Mozilla chose to waste most of it.
Right? I don't need AI BS. I just want a solid browser.
What do you mean, you don't want an opt-out ad tracker?
I kinda get why they (and other companies) have to try AI at the moment though.
It’s not what people claim it is, but it could end up being an essential tool for the modern world, and if they don’t invest in it early their business might end up getting left behind.
We’ve certainly seen companies fall because they’ve not tried to stay on the cutting edge before.
But, but but, it's AI!! It'll solve
noneall of your problems!Investors want AI BS that’s why.
I hate to see AI (I suppose we mean specifically GPTs in this instance) trashed all the time, just because companies use it incorrectly. They shove it in every hole they can to hike the stock price. But it's a great tool, that arguably needs more time in the oven, which has legitimate helpful uses. Especially in the context of a browser.
For example, in Arc Browser I can semantically search the page/article for anything and it will show me the location of the information I need (ever tried to find the recipe itself in an article about the recipe?). I can also do some obvious stuff, like summarize and translate sections, which I could do by copying it into a dedicated service, but it's definitely much more convenient being built-in.
Would be much better if it ran locally off the NPU, but we are not there yet.
...compensating their CEO of all people doing good work in there
Maybe that's not bad for firefox.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects and just focus on delivering a good browser.
Algo the lack of google as financial support means they'll rely more on donations, which would mean that they really need to focus on offering a good browser.
I'll gladly donate to firefox if I would see they are really focusing on it.
I donate to lemmy and mastodon instances. As I do believe they are using my money for good things.
I have donated in the past while still living in a third world country. I stopped when I realized how my donation was squandered.
I think in the future I will try to donate like 10 dollars a month for free software that I use, including Firefox, KDE, Thunderbird, Wikipedia, Lemmy, etc.
I think it's very important to support open source financially, because without it we would all be fucked by huge corporations. And I might sound overly anti-capitalist, but I think that most of them should be broken up.
The moment that it's possible to donate directly towards the development of firefox, there's roughly 10€/yr with their name on it. As it stands however, Mozilla is not funding FF at all, but rather extracting money from the project.
Mozilla (not Google) got rid of the side projects, increased the CEO's salary, and laid off a bunch of employees during the pandemic. It basically got rid of the innovation that could have made Firefox a faster, more secure, and pleasant experience. Rust and Rust-based Servo, as a replacement for Gecko, were two of those side projects. These are the things Mozilla needs to invest in.
Also, I think Mozilla needs to ask the user upon install what the default search engine should be from a list of search engines including Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing, and Yahoo. Maybe the order of those could be arranged based on how much they're able to finagle from the search engines.
The real monopoly is their control over Chrome. That's what they should be forced to split from the company that owns the search engine. Development and design of Chrome should not and cannot be done by the company that runs the search engine and gets its revenue from ads.
Development and design of Chrome should not and cannot be done by the company that runs the search engine and gets its revenue from ads.
I'd go so far as to argue the exact same for development of: Operating systems, automotive, smartphones, residential fiber...
The ulterior motive is simply never in a user's best interest when every function ultimately becomes part of the "influence towards the purchase of goods and services" funnel.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects
Like Rust?
For userland code that basically fingerbangs every server on the web, some forced memory-safety might not be a bad idea
I really hope that's sarcastic, because Rust is one of the most valuable additions to the whole IT field in a good while.
Entire industries have been stuck on C/C++ for decades. Industries, which are normally extremely late to any form of modern software development, are now practically jolting to get Rust integrated into their toolchains.
Similarly, languages without runtimes allow for building libraries that can be called from other programming languages, which so far meant C/C++. That's a big reason why many widely used open-source projects like OpenSSL, SQLite, OpenGL etc. are written in those.
Even if, for whatever reason, you think Rust is awful, getting a third language into the mix will allow many more people to build similar libraries, which is again really good for everyone.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects
Like Firefox?
It really seemed like it's been a bit of a side project those last few years...
The problem is that building a plain simple browser doesn't pay.
In reality it means they'll have to focus more on monetization, which will create more enshittification and not less.
What they need is to focus on enterprise functionality and privacy services. Maybe they could even do some sort of consulting
Maybe you have noticed it, but they try to widem their portfolio with paid services in the last couple of years. They have seen it coming.
I pay for at least one of their new services.
true true. good point
Maybe they can stop paying their CEO 7 million per year
Maybe they can stop fiddling around with A I.
I know many of us don't really like AI stuff. But it is just a door opener - and Mozilla needs funding like any company.
The product we sell at our company also has AI features. So far AI got us to talk to many more customers. So far none of them bought the AI stuff - even if in my opinion it would provide productivity increases. For us AI is a net positive: it cost us 2 weeks of writing gluecode, didnt sell at all, opened many doors for selling the main product.
- Mozilla will take money from Microsoft
- Firefox gets Office 365, Exchange, and Azure AD integration
- Netflix partners with Microsoft for advanced HD and DRM
- Microsoft and Mozilla partner to deliver Microsoft-enhanced Firefox for Windows
- ActiveX 2.0
I upvoted you but I wasn't happy about it.
Microsoft is declared a monopoly (again). Firefox has to find new funding (again)
I had a good chuckle at how well that all came together.
Okay, Satan.
ActiveX 2.0
Every old ass exploit and C2 targeting internet explorer is gonna dig itself out of the grave lmao
You should clarify which Mozilla you are mentioning. Mozilla Foundation or Mozilla Corporation?
Mozilla chose a stupid business model. 🤷
Don't you think they dabbled on stupid projects and acquired some companies like pocket precisely because just a browser wasn't enough to pay the bills?
That's why Mozilla Foundation shouldn't have created Mozilla Corporation in first place.
Meh. It's just Monopoly money /j
I hope Mozilla put most of that Google money into index funds or something. At least it didn't go into paying the developers.
I haven't confirmed this but according to this
They didn't
That... Is a weird link that doesn't open
Oh for fun! I don't want Mozilla to go down, Firefox is one of the few non-Chromium web browsers; I'm glad that Google is pronounced as a monopoly, as it is true. However, for every good thing, there is a terrible curse that shows how much our system needs to be changed. It will be so heartening to not have Apple using Google Search by default, as the results are fucking shit. They could survive the lack of Investor Daddy's cash.
Firefox is open source, we don't need Mozilla.
If tech giants such as Google cannot be broken up, then their services should be required to be compatible and all data exportable to competitors. See the EFFʼs “Competitive Compatibility” concept. Buy a movie off Google's YouTube but Google misbehaves? It must be exportable to a market competitor that you do support. Don't like how Google handles your email? You should be able to switch your email address to a competitor just like you can change phone companies without losing your phone number.
Basically, if the US Federal government cannot discipline monopolies by breaking them up directly, they should break up the moats and walled gardens the monopolies built to keep customers locked in to maintain their monopolies. See Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
In my utopia, Google would be forced to continue to pay out the current annual contract sum, at a decreasing percentage every year, for some number of years, to all affected companies, giving them the opportunity to divest and pivot.
The root problem doesn't get fixed if the company with enough money to be a monopolist still has the money when this is "resolved."
That is actually fairly smart. That way you don't shock the ecosystem and effect the economy.
Firefox; being open source as it is; is not in danger.
lets fucking gooooo down with Booble!!
Should we buy Mozilla?
Sure, how much could a web browser cost anyways? Here’s $20.
I would actually like to know how much it cost. And how much each user "should" pay so it becomes viable.
Though I would really think that public institutions should use firefox as a base browser instead of edge/chrome as being open source is usually a big plus for public agencies that need to really control what's going on in their computers. And thus being a big source of financial support for firefox.
Maybe ad-supported version?
Like the Opera browser in 2000s.
Yes. Can we ? Eh ...
I have a very mouthy Jackson who says no.
Which would ironically give even more monopoly over how the web is viewed to Google. Chrome and Firefox are just about the only two players in that space right now.
No they're not, there's safari and Edge. Don't forget about opera.
:|
Sorry. I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face while I say that....
I'd pay for a browser if it wouldn't sell my data.
I wouldn't mind paying for a browser, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of subscribing to a browser.
people pay for a search engine, they would subscribe for a browser if it does what they want
if Mozilla bundles a private, secure and well packaged browser with a good search engine and this browser performs well while still providing the current version for free, there's a certain minority who would be compelled to pay for it
atm, a browser and search engine is the major gateway to the internet, google has always done that at the cost of the user being a product, but it is now fucking that up and an alternative is needed, Mozilla could and should step in for that
maybe firefox forks already do the trick for you, i've heared there are plenty free ones. no need to pay, but maybe donations are very welcome. also a complete open source solution that is ready to be compiled by anyone could also be patched by anyone for himself to disable a feature heshex dislikes or such.
welcome to free adult world ;-)
Why does this percentage keep going up? Who keeps inflating the numbers? The first time I heard about this, it was like 64%. Then 77%. Now 81%?! Tomorrow, I'm gonna see a meme stating 97% of Mozilla's income is from Google.
The actual numbers are $510MM/y from Google out of $593MM/y total revenue. So 86% if my math is correct. It's bonkers how dependent on a single deal they are.
Are they dependent?
All I see is Google throwing a fuck tonne of money at them, and Mozilla spaffing it on pointless crap. They could probably raise more if Google went away, but they could also reduce spend significantly if they didn't have stupid money get thrown at them.
Its like giving your kids $100 a day. Sure they could blow it on pay to win games, but what would happen if you reduced it to $10 a day? Probably nothing of note, just less spending on crap.
Um, it's actually 114% of Mozilla's total income.
Oh no, they will have to stop paying their CEO a ridiculous amount of money. TRAGIC.
CEO will still get their pay, just have to lay off bunch of devs to "balance the losses"
it's not like they used the money to improve the fucking browser anyway
Am I the only one who never realized how dead inside the lady looks in the first slide?
I wonder if German govt. funds Mozilla
something like the sovereign tech fund for gnome
tax money should improve public infrastructure and Firefox is digitally doing thatI hope Germany will fund not Mozilla Corporation, but Mozilla Foundation
I doubt they would make Google stop paying Mozilla. That would make Google more of a monopoly
Google pays because Firefox has Google as the default search engine. That deal is where the problem lies.
I sincerely hope that is what's going to happen and Mozilla gets severely fucked over for how they have been running their shit. Break their business and rethink from scratch how we run and finance the development of one of the most important pieces of software around. Hint: You're not going to be competitive with big tech by copying their practices, marketing "AI" bullshit and pocket and all that crap. You can't compete with google there, they can always outspend you.
As a Linux user, such a break would also be very timely, now that we have survived the painful surgeries of systemd and wayland. Those problems are mostly fixed, so we need another dysfunctional troublemaker - Firefox it is!
But seriously: The official story is always that google gives Mozilla the money to be the default search engine. But really, they don't need to care. Google needs Firefox so they can pretend they don't have a browser monopoly. For similar reasons, google used to employed 10000s of people who were doing very much non-essential stuff that is entirely irrelevant for their business. They could have fired them all long ago, and massively increased their profitability. But those would have looked obscene and raises regulators' attention. So just hiring a bunch of expensive engineers who build google chat 23.0 and whatever makes them appear more like a "normal" company.
We completely agree, Mozilla should not be run like it is i.e. a Tech Startup and should allow donations to Firefox directly.
It should become a worker owned co-op as that would make a lot of things better in the long run.
It's been clear for a while now, their current way of operating just isn't going to work and hasn't been, especially since they're adding rubbish no-one wants or needs e.g. the private adverts thing.
Break their business and rethink from scratch how we run and finance the development of one of the most important pieces of software around.
Or just run them into bankruptcy and dissolve the enterprise.
Hint: You’re not going to be competitive with big tech by copying their practices, marketing “AI” bullshit and pocket and all that crap. You can’t compete with google there, they can always outspend you.
That's sort of the root problem of a monopoly. There's nothing you can practically do to break their hold. They have to fuck up so hard that they lose a significant chunk of their patrons. And in a Walled Garden of an online ecosystem, that's very hard to do.
In a better world, the sanction on Google as "monopoly" would incur an antitrust ruling that breaks them up into multiple smaller firms. This is also what should have happened to Microsoft back in the 90s. Instead, what we're seeing is a wrist-slap that mostly hurts Google's partners, rather than their shareholders.
Google needs Firefox so they can pretend they don’t have a browser monopoly.
Edge provides them enough cover for that. And Mozilla's refusal to adopt the ManifestV3 threatens Google's advertising revenues with a browser that continues to support ad blockers.
So now its time for Mozilla to die.
Revenue of Mozilla Corporation. Not Mozilla Foundation.
Hopefully Ladybird turns out well
Others will present themselves. Mozilla have been on a downtrend for years. I've heard of a couple of alternatives, but I don't have the experience with any of them. If anyone knows any good Firefox alternatives, please let us know!
If by that you mean “some alt-right-adjacent bro will come up with a new browser that’s essentially reskinned Chromium with a crypto wallet duct-taped to it”, you’re probably right
It's okay you can just say Brave
those already exist
Isnt that brave?
This used to be the thought, but the trouble is, HTML is now such a vastly complex web of requirements, mixed with the unwritten rules set by Chrome, it’s doubtful another browser could push forward easily; especially without a major source of funding.
Forks are often dependent on the original unless the source just gave up.
Vivaldi is my favourite browser, made by decent people.
Also chromium
Vivaldi is pretty alright.
I suppose for me personally the question will always be: how good is it with adblocks? Especially on youtube as that's where I spend a lot of my time. SponsorBlock on Firefox has been invaluable for me, not just blocking ads, but auto-skipping the whole "like, comment subscribe" and in-video ads etc.
When I heard the news, my first though was a mix of "Oh. oh no..", "yay! no vendor-lock-in", and "OH, NO."
My expectation for the future is that a crowd fundraiser like on Wikipedia (does anyone remember those?) will be on the way for Mozilla... there is no way they can survive a 80% drop in the budget gracefully.
They'll probably just switch business daddy's and just have Bing as default.
Tbh I like Gecko but I hate the Mozilla company's recent statements.
Please elaborate or point me in the direction
Mass Layoffs
AI Focus
End of Support status for FireFox on windows older than Windows 10
Removal of many settings such as browser.privateWindowSeparation.enabled
It's a company. Mozilla Foundation has nonprofit status but the Subsidiary Mozilla Corporation is for-profit.
TBH I'm biased af because I just liked it better before all the recent updates.
This is the only Mozilla mistake I'm aware of:
I'm too OOTL here, is the meme for reai? Is Mozilla without funds now?
The meme is real, but that doesn't mean that Mozilla is suddenly bankrupt. I can't speak to Mozilla specifically, but there are non-profits like Wikipedia that set up stores of money equal to at least a full year of operating expenses, so that they can work to pivot in the face of exactly this kind of eventuality.
Google will appeal the ruling, which will drag out the measures for a while still, and no one knows yet whether they'll actually be forced to stop paying Mozilla. Presumably, Mozilla will mention in court that this is a real fucking problem and would actually weaken Google's competition. But the concern is still there, yeah.
Mozilla Corporation? Mostly. Mozilla Foundation? No.
3,2,1... more spyware coming to Firefox.
If it's visible, that's not spying, dum-dum.
😂
I suppose it's time to fork Firefox. Can call the fork "Netscape Navigator". Ya, I think that has a nice ring to it.
I miss watching the little moon spin with the shooting stars of Netscape Navigator. It's weirdly the most nostalgic thing for me. Maybe because my first full memory ever is the library computers and learning how to use Netscape in first grade. It's the first time I started really retaining information fully, aside from snippets of Oregon Trail for the Commodore 64 in my kindergarten class.
Penalize Google many much monies and use some of those to endow a trust that gives yearly funding distributions.
Simple.
popcorns
If think of it then there be no competition any more even by a little. If Google Decide to give up on chrome and make there own close Source web engine. Nothing really stopping them as they control the web and search even taking then to count not going make them support the chrome web engine. Firefox just uphill battle even more now as user can't give up ther chrome habits and the forks.
They don't need a brand new closed source browser, chrome is already closed source. Sure, a lot of the heavy lifting is done inside the open source chromium's code , but all the things that turns a profit for Google is the closed source additions (a million kinds of telemetry) .
Always that Bing money!
Coming soon: [Firefox - Mozilla Ads Edition]
well then they can start resetting duckduckgo as the default search engine
They honestly should partner with DDG. They are in the same industry.
It's likely if other browsers collapse they could rule chrome a monopoly too
Mozillas mo' problems
Mozilla co's problems
Firefox seems fine now and it's open source. I get that no software is maintenance free, but how much work actually needs to be done each year?
You can't just maintain a browser, the web is ever evolving.
That'd be a good way to get left behind. Even now there are technologies that chromium supports and ff doesn't, e.g. the new-ish webusb api. (Actually checking now it is supported as experimental, but my point stands)I think they dont implement it on purpose
For a browser...
A huge amount
That's a valid question. Unfortunately, it's difficult to quantify.
The state of browsers in general has been a moving target since NCSA Mosiac; about around 1993 or so. So the last three decades has been a ceaseless grind of new features, security enhancements, performance enhancements, and so on. And this feature set is absolutely monstrous in scale, as it includes backwards compatibility to most of those features (if not all of) back to that beginning over 30 years ago. So, work on any browser is by definition perennial, and it only ever gets more complex.
For Firefox, well, just take a look at their bug tracker. It's broken down by component, but each link on this page is its own fresh hell of things to do, many of which are barely a year old: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox
I would also argue that the only other software projects that compare to a web browser in terms of sheer scale, compatibility, and longevity, are things like the Linux Kernel or maybe the entire Microsoft Office suite. IMO, software in this class is a lot of work to keep going, no matter how you slice it.
A browser is one of the most complex pieces of software you will find. There's a reason why only 2.5 browsers exist (I'm counting chromium and safari as 1.5 because they are not the same but they are both WebKit). Maintaining a browser is difficult and making a new one is even more difficult.
Take Microsoft, one of/the most valuable company in the world. They had a browser (internet explorer) that has been state of the art, then they couldn't maintain it anymore and it became a joke. They made a new one instead (old edge) with all the intention of making it a real player. Fucking Microsoft couldn't do it and had to give up. They replaced it with a reskin of chrome (new edge).
Apple and Google manage to maintain chrome and safari both thanks to their position of monopoly, and because their position of monopoly depends on it. Firefox exist(ed) as a tax sponge for Google, but it's definitely behind chrome in technology, but if it was a new browser, and not one order than safari, they would never be able to make it.
It's around 30 million lines of code. You need actual human beings who have enough knowledge of this code to make decisions.
When I'm on a project with 30000 lines of code as a reasonably experienced dev, I consider that rather challenging to know most details of. This is obviously some complete ballpark math, but that would mean they need 1000 devs.
They had around 750 employees in 2020, after they laid off 250 employees. This includes HR, management, IT support and such, so possibly 650 actual devs, of which not all are working on Firefox.
lol is this a joke or are you being serious?
librewolf, brave, mullvad browser.
librewolf
Downstream of Firefox that relies on Firefox being developed by Mozilla
brave
Sketchy downstream of Google Chromium
mullvad browser
Downstream of Tor Browser which in turn is downstream of Firefox that relies on Firefox being developed by Mozilla
Sketchy downstream of Google Chromium
it's not sketchy at all, that's google-funded propaganda you saw/heard
Good.
I switched to brave anyway.
dude, just use librewolf, firefox without any bullshit. done.
edit: okay. no mozilla = no librewolf. funny how the only alternative to google's browser depended on google for its survival. i don't have a solution, and it sounds like no one else does either.
Librewolf kinda depends on the existence of Firefox
The librewolf maintainers have written some patches, scripts and config to remove some specific bits of Firefox and bundle a few extensions. They will not necessarily have the ability to develop a whole web browser on their own
If the Mozilla Foundation isn't working on Gecko and Firefox, there isn't a Librewolf.
there are other options, none of them perfect, nor immortal. but if mozilla's days are numbered, then it is what it is.
maybe i should have said "use the thing that's not exploiting you for money," librewolf being one option. either way, don't fall into becoming a fanboy who simps for software. enshittification is inevitable for all platforms, as evidenced by...all platforms
it sounds like no one else does either
Maintaining a browser that doesn't rely on someone else's upstream code is quite an ordeal. Of the four main browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox), 3 are built by large for-profit enterprises and the other relies on money from a large for-profit enterprise. Browsers are very complex pieces of technology and can't be maintained by 3 guys on GitHub in their spare time.
in other words, we're fucked.
it was fun while it lasted
