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kgraves

Did anyone find anything in this post about Mozilla refusing to take money from Google?

I can’t find it.

Mozilla, stop taking money from Google and letting them be the default search engine!

Please don’t enable and legitimise surveillance capitalism.

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Thanks for the downvotes, I know you don't like the facts, but here they are:

> Today, the majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, including the deal negotiated with Google in 2017 following Mozilla’s termination of its search agreement with Yahoo/Oath (which was the subject of litigation the parties resolved in 2019.) [0] [1] [2]

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/11/30/mozilla...

To do that now would be financial suicide. They have several new services, if they manage to get revenue from them they could survive cutting Google. But not before.

> They have several new services,

Please name these revenue generating services from Mozilla.

From the top of my head, Firefox VPN and Pocket.

What is more disappointing is this is what they have to show for after years of funding from Google.

I get that they have to build a browser but come on. Is that it?

I present to you the Debian Foundation as a counter example. I posit they are surviving just fine without a contract with Google.

The Debian Foundation also doesn't have to compete against Google on a product that costs millions of dollars to build and maintain, and that Google throws billions at in marketing.

Interesting comparison: they do compete against Red Hat, and thus IBM, who I could well believe do spend billions on marketing in the same space.

At various levels it has to compete against Redhat/IBM, Microsoft and other Dekstop and Server OS vendors.

So what you're saying is... since Mozilla has cash difficulties, let's get rid of the main income source?

Or am I misunderstanding?

Being beholden to your main competitor is a losing strategy. It's made them a lot of money in the short term to lose it all in the longer term. It's easy to comment on this in retrospect, but I personally think they should have considered this more seriously before making a deal with the devil.

Maybe settling for less cash, and working with partners you don't directly compete with, like DuckDuckGo and the like, would be a better long-term strategy even if it means less cashflow and a smaller company in the short term.

YES

I wouldn't do a deal with the devil that is also competing with you. Especially in the name of privacy.

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