>Proposals in US vs. Google threaten vital role of independent browsers
That's a creative way to put it considering there is only one independent browser (singular) that's being harmed by this. A more straightforward title world be `Proposals in US vs. Google threaten the only viable independent browser maker left`
Hmm I think two, since Google pays (paid) Apple to be the default search engine on iOS, it could’ve been said that WebKit and Safari development might have been partially financed with this money.
But I guess that falls apart when we treat Safari as dependent on Apple, which it is.
This opinion is fully consistent with Mozilla's self-interest, whether it is or is not in Google's interest is basically immaterial.
I also have to say I find it difficult to take "Mozilla is Google by proxy" complaints seriously when the same people tend to simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams. It's unreasonable to on one hand whine about their financial dependence on the Firefox default search deal with Google and then on the other hand whine any time they make a little bit of revenue on a VPN partnership, or Pocket, or a Disney movie about a Red Panda.
> when the same people simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams.
I don't know what "same people" you're talking about, but the criticism I see is typically about a) Mozilla's attempts to branch out which failed, b) Mozilla's "branching out" attempts that are just as bad as their reliance on Google (like how they bought an ad company and are pushing their form of "anonymous tracking" or whatnot.)
Hot take: Developing a privacy concious replacement for the current ad-surveillance-industrial-complex model is NOT a bad idea, it's probably a good one and consistent with their values. It's also one of the few ideas which could actually plausibly fund their operations.
I liked their partnership with Scroll, before it got destroyed by the Twitter acquisition.
I think those people are (1) worried about Google and also simultaneously (2) worried/annoyed by activities that they think will never be sufficient to replace Google funding and that distract from browser development.
Exactly. Mozilla is a seriously bloated organization. Most of its $500M+ budget goes toward activities that have little to do with Firefox development.
(In another thread a couple of months ago, it was postulated that Firefox development accounts for at most $200M of the budget, and likely much less than that.)
Basically, they are using Firefox search deals and other revenue streams to fund their political and educational campaigns. Not that I disagree with their ideals, but I really wish they left the activism to other orgs like EFF and just focused on making a browser.
>I find it difficult to take "Mozilla is Google by proxy" complaints seriously when the same people tend to simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams.
I don't wish to cause too much argument, but it might be worth to consider that not all naysayers are from the same cloth. It could easily be several different groups of people that might not overlap. Each might complain about Mozilla, but for different reasons. I.e. Group 1: "Mozilla takes money from google, and that's bad! They rely too much on Web Browsers!" Group 2: "Mozilla is too distracted by side projects! They need to focus on what they're best at!"
Both of those groups might not agree with one another, but at other times there might be some overlap in complaints, too. I could see group 1 and 2 both complain that, for instance, "AI is an untested, trendy/gimmicky idea that they shouldn't be focusing on right now."
I'm not terribly wrapped up with what Mozilla does, or does not do; Mozilla can do whatever they want...I don't work there, so I don't care too terribly. I do my best to judge ideas on its merits.
>I could see group 1 and 2 both complain that, for instance, "AI is an untested, trendy/gimmicky idea that they shouldn't be focusing on right now."
If you think that Mozilla is too dependent on a search engine deal, would it not be wise to hedge against the fact that search itself may be less relevant in the future? Certainly Google, Apple and Microsoft are not ignoring AI as a browser supplement / replacement. But they're all incentivized to do it on their own proprietary systems, whereas Mozilla is incentivized to use local, open source, small models. That's potential differentiation.
I was using an example of criticism I've heard regarding Mozilla. As I stated:
>I'm not terribly wrapped up with what Mozilla does, or does not do; Mozilla can do whatever they want...I don't work there, so I don't care too terribly.
I don't think GAI (generative AI), in the commercial sense that it has been marketed in the last year or two, has been around long enough to critique it with any verifiable wisdom or insight - ChatGPT for example only launched around mid 2022 - we aren't far enough removed from its hype to make any kind of neutral assessment.
In more broad terms as a field of computer science ala machine learning, computer vision, deep learning, etc. it's far too niche an area for me to really assert any insight on - I'm at the kids table.
As an overview, I typically favor optimism over the long-term (15-20 year) on technological advancements - spellcheck is in a better spot than it was in 2004 for example, however, I have also been exceedingly dismissive over some things: online video (YouTube), streaming (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), and microblogging when they were new. They, of course then became explosively successful several seconds after the words tumbled out between my lips.
GAI is simply too new a technology in its current form to say if it is a: positive, negative, neutral, or somewhere in-between. And if it doesn't seem smart to speculate one way or another about GAI, it seems even more ill-advised to speculate whether it is profitable to invest in GAI.
If anything, the funding has corrupted them, as they opted for web extensions instead of extending or re-implementing their XUL framework, thereby removing significant amounts of user control over the browser. We can now see the true intention behind web extensions, exemplified by Chrome's implementation of Manifest V3, which appears to be designed to make it challenging for web extension developers to keep up with the changes while maintaining privacy and user control, ultimately causing the extension ecosystem to fragment. This outcome could have been avoided if browsers had stuck to their own paths from the start.
This trend has continued to this day, as evident in your mention of compromised privacy, where Mozilla may take some steps to protect users but then introduce subtle changes that include analytics and tracking.
Additionally, the funding likely retained a lot of talent at Mozilla that could have otherwise contributed to the former SerenityOS's browser, now known as LadyBird, thereby diversifying the ecosystem.
Sadly Mozilla is like a large dead tree husk, full of parasites, that deprives healthy tree saplings from sunlight. I know its harsh, but I say knock it down. Much better for the browser market.
> We urge the court to consider remedies that achieve its goals without harming independent browsers, browser engines and ultimately without harming the web.
Such as? I have no idea what the solution to this issue is and, it seems, neither does Mozilla.
If you have a monopoly, the only way to handle it is to split the company down the middle. Give both full rights to all the contained IP except the name of the original company. Google.com would redirect to the two resulting companies randomly. Maybe after this split stabilizes you need to split the resulting companies again.
Markets need to emulate evolution. Consolidation is emulating invasive clonal individuals that eventually crash. We need to emulate offspring and the death of the parent.
…this might be the worst possible solution for all parties involved. How do I handle my own credentials when I have no idea which way a coin toss is going to go when I reach the site? How are certs handled? What would anyone gain from one Google becoming two, identical and indistinguishable Googles?
That’s an interesting idea. I would think that trying to do a second split would have significant challenges because the monopoly has already been turned into a duopoly, so now you have to do the work against two rich companies. Looking at the two most famous breakups of monopolies, Standard Oil and AT&T, where each was broken into multiple entities, I would argue that the resulting “children” were still far too powerful. Maybe these monopolies need to be broken into 10+ separate businesses for it to be truly effective.
> As written, the proposed remedies will force smaller and independent browsers like Firefox to fundamentally reexamine their entire operating model.
I think a lot of us Firefox users would see that as a good thing, or at least no worse than the status quo. Firefox is now a small slice of the market, and it seems Mozilla has lost the will to ever truly challenge Chrome again. Maybe removing the easy Google money would be, shall we say, motivating.
> and it seems Mozilla has lost the will to ever truly challenge Chrome again
They never intend to challenge Chrome in the first place. Once they displaced IE, and Chrome gained ground they considered themselves mission accomplished. Although I cant search for the reference where Mozilla said this. It was in the early 10s.
Stop doing weird campaigns, or rather anything unrelated to building a browser.
Rehire the servo team.
Focus on the devs.
There was a time, when firefox with the firebug plugin was the dev tool for the web.
So people made sure websites worked in Firefox.
But since quite a while, chrome dev tools are superior in allmost every regard and the ff ones unusable to me.
Oh and let go of the expensive management. The one that openly talks about privacy, but ships FF with tracking and advertisment integrated by default. Stuff like this burned my trust.
So I still use FF, because chrome is not better in that regard, but that is the only reason.
I'd also say they should listen to power users: allow any/custom add-ons and re-enable dev tools in Firefox for Android (like kiwi browser). A mainstream android browser with these two features would easily outclass chrome on android for most power users.
If I were in charge? I would start by creating 3 (or more) editions of Firefox, segmented to casual, power, and pro users. Casual would be similar to the current Firefox, but with even more focus on ease of use, a “hand holding” mode, and more clarity and guidance when it comes to security and privacy. Power would have most hidden options exposed in UI, personalizations would be exportable/importable, extensions and user scripts would of course be treated as first class citizens. Pro would be fully customizable/optimizable for different verticals like medical, scientific, industrial, legal, engineering, etc. maybe a set of templates that can then be further customized, plus LTS with guarantee against random UI changes and ongoing testing against important sites/apps in each vertical. This is also where you could have a marketplace for high-end extensions or full on mods for the Pro edition. Pricing wise, Casual would be free, Power would be free with a donation of any amount or contribution of code/bug reports, and Pro would be $$ per seat per year, plus a cut of sales in the marketplace.
That’s how I would start. I have lots of other ideas for longer term projects all focused on the browser.
It's an absolute scandal that Mozilla gets HALF A BILLION $ PER YEAR from Google and Firefox isn't even technically or by market share the greatest browser in the market.
How is it that despite this tremendous funding, no other company is using the gecko engine?
How did Microsoft end up using Google's engine over Mozilla's?
Mitchell Baker has a lot to answer for. She is single-handedly responsible for pillaging this opportunity. How she has lasted as the CEO for so long is criminal.
Article doesn't answer question... it vaguely talks about search, defaults, threats but you have to kind of infer and guess what is actually written in the judgement. I wanted to read "the judgement says xxx which means xxx will happen which causes xxx".
This is a reminder that Mozilla only exists because of google, in the Mozilla Foundation's 2021–2022 financial statement, Mozilla states to have made $593 Million, $510 Million of that came from Google. Mozilla is bitching because they dont exist without Google, and while they may claim to be independent or whatever, if the DOJ forces Google to end default search deals, Mozilla disappears.
Maybe they should think of starting to spend "Mozilla Foundation" money on browser development, like most donors expect them to, instead of other random things no one cares about.
> It does make profit. The Corportation-owned-by-Foundation model is not that uncommon.
How, exactly? Excess from Google's money drops?
If their corporate structure is a barrier to using donations for development, I think they need to change it. If "MoFo" can't send money to "MoCo," but I bet the opposite could be made to work. Maybe "MoCo" should gift the browser software and development teams to "MoFo," and pay the Google money (as long as it lasts) to the foundation to license it back to distribute it with search engine-placements, etc.
Didn't they lay off all the rust devs they funded?
I'm unclear what Mozilla actually did to _actively_ foster Rust.
I get the impression it was more like Tim Berners-Lee and Cern.
If I'm counting right, that page (minus header/footer) mentions Firefox three times, and AI 17 times. And one of the mentions of Firefox is practically pejorative: "Mozilla has been incorrectly thought of by many as 'the Firefox company.'"
This is depressing. Firefox is the only browser I'm willing to daily drive because it's the only one that's good and built by a nonprofit. I love Firefox, but loving Mozilla gets harder every day.
They do in fact have "alternative revenue streams" and HN complains about the existence of every single one of them. Every threat about Pocket or Mozilla VPN or Lockwise etc. etc. is full of the refrain "Why don't they just focus on Firefox"
There's no "alternative revenue stream" that would bring in that quantity of money without requiring significant investment that would detract from Firefox engineering, which people would then also whine about endlessly.
Making the browser itself paid would instantly doom them to irrelevance. It's already bad enough trying to make developers care about a browser with 2% marketshare, it will be impossible to do so if their marketshare drops to 0.1%, which it will if you make it paid.
That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
Brave replaces third party ads with their own, I don't see that as being particularly ethical.
Personally I'd like to see them try to recreate what Scroll were doing a few years ago before the Twitter acquisition destroyed them. They'd have to make it cross-browser though.
I think Brave is disreputable but they’ve arguably been able to capture more excitement as an alternative browser in recent years, though I don’t know how much of that is because of Brendan Eich’s name. But at least they’re innovating on how to make money with a browser.
Maybe Firefox could release an ad-supported edition?
They appear to actively scorn the idea of making a good browser as a method of funding as well, they seem to prioritize everything but firefox, and want to blow what's left of the budget on company events at fancy hotels. There's a reason firefox forks get so much more goodwill than mozilla itself for the past several years...
Making the browser itself paid would instantly doom them to irrelevance. It's already bad enough trying to make developers care about a browser with 2% marketshare, it will be impossible to do so if their marketshare drops to 0.1%, which it will if you make it paid.
That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
I was not suggesting a paid browser, that's a bit of a leap. But right now mozilla has burned all their goodwill. If they wanted to, for example, focus on making firefox really good and solicit donations specifically to support continued firefox development, it wouldn't work anymore. They could have followed the model of other large open source projects that do the same.
But now i would never want to support them. The goodwill is just gone and if you give money to mozilla right now it gets wasted on nonsense, they have so little interest in firefox. I'd rather support any of the forks.
if only there was some project that had a great donation scheme and works really well, that is a poster child of good donation models, probably not real though.
Yea I hope everyone whose livelihood depends on Mozilla funding is ruined, as they explicitly view me and my political representative as an enemy and have been advocating to silence my political speech. They deserve to fail. Imagine expecting people to just "take it" with stuff like this from a tech company. It's indefensible.
I suspect we have different definitions of "political speech" and "silence" and how that applies to the 1st amendment.
Jan 6 was an abomination, and it should not be controversial for a tech company that values democratic values to call for algorithm and advertising transparency.
Isn't Mozilla worth half a billion dollars? Perhaps they are "independent" in the sense that they are technically a different organization than google, but usually when I hear independent it evokes images of some "plucky upstart" looking to take on some giant superstructure. I'm talking about independent movie theaters, or independent coffee companies. Things like that.
Calling Firefox an independent browser is kind of like calling Internet Explorer an "independent browser" - it very well may be a different organization, but Microsoft is hardly independent as some kind of thin, agile, and flexible upstart looking to "take on old man google".
>Proposals in US vs. Google threaten vital role of independent browsers
That's a creative way to put it considering there is only one independent browser (singular) that's being harmed by this. A more straightforward title world be `Proposals in US vs. Google threaten the only viable independent browser maker left`
Hmm I think two, since Google pays (paid) Apple to be the default search engine on iOS, it could’ve been said that WebKit and Safari development might have been partially financed with this money.
But I guess that falls apart when we treat Safari as dependent on Apple, which it is.
It also harms any other browsers based on the gecko engine.
Opera also has a search deal with Google.
Is Mozilla independent?
The undisputed reality is that Mozilla is almost wholly funded by the dominant (i.e. monopoly) search provider.
This blog post as well as basic Firefox design decisions (compromised privacy by default) are fully conducive and reflective of this reality.
In other words, this opinion was bought and paid for by Google.
This opinion is fully consistent with Mozilla's self-interest, whether it is or is not in Google's interest is basically immaterial.
I also have to say I find it difficult to take "Mozilla is Google by proxy" complaints seriously when the same people tend to simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams. It's unreasonable to on one hand whine about their financial dependence on the Firefox default search deal with Google and then on the other hand whine any time they make a little bit of revenue on a VPN partnership, or Pocket, or a Disney movie about a Red Panda.
> when the same people simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams.
I don't know what "same people" you're talking about, but the criticism I see is typically about a) Mozilla's attempts to branch out which failed, b) Mozilla's "branching out" attempts that are just as bad as their reliance on Google (like how they bought an ad company and are pushing their form of "anonymous tracking" or whatnot.)
Hot take: Developing a privacy concious replacement for the current ad-surveillance-industrial-complex model is NOT a bad idea, it's probably a good one and consistent with their values. It's also one of the few ideas which could actually plausibly fund their operations.
I liked their partnership with Scroll, before it got destroyed by the Twitter acquisition.
I think those people are (1) worried about Google and also simultaneously (2) worried/annoyed by activities that they think will never be sufficient to replace Google funding and that distract from browser development.
Exactly. Mozilla is a seriously bloated organization. Most of its $500M+ budget goes toward activities that have little to do with Firefox development.
(In another thread a couple of months ago, it was postulated that Firefox development accounts for at most $200M of the budget, and likely much less than that.)
Basically, they are using Firefox search deals and other revenue streams to fund their political and educational campaigns. Not that I disagree with their ideals, but I really wish they left the activism to other orgs like EFF and just focused on making a browser.
This opinion is fully consistent with Mozilla's self-interest
This opinion is fully consistent with Google's self-interest.
Coincidence? I think not --- there are about $400M reasons for it.
>I find it difficult to take "Mozilla is Google by proxy" complaints seriously when the same people tend to simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams.
I don't wish to cause too much argument, but it might be worth to consider that not all naysayers are from the same cloth. It could easily be several different groups of people that might not overlap. Each might complain about Mozilla, but for different reasons. I.e. Group 1: "Mozilla takes money from google, and that's bad! They rely too much on Web Browsers!" Group 2: "Mozilla is too distracted by side projects! They need to focus on what they're best at!"
Both of those groups might not agree with one another, but at other times there might be some overlap in complaints, too. I could see group 1 and 2 both complain that, for instance, "AI is an untested, trendy/gimmicky idea that they shouldn't be focusing on right now."
I'm not terribly wrapped up with what Mozilla does, or does not do; Mozilla can do whatever they want...I don't work there, so I don't care too terribly. I do my best to judge ideas on its merits.
>I could see group 1 and 2 both complain that, for instance, "AI is an untested, trendy/gimmicky idea that they shouldn't be focusing on right now."
If you think that Mozilla is too dependent on a search engine deal, would it not be wise to hedge against the fact that search itself may be less relevant in the future? Certainly Google, Apple and Microsoft are not ignoring AI as a browser supplement / replacement. But they're all incentivized to do it on their own proprietary systems, whereas Mozilla is incentivized to use local, open source, small models. That's potential differentiation.
I was using an example of criticism I've heard regarding Mozilla. As I stated:
>I'm not terribly wrapped up with what Mozilla does, or does not do; Mozilla can do whatever they want...I don't work there, so I don't care too terribly.
I don't think GAI (generative AI), in the commercial sense that it has been marketed in the last year or two, has been around long enough to critique it with any verifiable wisdom or insight - ChatGPT for example only launched around mid 2022 - we aren't far enough removed from its hype to make any kind of neutral assessment.
In more broad terms as a field of computer science ala machine learning, computer vision, deep learning, etc. it's far too niche an area for me to really assert any insight on - I'm at the kids table.
As an overview, I typically favor optimism over the long-term (15-20 year) on technological advancements - spellcheck is in a better spot than it was in 2004 for example, however, I have also been exceedingly dismissive over some things: online video (YouTube), streaming (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), and microblogging when they were new. They, of course then became explosively successful several seconds after the words tumbled out between my lips.
GAI is simply too new a technology in its current form to say if it is a: positive, negative, neutral, or somewhere in-between. And if it doesn't seem smart to speculate one way or another about GAI, it seems even more ill-advised to speculate whether it is profitable to invest in GAI.
In what way is Privacy in Firefox compromised by default? And how does that compare to Chrome, Edge, or Safari in their default privacy settings?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/study...
If anything, the funding has corrupted them, as they opted for web extensions instead of extending or re-implementing their XUL framework, thereby removing significant amounts of user control over the browser. We can now see the true intention behind web extensions, exemplified by Chrome's implementation of Manifest V3, which appears to be designed to make it challenging for web extension developers to keep up with the changes while maintaining privacy and user control, ultimately causing the extension ecosystem to fragment. This outcome could have been avoided if browsers had stuck to their own paths from the start.
This trend has continued to this day, as evident in your mention of compromised privacy, where Mozilla may take some steps to protect users but then introduce subtle changes that include analytics and tracking.
Additionally, the funding likely retained a lot of talent at Mozilla that could have otherwise contributed to the former SerenityOS's browser, now known as LadyBird, thereby diversifying the ecosystem.
Sadly Mozilla is like a large dead tree husk, full of parasites, that deprives healthy tree saplings from sunlight. I know its harsh, but I say knock it down. Much better for the browser market.
> We urge the court to consider remedies that achieve its goals without harming independent browsers, browser engines and ultimately without harming the web.
Such as? I have no idea what the solution to this issue is and, it seems, neither does Mozilla.
If you have a monopoly, the only way to handle it is to split the company down the middle. Give both full rights to all the contained IP except the name of the original company. Google.com would redirect to the two resulting companies randomly. Maybe after this split stabilizes you need to split the resulting companies again.
Markets need to emulate evolution. Consolidation is emulating invasive clonal individuals that eventually crash. We need to emulate offspring and the death of the parent.
…this might be the worst possible solution for all parties involved. How do I handle my own credentials when I have no idea which way a coin toss is going to go when I reach the site? How are certs handled? What would anyone gain from one Google becoming two, identical and indistinguishable Googles?
That’s an interesting idea. I would think that trying to do a second split would have significant challenges because the monopoly has already been turned into a duopoly, so now you have to do the work against two rich companies. Looking at the two most famous breakups of monopolies, Standard Oil and AT&T, where each was broken into multiple entities, I would argue that the resulting “children” were still far too powerful. Maybe these monopolies need to be broken into 10+ separate businesses for it to be truly effective.
> As written, the proposed remedies will force smaller and independent browsers like Firefox to fundamentally reexamine their entire operating model.
I think a lot of us Firefox users would see that as a good thing, or at least no worse than the status quo. Firefox is now a small slice of the market, and it seems Mozilla has lost the will to ever truly challenge Chrome again. Maybe removing the easy Google money would be, shall we say, motivating.
> and it seems Mozilla has lost the will to ever truly challenge Chrome again
They never intend to challenge Chrome in the first place. Once they displaced IE, and Chrome gained ground they considered themselves mission accomplished. Although I cant search for the reference where Mozilla said this. It was in the early 10s.
Much more looking forward to Ladybird.
What do you think Mozilla should be doing to recapture market share from Chrome that they aren't doing now?
Stop doing weird campaigns, or rather anything unrelated to building a browser.
Rehire the servo team.
Focus on the devs.
There was a time, when firefox with the firebug plugin was the dev tool for the web.
So people made sure websites worked in Firefox.
But since quite a while, chrome dev tools are superior in allmost every regard and the ff ones unusable to me.
Oh and let go of the expensive management. The one that openly talks about privacy, but ships FF with tracking and advertisment integrated by default. Stuff like this burned my trust.
So I still use FF, because chrome is not better in that regard, but that is the only reason.
I'd also say they should listen to power users: allow any/custom add-ons and re-enable dev tools in Firefox for Android (like kiwi browser). A mainstream android browser with these two features would easily outclass chrome on android for most power users.
If I were in charge? I would start by creating 3 (or more) editions of Firefox, segmented to casual, power, and pro users. Casual would be similar to the current Firefox, but with even more focus on ease of use, a “hand holding” mode, and more clarity and guidance when it comes to security and privacy. Power would have most hidden options exposed in UI, personalizations would be exportable/importable, extensions and user scripts would of course be treated as first class citizens. Pro would be fully customizable/optimizable for different verticals like medical, scientific, industrial, legal, engineering, etc. maybe a set of templates that can then be further customized, plus LTS with guarantee against random UI changes and ongoing testing against important sites/apps in each vertical. This is also where you could have a marketplace for high-end extensions or full on mods for the Pro edition. Pricing wise, Casual would be free, Power would be free with a donation of any amount or contribution of code/bug reports, and Pro would be $$ per seat per year, plus a cut of sales in the marketplace.
That’s how I would start. I have lots of other ideas for longer term projects all focused on the browser.
Revert to 3.6 and redo the last 15 years
Fire Mitchell Baker.
I honestly do not think Mozilla is fixable.
> As written, the proposed remedies will force smaller and independent browsers like Firefox to fundamentally reexamine their entire operating model.
> For the past seven years, Google search has been the default in Firefox in the U.S. because it provides the best search experience for our users.
Isn't Google search the default because Google pays to be the default?
It's an absolute scandal that Mozilla gets HALF A BILLION $ PER YEAR from Google and Firefox isn't even technically or by market share the greatest browser in the market.
How is it that despite this tremendous funding, no other company is using the gecko engine? How did Microsoft end up using Google's engine over Mozilla's?
Mitchell Baker has a lot to answer for. She is single-handedly responsible for pillaging this opportunity. How she has lasted as the CEO for so long is criminal.
Article doesn't answer question... it vaguely talks about search, defaults, threats but you have to kind of infer and guess what is actually written in the judgement. I wanted to read "the judgement says xxx which means xxx will happen which causes xxx".
I have more questions after reading than before!
Why not mandate that each browser shows search options on first install, and then periodically ask again every... 6 months?
Google could still pay to be the top sponsored option.
Would Google still pay Mozilla in this case?
No one has figured out how to fund browser development because of ads. The siren call was too strong and drowned out alternate funding models.
This is a reminder that Mozilla only exists because of google, in the Mozilla Foundation's 2021–2022 financial statement, Mozilla states to have made $593 Million, $510 Million of that came from Google. Mozilla is bitching because they dont exist without Google, and while they may claim to be independent or whatever, if the DOJ forces Google to end default search deals, Mozilla disappears.
Maybe they should think of starting to spend "Mozilla Foundation" money on browser development, like most donors expect them to, instead of other random things no one cares about.
>Maybe they should think of starting to spend "Mozilla Foundation" money on browser development
That would be tax fraud. Tax-exempt charitable donations from MoFo can't be used for product development by MoCo, a for-profit company.
It sounds like MoCo doesn't make any profit anyway, it's just an antitrust shield for Google.
It does make profit. The Corportation-owned-by-Foundation model is not that uncommon.
> It does make profit. The Corportation-owned-by-Foundation model is not that uncommon.
How, exactly? Excess from Google's money drops?
If their corporate structure is a barrier to using donations for development, I think they need to change it. If "MoFo" can't send money to "MoCo," but I bet the opposite could be made to work. Maybe "MoCo" should gift the browser software and development teams to "MoFo," and pay the Google money (as long as it lasts) to the foundation to license it back to distribute it with search engine-placements, etc.
I personally stopped giving them money when I learned they didn't spend any of the donations on firefox.
To be fair, the Rust thing was really great.
All the lackluster AI, VR, and other toys have been wasted efforts though.
Didn't they lay off all the rust devs they funded? I'm unclear what Mozilla actually did to _actively_ foster Rust. I get the impression it was more like Tim Berners-Lee and Cern.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/
Yup.
If I'm counting right, that page (minus header/footer) mentions Firefox three times, and AI 17 times. And one of the mentions of Firefox is practically pejorative: "Mozilla has been incorrectly thought of by many as 'the Firefox company.'"
This is depressing. Firefox is the only browser I'm willing to daily drive because it's the only one that's good and built by a nonprofit. I love Firefox, but loving Mozilla gets harder every day.
>only one that's good and built by a nonprofit.
Firefox is developed by Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit.
I hadn’t realized that. :(
They’re right. Mozilla is ‘the Firefox company who imagines themselves otherwise’.
At some point this is Mozilla’s own fault for not finding an alternative revenue scheme after all these decades. Addicted to an easy money spigot.
They do in fact have "alternative revenue streams" and HN complains about the existence of every single one of them. Every threat about Pocket or Mozilla VPN or Lockwise etc. etc. is full of the refrain "Why don't they just focus on Firefox"
There's no "alternative revenue stream" that would bring in that quantity of money without requiring significant investment that would detract from Firefox engineering, which people would then also whine about endlessly.
What if they found a way to monetize Firefox
It’s not like those alternative streams have been very successful. Feels like they’ve been floundering from project to project for a decade now.
Making the browser itself paid would instantly doom them to irrelevance. It's already bad enough trying to make developers care about a browser with 2% marketshare, it will be impossible to do so if their marketshare drops to 0.1%, which it will if you make it paid.
That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
What if they pursued a freemium model, other browsers like Orion do that.
What if they monetize an aspect of the browser that people will actually pay good money for (something more than Pocket).
Heck even Brave is trying something with its model.
Brave replaces third party ads with their own, I don't see that as being particularly ethical.
Personally I'd like to see them try to recreate what Scroll were doing a few years ago before the Twitter acquisition destroyed them. They'd have to make it cross-browser though.
I think Brave is disreputable but they’ve arguably been able to capture more excitement as an alternative browser in recent years, though I don’t know how much of that is because of Brendan Eich’s name. But at least they’re innovating on how to make money with a browser.
Maybe Firefox could release an ad-supported edition?
They appear to actively scorn the idea of making a good browser as a method of funding as well, they seem to prioritize everything but firefox, and want to blow what's left of the budget on company events at fancy hotels. There's a reason firefox forks get so much more goodwill than mozilla itself for the past several years...
Making the browser itself paid would instantly doom them to irrelevance. It's already bad enough trying to make developers care about a browser with 2% marketshare, it will be impossible to do so if their marketshare drops to 0.1%, which it will if you make it paid.
That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
I was not suggesting a paid browser, that's a bit of a leap. But right now mozilla has burned all their goodwill. If they wanted to, for example, focus on making firefox really good and solicit donations specifically to support continued firefox development, it wouldn't work anymore. They could have followed the model of other large open source projects that do the same.
But now i would never want to support them. The goodwill is just gone and if you give money to mozilla right now it gets wasted on nonsense, they have so little interest in firefox. I'd rather support any of the forks.
if only there was some project that had a great donation scheme and works really well, that is a poster child of good donation models, probably not real though.
It doesn't help that they're bleeding their minimal customer-base with political bullshit:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blogarchive/blog/2021/01/08/we-need...
Everything they list in their "recommended actions" section is spot-on.
Calling for algorithm and advertising transparency should not be controversial.
Yea I hope everyone whose livelihood depends on Mozilla funding is ruined, as they explicitly view me and my political representative as an enemy and have been advocating to silence my political speech. They deserve to fail. Imagine expecting people to just "take it" with stuff like this from a tech company. It's indefensible.
I suspect we have different definitions of "political speech" and "silence" and how that applies to the 1st amendment.
Jan 6 was an abomination, and it should not be controversial for a tech company that values democratic values to call for algorithm and advertising transparency.
Isn't Mozilla worth half a billion dollars? Perhaps they are "independent" in the sense that they are technically a different organization than google, but usually when I hear independent it evokes images of some "plucky upstart" looking to take on some giant superstructure. I'm talking about independent movie theaters, or independent coffee companies. Things like that.
Calling Firefox an independent browser is kind of like calling Internet Explorer an "independent browser" - it very well may be a different organization, but Microsoft is hardly independent as some kind of thin, agile, and flexible upstart looking to "take on old man google".