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.
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 outpaces R&D once they hit scale ... and in an ideal situation - your revenues should outpace R&D expense because you're getting economies of scale (which further dilutes the R&D to Other Business Function comparison).
And Mozilla has hit scale / become "big company" - with those kinds of revenues.
The reason why G&A outpaces R&D, is because now you have all kinds of work to do 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.
Again not diminishing Firefox's efforts but it's difficult not to compare with other _leaner_ open-source projects.
As an example the Linux foundation [0] had 270M in expenses in 2023. Of which even we aggregate international operations and corporate operations the expenditure is less than 21M in G&A equivalent activities.
I agree with up that you have to take revenue into account as well. However, as an NPO Mozilla has no mandate to grow at all costs.
What’s the benefit of having Mozilla be this huge? How does it compare to the risk of shutting down if their revenue dries up, which is looking like a possibility?
This was wild to contemplate and I was about to raise my finger and say "Really?! 'G&A' at that scale?!" but at the same time even if those kinds of roles are over-hired - they have to be responding to need and within a realm they found risk-averse.
Having said that I just have had the same kinds of questions/trouble as OP about Mozilla's wild spending and budget compared to seeing their devs at grungy linux confs in the midwest when I was an undergrad in the 00s.
You did help point out what I really wondered about also and didn't understand, so thanks.
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.
> 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.
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]
Where do you get "a few million"? Do they only have less than 20 developers? Why denigrate Mozilla?
> 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.
Firefox isn't used by companies, but by consumers.
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"
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
> 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.
I would agree with you there.
Sadly the art of troughing is a well known feature of larger NPOs.
That's why (IMHO) people should never blindly donate to NPOs without first taking a quick look at their financial accounts to get a feel for how much troughing is going on. Honestly, if I had my way, I would make it law to have a simple-to-read one-page summary of that data for every NPO.
I also do not buy the oft-cited argument "well, we have to attract talent by paying them 'competitively' ".
Well no. If the "talent" wants a fat paycheck, they can go work in the private sector. If they are going to work at an NPO, then they should WANT to work for the NPO, not just see it as another spot for their CV. In many (most?) cases they will be in charge of an army of well-meaning unpaid volunteers, its not a good look for the C-suite to roam around in private cars, businssess-class flights, have fancy "away days" etc. etc.
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?
Yeah, this is my takeaway as well. Folks in this discussion are saying “why can’t Mozilla just focus on making Firefox” and my response would be “because that’s the path to eventual death”.
Firefox is, what, 3% of the browser market today? It isn’t because it’s a bad browser. It’s because people are using OSes with tightly integrated browsers they never think to change. Making Firefox faster or adding vertical tabs or whatever the demand of the day is won’t change that.
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).
In general it has been my experience that administrators primary functions are to justify administrators jobs. Usually by any ill considered and ill researched manner as possible.
The solution is to keep adding management layers until the company implode. The problem is that when it has gone too far all the people who are left are those that do not take responsibility.
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.
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.
Those arguments all sound like "We nearly have a monoculture so let's embrace the monoculture and give up". The downward curve needs to be counter-acted, not accelerated.
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.
Mine too, but they have existed for a while now and seems their development is stuck and left to rot, there's many improvements around them that could be made to help improve privacy.
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.
It's to the point where there doesn't seem to be much left to lose. Anything is worth trying. Their CEO should definitely be out the door. Still, I won't be holding my breath. They're hostile to their community, developers who want to work on web technologies, and to the open web.
> 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.
I'd like to understand this point better. Does Firefox use the Chromium engine under the hood?
Nope, Firefox still uses its own rendering engine and JavaScript engine—except on iOS, where it's essentially Safari with a UI wrapper. But that’s due to Apple’s ToS, not Firefox’s fault.
I assume the previous comment was about market share. It’s low, yes, but I still think Firefox has influence despite that. Having a third rendering engine is valuable—especially now, after Microsoft killed IE/Edge and turned it into a Chromium fork. The percentage might not be high, but the people who use Firefox are usually the ones pushing for keeping the web an open standard.
It doesn't use Chromium. I think that their point is that Firefox's rendering engine, Gecko, can only have an impact on the rendering engine space proportional to its user base, which they have argued is insignificant.
I have never once had an issue with a website that was solved by opening it in Chrome instead. and I switched to firefox like three years ago. If firefox is so much less supported, I'm not seeing it at least
I've been bringing this up in every single thread about Chrome and Manifest V3 pops up. I'm been using Firefox, 100% of the time, on three different operating systems, for probably six years at this point.
I can remember a single time I had to swap to Chrome for something, and it was three years ago, and involved some flavor of WebAssembly, I believe.
If anyone can point out a current website that is acting up under Firefox and not Chrome, please post it. I just want want to know that the "Firefox is inferior" argument isn't a decade old echo.
Firefox works pretty well on most sites. Web standards are IMHO in a good enough Shape that anything properly developed will be fine.
Firefox doesn't work well on Google properties (for obvious and non obvious reasons). It's decent, but in my experience it 's significantly slow and resource intensive in most of Google Suite and subpar on YouTube[0]. Useable, but definitely heavier than Chrome. I ended up with a dedicated Chrome instance for meet and Sheets.
Recently I found Notion to be more and more sluggish, it might be because of cache and other relics as I spend my life in Notion, but fresh Chrome instances behave better. All in all, Notion has become worse and worse, so it might be just part of that trend.
Many enterprise extensions currently won't work at all in Firefox. It's in no part Firefox's fault, and enterprise software has always been shitty, but this is becoming a reality to me.
[0] I don't have the link at hand, but it was notably due to Google intentionally screwing up Firefox last time I looked into it...
I switched to firefox when Firebug came out. I haven't switched since, although I spend a lot of time on iOS so maybe half my browsing is FF.
I'm sure I've seen a few things not work on FF, but not many, and likely things that would break on Safari too (I've had govt stuff just not work on tablet safari for sure).
Let me introduce you to Microsoft's Office 365 or w/e this pile of garbage is called. Especially Teams. This fiasco of Web chat programs is the reason I have to keep two browsers open.
> Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers
Chrome, Edge and Safari are all bigger than Firefox. But Firefox not in the top ten results? Unless you are counting different versions of browsers as unique entries, I cant imagine what other 7+ browsers are bigger than Firefox.
Firefox on iOS has a feature called “Turn on Night Mode” which can color invert any page. I use it about 100x a day and couldn’t find it anywhere else. A perfect example of why we need options.
- Stylus and all other manifest v2 extensions that Brave won't be developing custom replacements for
- Better performance with lots of tabs/windows
- Container tabs
Firefox is better for powerusers and those who like customization, Chrome is better for those who don't care about customization and just watch Netflix. Pretty much equivalent to the Android/iOS debate.
It's true that Apple has the only independent browser engine that has enough users to make developers cater to it. But it's also true that Mozilla has seats on the relevant standards bodies, and on privacy-related issues, their presence helps act as a counterweight along with Apple.
Chrome users are often really familiar with Chrome's devtools and think Firefox is behind because they have trouble finding their way around FireFox's devtools. Truth is that Firefox built a reputation for itself amongst developers specifically because of it's very advanced devtools. Chrome has mostly caught up, but I'd still place Firefox ahead here
Besides that, uBlock Origin, Bypass Paywalls Clean, and AdNauseum working have been enough of an argument for me to be able to convince my friends to make the switch.
No thinly-modified version of Chromium is going to save us from Google having almost unilateral power over the implementation of web standards, creating a browser monoculture. None of these forks is making substantive changes to the browser engine; it's often just Chromium with a few configuration tweaks and cosmetic enhancements.
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.
>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.
> 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.
They opted firefox users into a data collection scheme they call PPA which works kind of like FLOC and uses the browser to gather information about what you do online, then they sell that data to advertisers by first sending it to yet another a third party who will assemble that data into reports for the advertisers. Then they basically said firefox users were too stupid to be trusted to opt-in, and it would be too hard to explain to such dumb users how selling their data was a good thing, so Mozilla had no choice but to force it on everyone by default without telling them about it. (https://web.archive.org/web/20240715112635/https://mastodon....)
Just a few days ago, they updated their android application info and stated they're going to share location data with third parties for "Advertising or Marketing" purposes...[1]
They also removed a promise to "never sell your data" in their FAQ[2] 2 weeks ago.
Regarding the Anonym acquisition, every adtech acquisition is a reverse-acquisition. Google didn't really go evil until they got reverse-acquired by DoubleClick.
I donated a lot of time, code, and at least a little money to early Mozilla and Firefox. They were a lot more dynamic and engaging when they were a small nonprofit. Now it feels like thanks to Google money they have become fat and lazy. Unable to take risks because it might threaten their income stream or their relationship with Google. It makes me sad and angry to see what they have become. Maybe a diet will help, but I fear the patient is beyond help at this point.
They've been pretty hard at work to offer services that will let them wean themselves off of Google money. This is how much of their income came from search royalties yearly according to their independent auditor reports
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out (which is normally at or near zero) the percentage is around 91%
One one hand, they are criticized for taking risks - being risks, inevitably many don't work out - including their AI project. On the other, now they don't take enough risks.
I guess it's the usual lifecycle most organizations go through, and generous funding has accelerated the process. The only upside is that, in theory, anyone could fork Firefox and continue development within a healthier structure. It's a critical project for the Internet. Hopefully, Ladybird will be viable soon, adding a bit of redundancy. Else, we risk becoming a Chrome monoculture.
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!
Agreed. Mozilla has problems, but bleeding funds from Google to fund their competition has a satisfaction factor. I'd rather sign a petition to keep the Google daddy fund going until the very end.
This seems like a weird time to be making noise about this. Mozilla has been trying to become less Google-dependent for a long time. In this past half decade especially they've made huge strides with less and less of their total revenue coming from Google royalties:
2023: 75.8% of revenues from Google royalties
2022: 86.0%
2021: 87.8
2020: 88.8
2019: [^a]
2018: 95.3
2017: 95.9
This data is based on their independent auditors reports.
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out (which is normally at or near zero) the percentage is around 91%
And every time they try to get an alternate revenue stream, someone on HN will then shout "just focus on the browser!!". Mozilla can't please the crowd no matter what they do.
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).
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.
The non-gov approach has been the last decades. I don't find the result convincing to be honest.
The path you're proposing has been pushed by the community for about how long the Mozilla foundation existed. I'm not sure asking them one more time will make a big difference.
They don't have to tell them how to run it. But it would be for the benefit of everyone if they could give grants to Mozilla to help them wean off of Google
Mozilla has been less and less dependent on Google and is now working on a VPN, MDN Plus, and other revenue streams that are also helping it become more independent. But the truth is that if all Google money suddenly stopped today, there would be no more Mozilla
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.
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.
The EU could step in for the browser, that bit of common, required infrastructure needed to provide modern government services. If that was the task given, EU bureaucrats could be the best choice for managing it. Any attempt to step beyond that immediately fails at the planning stage, because conflating the infrastructure component with anything else creates a ball of mud and a political and technical black hole. Like your example, where the EU couldn't even consider it because member states haven't given the organization that particular power.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
>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
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out (which is normally at or near zero) the percentage is around 91%
Readit News
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...
And Mozilla has hit scale / become "big company" - with those kinds of revenues.
The reason why G&A outpaces R&D, is because now you have all kinds of work to do 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.
CEO's largest accomplishment since 2007 was to put Mozilla on the brink of shutting down anytime Google's money stops flowing in.
As an example the Linux foundation [0] had 270M in expenses in 2023. Of which even we aggregate international operations and corporate operations the expenditure is less than 21M in G&A equivalent activities.
[0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/hubfs/Reports/lf_annualrepor...
What’s the benefit of having Mozilla be this huge? How does it compare to the risk of shutting down if their revenue dries up, which is looking like a possibility?
Having said that I just have had the same kinds of questions/trouble as OP about Mozilla's wild spending and budget compared to seeing their devs at grungy linux confs in the midwest when I was an undergrad in the 00s.
You did help point out what I really wondered about also and didn't understand, so thanks.
Why does mozilla.ai exist?
Didn't we like a trust the product more in 2007 than we do now?
I mean, yay for scale, but haven't we lost something here?
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.
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
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-...
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...
It's $260M.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43341830
Where do you get "a few million"? Do they only have less than 20 developers? Why denigrate Mozilla?
> 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.
Firefox isn't used by companies, but by consumers.
These numbers are highly unrealistic.
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
I would agree with you there.
Sadly the art of troughing is a well known feature of larger NPOs.
That's why (IMHO) people should never blindly donate to NPOs without first taking a quick look at their financial accounts to get a feel for how much troughing is going on. Honestly, if I had my way, I would make it law to have a simple-to-read one-page summary of that data for every NPO.
I also do not buy the oft-cited argument "well, we have to attract talent by paying them 'competitively' ".
Well no. If the "talent" wants a fat paycheck, they can go work in the private sector. If they are going to work at an NPO, then they should WANT to work for the NPO, not just see it as another spot for their CV. In many (most?) cases they will be in charge of an army of well-meaning unpaid volunteers, its not a good look for the C-suite to roam around in private cars, businssess-class flights, have fancy "away days" etc. etc.
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?
Firefox is, what, 3% of the browser market today? It isn’t because it’s a bad browser. It’s because people are using OSes with tightly integrated browsers they never think to change. Making Firefox faster or adding vertical tabs or whatever the demand of the day is won’t change that.
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).
Every single Windows and Mac user who uses Chrome made an affirmative choice to download Chrome. Why didn’t they decide to download Firefox?
But yeah that ratio is totally off. Paying the CEO 7 million also won't help.
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.
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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.
Web developer here, and Chrome dev tools suck balls. I exclusively use Firefox.
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.
https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Firefox/
So I am glad to see this page full of signatures. It might not help, but it won't hurt either.
I'd like to understand this point better. Does Firefox use the Chromium engine under the hood?
I assume the previous comment was about market share. It’s low, yes, but I still think Firefox has influence despite that. Having a third rendering engine is valuable—especially now, after Microsoft killed IE/Edge and turned it into a Chromium fork. The percentage might not be high, but the people who use Firefox are usually the ones pushing for keeping the web an open standard.
I can remember a single time I had to swap to Chrome for something, and it was three years ago, and involved some flavor of WebAssembly, I believe.
If anyone can point out a current website that is acting up under Firefox and not Chrome, please post it. I just want want to know that the "Firefox is inferior" argument isn't a decade old echo.
Firefox doesn't work well on Google properties (for obvious and non obvious reasons). It's decent, but in my experience it 's significantly slow and resource intensive in most of Google Suite and subpar on YouTube[0]. Useable, but definitely heavier than Chrome. I ended up with a dedicated Chrome instance for meet and Sheets.
Recently I found Notion to be more and more sluggish, it might be because of cache and other relics as I spend my life in Notion, but fresh Chrome instances behave better. All in all, Notion has become worse and worse, so it might be just part of that trend.
Many enterprise extensions currently won't work at all in Firefox. It's in no part Firefox's fault, and enterprise software has always been shitty, but this is becoming a reality to me.
[0] I don't have the link at hand, but it was notably due to Google intentionally screwing up Firefox last time I looked into it...
I'm sure I've seen a few things not work on FF, but not many, and likely things that would break on Safari too (I've had govt stuff just not work on tablet safari for sure).
Also Slack.
Chrome, Edge and Safari are all bigger than Firefox. But Firefox not in the top ten results? Unless you are counting different versions of browsers as unique entries, I cant imagine what other 7+ browsers are bigger than Firefox.
I'm not too sure why it's majorly relevant. The fact that it's not popular doesn't make it any less of a desirable option
> From a privacy preserving perspective, Firefox has no unique value
Similarly, the fact that it's not unique is somewhat irrelevant. Though the thing that's scary is what they removed from their terms and conditions.
- Sidebery (tree style vertical tabs)
- userChrome.css editing
- Stylus and all other manifest v2 extensions that Brave won't be developing custom replacements for
- Better performance with lots of tabs/windows
- Container tabs
Firefox is better for powerusers and those who like customization, Chrome is better for those who don't care about customization and just watch Netflix. Pretty much equivalent to the Android/iOS debate.
Besides that, uBlock Origin, Bypass Paywalls Clean, and AdNauseum working have been enough of an argument for me to be able to convince my friends to make the switch.
Crypto [1].
[1] https://brave.com/wallet/
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EDIT: Brave is opensource
[1]: https://github.com/brave/brave-core
[2]: https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit
[0] https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit
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.
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.
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.
Naturally not everyone was happy about it:
https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-fea...
I hope you realize that happened in 2006.
Recent developments can only improve the situation, actually, if it makes Mozilla more independent.
They also removed a promise to "never sell your data" in their FAQ[2] 2 weeks ago.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43326230
[2] - https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...
I think Google has that problem too.
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!
With less than 3% marketshare, Mozilla doesn't exist now for most people --- mainly just for Google.
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out (which is normally at or near zero) the percentage is around 91%
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It could be a stand alone association ruled by its members or a classic free-for-all whatever goes code talks FOSS project.
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.
The path you're proposing has been pushed by the community for about how long the Mozilla foundation existed. I'm not sure asking them one more time will make a big difference.
Mozilla has been less and less dependent on Google and is now working on a VPN, MDN Plus, and other revenue streams that are also helping it become more independent. But the truth is that if all Google money suddenly stopped today, there would be no more Mozilla
Vivaldi.
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Nope, run in the opposite direction. Unsuck from any teat.
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.
Modern adtech goes entirely against their core values.
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.
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
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-202...
[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out (which is normally at or near zero) the percentage is around 91%