So, where is the money coming from ?
Who's the product here ?
Mozilla is in the game of keeping the internet healthy. Part of it involves products, such as Firefox and its quest to recover userbase. Parts of it involves money, such as MOSS awarding grants or prizes for FOSS stuff they use and see value.
But most of Mozilla actions can be thought on "how close they get Mozilla to achieve its mission as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto[1]". In the case of Firefox Send, it enables less friction sending files and protects the user privacy, so it IMHO advances item #4 of the manifesto: "Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional." It also serves as a nice branding reminder for people, as it works with other browsers, makes people using some other solution remember Firefox...
MITI is Mozilla trying to keep the internet credible as a source of news and information. This is in keeping with Mozilla's core principles. Give the blog post a careful read, as it might change your mind: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-information...
Re: Cliqz, working with a search-oriented company might be a way that Mozilla can help avoid monopolies in search. The goal is to find new ways to keep the web open, so that new challengers have a level playing field vs. dominant companies.
Andreas wrote a good blog post about the worrying monopolistic trends in search a couple years ago: https://andreasgal.com/2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-se...
Edited to add: Cliqz is a very privacy-conscious company, and I think that respect for the user was a major factor in Mozilla partnering with Cliqz. This is just to say that, AIUI, the partnership was evaluated, again, in keeping with Mozilla's principles.
Also, here's the Mozilla manifesto, which documents those guiding principles: https://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/
>They seem to by trying hard to squander their reputation.
The other part of it is Mozilla building the browser for the lowest common denominator at the price of user control.
The workflow is:
1 - Build webextension 2 - Upload to AMO 3 - Choose "distribute on AMO" or "sign and distribute on your site"
It's a measure to prevent casual trojans, there are many ways around it for non-casuals and developers to employ.
That's actually pretty cool. Can you give me an example distro that does that with Firefox (w/FF brandings)?
They followed that up with some ten years of "web standards! web standards! open web standards!". This is the game Mozilla plays. That's why they won on the web: everyone does it their way now, even if their browser isn't dominant.
If Firefox Send graduates from being an experiment, then it recoup its costs implicitly if it can increase engagement with Firefox itself (which does produce revenue), or awareness of Firefox and Mozilla. Firefox's revenue comes primarily from search companies who pay for preferred placement in the browser. In that sense, people who search using Firefox are ultimately the product.
However, Mozilla is a mission-led company, and so profit maximization isn't ultimately the answer to why Mozilla does something. I think it's accurate to say that Mozilla is trying to maximize its positive impact. Revenue certainly enables that impact. But direct impact is also worth something, and it's not necessary for everything Mozilla does to involve profit maximization.
In this instance, the product is Firefox. The money is coming from the usual sources of revenue of Mozilla, i.e. Firefox.