But they're happy to pay via google's search and tracking. Mozilla doesn't have a lot of options open to them.
I'd honestly pay $2 per month (12 times "my share") for a Firefox that completely disavows the ad model and produces a truly user-centric experience sans ads, fingerprinting, etc. However, given that over 95% of their revenue comes from Royalties, I don't see that turning around any time soon.
I think nearly everyone would be willing to pay the ~$2/year to use Firefox if all browsers weren't free.
At that price, the main reason not to pay is the hassle rather than just downloading.
Thanks for the context about the revenue of Firefox. I had never given it any though.
Don't forget $2 in USA buys you different things than in Russia, China, India, or Africa.
Besides paying for a product doesn't mean that it becomes privacy-friendly, look at how Spotify still tracks your every actions even when you're a paying customer for instance.
A lot of people here also have huge double standards regarding Mozilla.
After all there was a time where most of us trusted Google and their "Do No Evil" motto. And then eventually in morphed into "Do More Profit" and we have the corporation that we know today.
DDG may change how they do things, but I expect that if they do there will be someone else that shows up to make money by providing a value-added anonymizing wrapper on top of search performed by a larger company - and it may not even be on top of the duopoly as it exists right now (are there actual search providers in the US not wrapping Google or Bing?). This may particularly happen if a new company grows in India or China then its able to start spreading coverage to other parts of the world.
I’m not affiliated with them. Just a happy user.
So donation money goes to outreach and similar. Which is useful but doesn't fund Firefox.
Someone please correct me if this is wrong.
the donations are still useful though because if there were none mozilla foundation would die, and in turn, mozilla corporation would also die or be sold as its fully owned by the foundation
Tax-exempt charities (which must by definition be non-profit, but not all non-profits are charities, and not all charities are tax exempt!) must spend money in a way that's aligned with their mission, and there are rules on how much they can spend outside that. (The really big no-no has to do with political lobbying and the endorsement of candidates for public office -- a relic of a more civilized age when apparently we thought that should be left up to individuals. But I digress.)
The Mozilla Foundation is a California corporation with tax-exempt status under US Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3), which covers "public charities, private foundations or private operating foundations". There are slightly different rules for each category.
I'm not sure what category Mozilla Foundation is; my suspicion is they are either a public charity or a private operating foundation. In either case, there's nothing that would prohibit them from funding software development, as long as it doesn't unfairly benefit someone involved in the organization's governance.
Their 2016 financial statements (I couldn't find anything newer) are available:
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Au...
tl;dr: In 2016 they spent over $250k on software development as a line-item, out of about $500k in revenue total. It's by far their biggest budget item.
> https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Au....
> tl;dr: In 2016 they spent over $250k on software development as a line-item, out of about $500k in revenue total. It's by far their biggest budget item.
The numbers are actually $250 million and $500 million. All the tables this report (as well as a newer one I have to search the link for) list the figures in thousands.
i would even pay a whole $3/month for that! =D
To have a premium product, you need to have a non-premium product, and given that most users would use the non-premium product, firefox would quickly become associated with a browser that has the actually desirable features turned off...
Which would probably be even worse than their low market take up at the moment (and I am typing this on firefox).
The people who would pay for a subscription are surely some of the most valuable for advertising to, and FF in its current form exists because of advertising.
Although the Foundation wholly owns the Corporation (we call them MoFo and MoCo internally), money donated to MoFo does not go towards paying MoCo employee salaries as far as I am aware.
A subscription model of some sort would probably make sense, but I don't think you'd want to gate those kinds of features on it.
[0] https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?utm_source=foundation.mozi...
I believe those backfired since all their marketing has been propped on morality. When they claim ads and tracking are evil, it bit them whenever they ventured anywhere near that stuff. Give many startups here an initial audience of 200M+ engaged users and they'll figure a way!
The real irony imo of FF being considered the alternative browser, but not actually competing against Chrome where it could have a serious edge only entrenches the pro commercial anti user status quo.