago? Or do you have some
| issue with the interim? They're still looking for a permanent
| one
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The reason they're cozying up to ad-tech is because they're
| trying to ditch Google.
| noirscape wrote:
| If they're turning to ads to replace Google, then maybe
| Mozilla deserves to die as an organization.
|
| Modern adtech goes entirely against their core values.
| t43562 wrote:
| If it's already essentially paying for them then .... what
| is the difference if they get it via Google or directly?
| dralley wrote:
| The whole point of their foray into adtech was to figure
| out a privacy-preserving way to do it that doesn't involve
| wholesale selling people's browsing history.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| How is that fundamentally different than what Google's
| done with chrome and the topics API? If you don't trust
| Google's solution, why would you trust Mozilla's?
| wmf wrote:
| Because most people in this discussion don't know or care
| about the tech, just "ads bad" and "Google bad".
| ekianjo wrote:
| It does not have to happen overnight. Make a 5 years plan,
| reduce exposure to Google at 20% of the whole thing per year.
| Agressively pursue other revenue streams. If it fails, slim
| down your operations progressively and cut costs year after
| year. It's not that complicated. The problem is that Mozilla
| will suck the teat as long as it can because execs directly
| benefit from it. They will burn Mozilla to the ground and leave
| for their next opportunity when the time comes.
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| Mozilla just lost government funding (which is ok). Keeping the
| machine as it is also by ditching Google is probably infeasible,
| and in that case do a company slimming care.
| _ink_ wrote:
| IMHO the EU should step in. Having a browser that is not
| controlled by big tech should be part of an effort to reduce the
| dependency on the US.
| royal_ts wrote:
| or to invest in Servo
| alex_duf wrote:
| Not sure if you're aware but servo is currently funded by the
| linux foundation Europe. Not quite tax money, but European
| capital.
| delroth wrote:
| The EU invests in Servo already, for example through NLNet
| grants.
| rightbyte wrote:
| How about not involving governments in how Firefox is run.
| Especially not those keen on backdoors and "Chat control".
|
| It could be a stand alone association ruled by its members or a
| classic free-for-all whatever goes code talks FOSS project.
| notpushkin wrote:
| If they can invest some money with no strings attached - hey,
| why not.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| The funding is the string simply because it can be taken
| away.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _funding is the string simply because it can be taken
| away_
|
| Endow a working group under Fraunhofer [1]. Their product
| is simply and solely a browser engine. Nothing more.
|
| [1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html
| noxer wrote:
| Have you asked the people who pay in the end (the taxpayer)
| if they want that? The very last thing I want my taxes to
| go to is anything that has "no strings attached". Its by
| definition a gift and gifting taxes should be a crime.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree, though how to utilize the tax
| money isn't the problematic part in the taxation IMO.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| if its come with string attached then another agency (ehm
| ehm intelligence) would try to get their hands on them
| Sayrus wrote:
| Then taxes could be used to pay government employees
| whose job is to contribute on a specific project. That
| could apply to Linux, a browser, maybe AOSP. Sure it'd
| require funding, but spent on employees within said
| countries you get it back and it does give Europe as a
| whole the ability to contribute its vision, both positive
| and negative.
| t43562 wrote:
| A gaggle of governments with conflicting interests are less
| fearful than some private individuals with simple goals -
| like getting rich.
|
| Currently private companies rule the browser world and they
| wield incredible power over everything from standards to PKI.
| Their interest is a world that depends on them even more.
| ponow wrote:
| As if centralization with one big company weren't enough, now
| we're not even satisfied with one country, but a block of them.
| Yikes.
|
| Nope, run in the opposite direction. Unsuck from any teat.
| t43562 wrote:
| a block of countries is what makes them far less worrisome.
| They're too busy competing with each other - none is going to
| want the others spying on it's own citizens for gain.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Is that the same as a republic of independent states?
|
| As long as the EU doesn't have the equivalent of the
| Commerce Clause then, sure.
| ekianjo wrote:
| A dysfunctional company is not going to benefit from the
| addition of a dysfunctional political layer
| sleepyhead wrote:
| A browser with an attached bottle cap, great idea.
| immibis wrote:
| What?
| _ink_ wrote:
| It's a reference to an effort of the EU to reduce plastic
| waste in the environment by tethering the plastic bottle
| caps to their bottles.
|
| Instead of rethinking their consumption habits, people are
| making fun it, suggesting the EU can't do anything
| productive.
| t43562 wrote:
| ..and yet this sort of thing works because it doesn't
| rely on people to show much responsibility.
| jeppester wrote:
| Attaching the bottle cap is a great idea that prevents
| unnecessary plastic pollution.
|
| It is an example of the EU doing something reasonable that a
| private company would never be motivated to do.
| regularjack wrote:
| You think attached bottle caps are a bad thing?
| hagbard_c wrote:
| State involvement tends to come with strings attached. The EU
| would insist on the browser to implement mechanisms to ' _limit
| the spread of mis-, dis- and malinformation_ ' where it is up
| to the whims of the politicos in Brussels to decide what the
| populace is allowed to see and what is to be suppressed. To
| that I say a loud and clear 'thanks but no thanks', I prefer my
| technology to work for _me_ instead of it being an enforcement
| mechanism for the powers that be.
| t43562 wrote:
| Possibly but right now you're being guided to whatever
| information makes the most ad revenue. A choice of two
| compromised mechanisms might be better than none.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| No, that is not the issue here - this is not about which
| sites I frequent but about whether the browser I use to do
| so tries to keep me from going there. The content of those
| sites can be influenced by advertising (which I rigorously
| block, no exceptions) but the browser as of yet does not
| attempt to keep me from visiting site A nor does it change
| its contents (other than by means of the content blocker
| which I have control over) to match some ideological goal.
| An EU-financed browser could end up doing these things
| which is why I do not want the EU to get involved in this
| way.
| t43562 wrote:
| It could but a national government is more likely to
| block sites at the ISP level.
|
| Also ... private companies can block things they don't
| like, such as competitors...or alter their search
| rankings.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Currently Firefox does not do any of those things out of
| the _.deb_ / _.tar.gz_. I 'd like to keep it that way,
| hence my resistance against involvement by parties which
| have shown to be either susceptible to or directly
| calling for censorship. This is also one of the many
| reasons why I wanted to see Mitchell Baker disappear from
| the organisation as she clearly was calling for active
| censorship.
|
| I frankly do not understand all the resistance against a
| call for a politically neutral tech infrastructure. To
| all those people frantically pressing that down-vote
| button, do you _really_ desire for your tech
| infrastructure to be ideologically driven? Do you even
| understand what such a thing means and what it will lead
| to?
| t43562 wrote:
| Governments are not necessarily all about politics - the
| electricity system isn't and the road network isn't.
|
| Private organisations that have great power over
| important bits of the internet are also not necessarily
| politically neutral and there is no level to control
| them.
| dismalaf wrote:
| There's already an independent Europe based browser...
|
| Vivaldi.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Vivaldi is just a chromium wrapper as far as I understand.
| dismalaf wrote:
| It's Chromium with the Google bits ripped out, Vivaldi has
| their own sign in/sync functionality, built in ad blocker,
| and custom UI. It's based on Chromium but has quite a bit
| different going on, as much as Brave or Edge.
| tredre3 wrote:
| But unlike Brave and Edge, Vivaldi isn't open-source.
| dismalaf wrote:
| https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-
| browser...
|
| They basically just want to keep the copyright to their
| UI. You can see the source but they don't want anyone to
| rip off their UI.
|
| And let's be real, every browser (even Firefox) has
| closed source server side code.
|
| Also, the comment I initially responded to was about why
| isn't there a European browser not controlled by "big
| tech"... Vivaldi is an independent company in Europe
| making a browser.
| bladeee wrote:
| But it depends on the Blink engine.
| dismalaf wrote:
| So? Blink is a fork of WebKit which was a fork of KDE's web
| engine. It's all open source anyway. The point isn't that
| the code must be unique, only that it's not dependent on a
| large US tech firm. They might benefit from Chromium
| development but the option to hard fork is always there.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Now is the time for Mozilla to take bold steps to reinforce its
| identity as a privacy-centric nonprofit
|
| Mozilla gave up that identity when it became an ad-tech company
| whose business model was to sell reports about the internet
| browsing habits of firefox users to advertisers.
|
| The problem was never Mozilla's dependence Google. The problem is
| their dependence on the surveillance of internet users.
|
| As far as I know Mozilla hasn't disclosed how much money they
| spent buying up Anonym, but they'll want a return on their
| investment. I don't think they're going to abandon it as quickly
| as they did their ideals.
| lallysingh wrote:
| What kind of reports can they generate from the data they
| collect: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-
| central/source/toolkit/compone... ?
| zb3 wrote:
| Searchfox? Not so fast! Don't forget they load "studies" code
| using so called "normandy" mechanism..
| lallysingh wrote:
| I don't understand what you're talking about. Do you have a
| reference? All I can find are UI experiments, AFAICT "what
| impact to telemetry does this UI change make?"
|
| Where telemetry is what I linked above.
| zb3 wrote:
| List of experiments I was talking about: https://experime
| nter.services.mozilla.com/api/v1/experiments...
|
| I see some have addons.. but actually my point is
| precisely that I don't understand it - these addons can
| be auto installed? They can make requests? They're not on
| searchfox?
| seqizz wrote:
| Nah, Firefox devs: It's time to ditch Mozilla and fork it.
| notpushkin wrote:
| That's also a possible scenario!
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Not just possible but likely the *only* scenario that can
| have any real impact at this point.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Maybe a new browser will rise from Firefox's ashes. Perhaps we
| should call the fork Phoenix?
| immibis wrote:
| Spelled Fenix, of course, or the current cohort of people
| won't be able to find it.
|
| Wait, they already did that.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| For those too young to remember:
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/05/13/milestone-
| phoe...
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Yes. If you believe in the open source concept, the current
| situation calls for nothing less.
|
| Let's be real, Mozilla leadership is not going to slaughter
| their cash cow. They have no incentive to place anything above
| the needs of Google.
|
| It's already proven --- the user base and market share have
| been effectively abandoned for lack of impact to the bottom
| line. Plaintive demands from users now carry no real weight and
| will most likely be met with marketing doublespeak/lip service
| while business as usual continues.
|
| Sorry but it's too late now. Any debate over the direction of
| Mozilla is a done deal settled a decade ago.
| whyever wrote:
| Who is going to pay the devs?
| raincole wrote:
| So who are going to fund them?
|
| Sorry for being cynical, but this "petition" sounds like telling
| depressed people to "just be more positive." Sure, just find more
| revenue streams. Just be sustainable. It's so easy!
| frontfor wrote:
| Agreed. A world where Mozilla ceases to exist due to lack of
| funding is arguably worse than the current state.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
|
| With less than 3% marketshare, Mozilla doesn't exist now for
| most people --- mainly just for Google.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Regardless of whether people know it exists, the world
| where it exists is much better than a world where it
| doesn't and there is only one option.
| regularjack wrote:
| The petition should instead be asking Mozilla to allow people
| to directly donate to Firefox development.
| notpushkin wrote:
| This is a good idea. I don't think I should change the
| petition now that it's signed by a significant number of
| people, but I agree targeted donations could help somewhat
| (although mainly I think we need to urge Mozilla to direct
| its other income into Firefox development, too).
| wmf wrote:
| It sounds like the goal is the same search contract just not
| with Google.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Pressure exposes true colors. Taking away the pressure from
| Mozilla will only hide the symptoms but not cure the desease.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Not looking to grind an axe but facts matter in this case.
|
| Let's look at Mozilla's financial statement for 2007 and 2023
| [0][1]:
|
| > Expenses
|
| 1. Program 'Software Development'
|
| 2007: 20.7M | 2023: 260M
|
| 2. Management 'General and Administrative' :
|
| 2007: 5.1M | 2023: 123M
|
| I am purposefully excluding marketing and fundraising costs.
| Because arguably you can't get away from those expenses.
|
| Let's ignore inflation and COL and ballooning costs, etc. If we
| look at just the ratio of expenditure. We have an NPO (on paper
| at least) that just went from spending a ratio of 4 to 1 between
| developers and managers to spending a ratio of almost 2 to 1.
|
| I am not familiar with what is typical in American NPO's but I
| can't help but feel that my money will not be spent on the right
| stuff.
|
| [0]
| https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audi...
|
| [1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| yummypaint wrote:
| Considering how much money is routinely set on fire by the US
| tech industry, this is a bargain for the best web browser
| currently in existence.
|
| What alternative do you suggest? Google and Microsoft are
| certainly worse. Firefox is vastly superior to the offerings of
| these multi billion dollar companies. Chrome and edge are
| exactly the prisons that these companies designed them to be.
|
| What specifically should laypeople do to regain something
| resembling a usable Internet? Firefox and ublock origin is the
| only answer I have.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The good news is that development could easily be funded by
| donations. It's only a few million. Enough to keep a few dozen
| people employed.
|
| The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the
| current massive misspending on overpaid people with no
| technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their
| budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code,
| offices they don't need, commercial products that flop,
| monetization schemes that fail, etc.
|
| I wouldn't. And I'm a user! Mozilla needs to be restructured.
| And ideally they diversify their commercial ecosystem as well.
| Because they are way too dependent on Google.
|
| If you look at Rust, created by Mozilla, they are set up in a
| more sane way. There's a foundation. It's well funded with
| sponsorships from the big companies that use and depend on
| Rust. Those companies employ people that contribute to Rust.
| Many OSS organizations are set up like that. It works. The
| diversity of contributors and commercial sponsors ensures
| neutrality and longevity. No single company has veto power. As
| long as valuable tech comes out, companies stay involved. Some
| disappear, new ones come along. Linux development works like
| that as well.
|
| Ironically, Chromium at this point is better positioned to
| become like that. The main issue is that Google still employs
| most of the developers and controls the roadmap. But there are
| quite a few commercial chromium based products: Edge, Brave,
| Opera, etc. that each have development teams using and
| contributing to it. Add Electron (has its own foundation, based
| on chromium) to the mix and the countless commercial
| applications using that and you have a healthy ecosystem that
| could survive Google completely disengaging if they'd be forced
| to split off their browser activities.
|
| I use Firefox mainly because of the iron grip keeps over
| Chromium and it's clear intent to cripple ad blocking, grab
| user data, and exploit its user base. But I worry about the
| dysfunctional mess that is Mozilla.
| notpushkin wrote:
| The better news are, Mozilla gets around $30 million as
| investment income ($37M in 2023 [1]). Some people argue that
| it's not enough to maintain Firefox but that sounds weird to
| me.
|
| Chromium is not a good alternative: 95% of Chromium commits
| come from Google. [2]
|
| [1]: https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/File:501c3_2023_990_
| Mozi...
|
| [2]: https://chromiumstats.github.io/cr-
| stats/authors/company_aut...
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Chromium is not a good alternative: 95% of Chromium
| commits come from Google._
|
| Or ... Chromium is the perfect alternative ... as long as
| it remains open source and privacy invasion can be easily
| stripped out of it. Let Google fund most of the development
| of a privacy respecting browser (i.e. Brave).
|
| And if it doesn't remain open source? Then it's time for a
| fork --- just like it is now with Firefox.
|
| Bottom line: If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also
| reject Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over the
| past decade was funded by Google.
|
| https://eligrey.com/
| notpushkin wrote:
| > Let Google fund most of the development of a privacy
| respecting browser (i.e. Brave).
|
| Why would they do that? (I mean, they wouldn't stop it in
| one go, but they sure as hell will try to push users
| _off_ the web.)
|
| > If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also reject
| Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over the past
| decade was funded by Google.
|
| Which is exactly the problem :-)
|
| If Chromium can live on without Google - I don't mind it.
| My primary concern is Firefox, though.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _but they sure as hell will try to push users off the
| web._
|
| ???
|
| Google's revenue stream is almost wholly dependent on the
| web and the privacy invasion it facilitates. Pushing
| users off the web would be self defeating.
| n_ary wrote:
| May be... the OP means mobile apps? Apps are easier to
| instrument with massive data mining and tracking
| capabilities and the core distributor is also google for
| at least the Android ecosystem. If you try to sideload or
| provide OSS apps, generic users will be frightened by
| google's mafia banner warnings ... "I see you trying to
| install an app from outside playstore, would be a shame
| if it had infinite spy and tracking malware, we can't
| protect you unless you come over here and only use our
| apps from playstore..."
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| Chromium is also stripping manifest v2. Firefox isn't.
| Chromium is open source, but it's not an open source
| project. It's a Google project.
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly. Manifest v2 is the bullet case for why Chromium
| isn't sufficient. Also, we best not forget their efforts
| with web integrity
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Brave is based on Chromium and it still supports manifest
| v2.
|
| Brave offers everything Firefox does and more --- like
| privacy by default (which Firefox could but won't do for
| obvious reasons) --- all without millions in direct
| Google payola.
|
| https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
| rpdillon wrote:
| Brave supports manifest V2 because the Chromium upstream
| hasn't removed it for enterprise use yet. As soon as that
| changes, Brave does not have a plan to continue
| maintaining V2. What you call Google payola is really the
| independence that allows Mozilla to develop a browser
| engine that isn't being actively crippled by Google's
| initiatives. That's the important piece. Brave is not a
| sustainable play because they have no way to fund a
| forked version of the chromium browser engine when Google
| inevitably cripples it to invade our privacy even
| further.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Firefox is open source, but it's not an open source
| project. It's a Mozilla project --- effectively totally
| funded by Google.
|
| *When* Google asks them to remove manifest v2, what do
| you think they'll do?
| notpushkin wrote:
| > _When_ Google asks them to remove manifest v2, what do
| you think they 'll do?
|
| It's even more pointless than removing it from Chromium
| though: Firefox users would just switch to a fork that
| still supports it, or to a fork that supports
| blockingWebRequest APIs on v3 extensions, or to a fork
| that implements some other ad blocking method. With
| Chromium, they at least have Chrome users, many of whow
| wouldn't want to even bother. (Those who do have migrated
| to forks already)
| charcircuit wrote:
| It's cheaper to extend v3 with additional features than
| to maintain another browser engine.
| rpdillon wrote:
| > Bottom line: If you reject Chromium, shouldn't you also
| reject Mozilla/Firefox? Virtually all development over
| the past decade was funded by Google.
|
| This is a non sequitur. Google supplies Mozilla with
| money, but Mozilla decides how to deploy that money. This
| is significantly different than Google directing the
| development of Firefox, which they clearly don't do. They
| absolutely do direct the development of chromium,
| however. It makes no sense to trust an advertising
| company to direct the development of your browser, but
| not to trust a nonprofit. Conversely, it makes perfect
| sense to place more trust in a browser developed by a
| nonprofit, even one funded by an advertiser, over a
| browser developed by an advertising company. Web
| attestation and manifest V2 are both examples of exactly
| why this is the case.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with
| the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no
| technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their
| budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code,
| offices they don't need, commercial products that flop,
| monetization schemes that fail, etc.
|
| Mozilla already solicits donations, but I wonder if people
| who donate to them know that Mozilla funds things that are
| wildly not Firefox-related, like feminist AI conferences in
| Africa. Meanwhile Firefox looks more and more like an also-
| ran compared to its competition. All I ever wanted from
| Mozilla was a browser, not this.
|
| https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/
|
| https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/mozfest-house-
| zambia-...
| Raed667 wrote:
| I'm not sure how common this sentiment is, but I had a
| discussions with colleges who will NOT donate unless they
| can guarantee that their money is going to the development
| of a chosen product or even more granularity to a chosen
| feature.
| delusional wrote:
| > like feminist AI conferences in Africa.
|
| According to their 2023 form 990 (the 2024 one isn't
| published yet) those sort of donations are usually on the
| order of 15k. You don't get much browser for that money.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| My understanding is that donating to Mozilla doesn't actually
| fund anything explicitly. You donate to the foundation and
| then they spend it on whatever. So there exists no actual
| mechanism to do what you state "could easily be funded"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _good news is that development could easily be funded by
| donations_
|
| Mozilla's donations are roughly equal to their CEO's
| compensation [1][2].
|
| [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-
| US/foundation/annualreport/2024/a... _"$7.8M in donations
| from the public, grants from foundations, and government
| funding" in 2023_
|
| [2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-
| fdn-990... _$6.9mm in 2022, page 7_
| st3fan wrote:
| > The good news is that development could easily be funded by
| donations. It's only a few million. Enough to keep a few
| dozen people employed.
|
| These numbers are highly unrealistic.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I welcome the oncoming hate, but THIS is what DAOs are for...
|
| A DOA specifically setup to build a user-respecting browser
| run by a Foundation where token holders could vote out the
| waste we've seen Mozilla and the like do, could work.
|
| And for those crypto-haters, I'm not sqying token-based as an
| speculative investment, I'm saying here token specifically
| here for voting rights to control asset allocation and
| business decisions
| wmf wrote:
| $260M isn't a few million.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| In this landscape I'm curious if any amount of money can
| overcome the oligopoly advantages of owning the OS (with no
| anti-trust enforcement) or owning the most popular web
| properties.
|
| Even if every cent for the past ten years went to browser dev
| alone, would that have made a difference?
|
| Do regular users even know the difference between one browser
| and another? Or is it only the icon they recognize, if even
| that?
| n_ary wrote:
| > Do regular users even know the difference [...]
|
| Honestly, from observing my close family and friends as well
| as passing by strangers, everyone uses whatever default
| comes(i.e. Chrome on Android) or again Chrome(on iOS because
| they saw some banner ad somewhere to install it to access
| their password stored previously in android life).
|
| The core portal to internet currently appears to be the
| blue-F(aka Facebook) icon which has an interesting search.
| People search in Facebook for specific topic and then will
| reluctantly move over to browser and again search on
| Google(always default). So, in summary no, everyone uses
| Chrome and does not know the difference.
|
| Some of my colleagues seem to use Brave and Linux die-hards
| use Firefox(comes default with ubuntu last I tried ubuntu).
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You're spending money in the wrong place - spend it on
| marketing instead of dev, and you've got a shot.
| alberth wrote:
| I know your intention is probably well placed but we do though
| need to factor in revenues: Year Revenue
| ---- ------- 2007 $75M 2023 $653M
|
| I bring this up because G&A of big companies (in general)
| always begins to outpace R&D once they hit scale ... and in an
| ideal situation - your revenues _should_ outpace the R &D
| expense because you're getting economies of scale (which then
| further dilutes the R&D to Other Business Function
| comparision).
|
| And Mozilla has hit scale and is a "big company" now (with
| those kinds of revenue)
|
| The reason why G&A outpaces R&D is because now, you have all
| kinds of work that needs to be done (that you don't have to do
| when your small/underdog) ... like:
|
| - regulatory compliance
|
| - legal
|
| - privacy
|
| - advocacy
|
| - public relations
|
| - etc...
|
| When you're the underdog, you don't have to deal with these
| activities and as a result, your expense base is more heavily
| skewed toward R&D.
| alex_duf wrote:
| I'm afraid it's too late for Mozilla. It's not in their mission
| anymore.
| EdPoincare wrote:
| Firefox is done with.
|
| https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Sounds like EU defined "sale of data" to mean a lot of other
| things besides selling data, like transferring information. And
| now Firefox cannot so definitively say they don't "sell your
| data", because they allow you to transfer webpages over the
| network.
| ptx wrote:
| Where are you getting this? All Mozilla says is that "the
| LEGAL definition of 'sale of data' is extremely broad in some
| places". They don't that it's the EU and definitely not that
| the EU has defined "sale of data" to include any use of a
| computer network, which would be absurd.
| begueradj wrote:
| The new privacy terms of Mozilla Firefox are a big concern [0]
|
| [0] https://medium.com/@mail_18109/mozillas-new-firefox-terms-
| sp...
| iteratethis wrote:
| We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left.
|
| Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it
| doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost
| entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore
| Firefox.
|
| Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in
| our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev
| ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced devtools, Google having
| a team of "evangelists", course material is Chrome-based, test-
| automation, etc. So developers too can ignore Firefox.
|
| Some argue that it's good to have an independent rendering
| engine. Here too Firefox plays no role at all. The only counter
| force to Google's web feature roadmap is Apple/Webkit, not
| Mozilla.
|
| From a privacy preserving perspective, Firefox has no unique
| value. Install Brave, say no to the one-time crypto pop-up, and
| you have a very decent and fast browser that also consistently
| renders along with Chrome and Edge.
|
| I use Firefox. If I ask myself why, it's muscle memory and
| because uBlock Origin still works.
| qwerpy wrote:
| I use Brave and am satisfied with it. The occasional hassle
| involved in turning things off when a new unwanted feature
| shows up or when I have to install it on a new machine is worth
| it for uBlock Origin and the Chromium performance and
| compatibility.
|
| However the theoretical downside of Brave is that as Google
| continues changing Chromium's codebase, there's incentive for
| them to make it harder and harder to maintain a manifest
| v2-enabled fork. Wouldn't be surprised if extensive refactors
| randomly happen that multiply the effort needed to merge
| changes from upstream while maintaining the v2 capability. And
| how motivated is Brave to do all this labor? At some point
| they're going to say the tax is too high, we have a nice built-
| in ad blocker anyway, just use that.
|
| A well-maintained, funded, and focused Firefox would be a good
| thing for when that day comes.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Brave does not need manifest v2 for it's ad blocker to work.
| It is not implemented as an extension. It is built into the
| browser itself.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Right but in my non-scientific test I found uBlock to work
| better so I don't use the Brave blocker. My prediction is
| that Brave will eventually say that it's too costly to
| maintain v2 in their fork and that people should just use
| the Brave blocker.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Interesting. What are you noticing? I might run ublock on
| top as well if it's worth it.
| apeace wrote:
| How does Brave survive financially?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How does Brave survive financially?_
|
| Crypto [1].
|
| [1] https://brave.com/wallet/
| dralley wrote:
| Also it's just a Chrome / Blink derivative. They don't
| actually have an independent web stack like Mozilla does.
| That independent stack requires a lot of developer effort
| to maintain.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| I use Firefox for Container tabs. It's useful for sites where I
| can't have multiple tabs opened to same site but different
| login. That's my main reason for sticking to Firefox.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Container tabs is the most useful browser feature anywhere.
| Now if they would just add tab history tracking.
| iteratethis wrote:
| This polls suggests that there's some decision holding back
| Mozilla from ditching Google, and that with enough pressure,
| they'll finally do it.
|
| They're long aware that they should. They made the strategic
| announcement some 7-8 years back if I remember correctly. Since
| then they tried to diversify and failed miserably.
|
| Sure enough incompetence is involved but we should also consider
| how very hard it is.
|
| Making hundreds of millions from a new tech product in the
| consumer space is impossibly difficult. You're up against Big
| Tech and a generally very competitive and saturated space where
| any idea can be easily replicated. And you're up against
| consumers that really don't want to pay, hence ads.
|
| That said, I do feel Mozilla barely tried and wasted a lot of
| money on distractions. They're way too comfortable raking half a
| billion for effectively doing nothing at all: keep the search box
| pointing at Google.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Since then they tried to diversify and failed miserably.
|
| I wish my miserable failures brought in $65 million annually.
| tlb wrote:
| Yes, $65M revenue is a decent success. The miserable failure
| is bloating their expenses to 5x that.
| dralley wrote:
| >I wish my miserable failures brought in $65 million
| annually.
|
| HN users complain about that $65 million constantly. Mozilla
| is stuck in a spot where the same angry nerds that want them
| to diversify away from Google won't actually let them spin up
| diverse sources of revenue.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Start selling $100 notes for $50. I am confident you can get
| your company to $65M revenue.
| krunck wrote:
| Can't sign the form as nocodeform.io seems to be having problems.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Sorry for that! There was a nasty bug which I've worked around
| for now (and tomorrow I'll switch over to a backend I host
| myself).
|
| Does it work now? If you're still running into errors, please
| let me know your name / website and I'll add you to the list!
| (or send to mozillapetition@ale.sh)
| dismalaf wrote:
| Mozilla will never do so willingly.
|
| Organizations always grow, since the entire point of an
| organization is to exist for the sake of its stakeholders. The
| bigger it is, the better for stakeholders.
|
| Willingly burning 85% of your revenue and downsizing isn't
| something that stakeholders want.
|
| Odds are Mozilla will simply die and their browser with it, since
| the Chromium based ecosystem is much more robust.
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| I think you are confusing organizations and companies. Yes,
| under capitalism, companies only exist to reek in profits, but
| from a non-profit organization you'd expect something else...
| dismalaf wrote:
| Stakeholders include employees, and it is all organisations.
|
| NGOs and government organisations follow the same pattern.
| They all expand, hire, and the people within each org all
| have a vested interest in the organization expanding and
| keeping them all employed, given raises, etc...
| kebokyo wrote:
| Something that this petition does not mention at all are possible
| alternatives to Google search as the default search engine. If
| Google isn't the default, who should be the default?
| wmf wrote:
| Yahoo, Bing, DDG, Perplexity...
| Gothmog69 wrote:
| Chrome wouldn't be so big if edge wasn't so shit
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, "Mozilla, please commit suicide". Whatever they're
| currently doing is fine. They've succeeded in their aim and now
| they're searching for a new thing to target affiliated with their
| space given their revenue numbers. Pretty logical thing to do for
| them. Good luck to Mozilla.
| johnea wrote:
| Why specificallly throw stones at Mozilla?
|
| EVERYONE should ditch goggle 8-/
|
| but, but, muh g-stuff!!! pathetic, really.
|
| The corps has been for the purpose of user surveilance from the
| beginning.
|
| If you want your donations to be well spent, send them to a
| firefox fork maintainer...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-12 23:00 UTC)