Even $500M a Year from Google Isn’t Enough to Save Firefox
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I have been a loyal Firefox user since the early 2000s and am just disappointed that this is where Mozilla ended up. I feel like there is some business development path where certain businesses de-emphasize their product in favor of caring more about their internal culture.
Also not supporting custom domains is stupid, I don't want to get locked into your service.
Moreover, if a majority of their income is from Google from being their default search engine, then it behooves Mozilla to increase their browser's market share.
i would imagine quite the opposite. Google's funding is implicitly a mechanism for google to _prevent_ firefox from gaining a large enough marketshare to threaten chrome, whilst it remain a "viable alternative" to give to regulators.
It might be that google is on paper paying for search engine traffic, but i think it's plain as day to anyone, that if firefox's market share grows significantly higher than chrome, google would actually stop paying firefox in an attempt to prevent chrome from being dethroned. I think the firefox executives know this - and therefore, never actually attempt to focus firefox's market share but instead, focus on peripheral features.
After all, their lavish pay (despite apparently being below market for the same position elsewhere) depends on google.
That's the quote from the CEO.
CEO has resigned to collecting checks, while the browser losses market share.
Mozilla the non-profit has brought us a lot of good stuff - rust etc, but they shut down the rust team. Servo was going to be big - but that threatened money.
Mozilla can live off donations / grants etc from countries. if they reduce management and hire more engineers.
Ideally ones not in the highest cost of living location on Earth.
You’d think you would get a hell of a lot of dev time with 500m worth of bounties for an open source project.
The only thing that can save Firefox is a better management and a better business model but we all know that's not going to happen. The current management has been unable to do anything of value.
I highly suspect that the management at mozilla is merely using google as a source of income, with no real intention of attempting to dethrone chrome.
Non-profits are not charities (though some are). It is just a business model. The fucking NFL is a non-profit organization.
See also: Boy Scouts of America. Nearly bankrupt from sex abuse lawsuits, the program itself may fold, but no executive is going hungry.
See also: the Susan Komen foundation, whose only function is to raise money to talk about breast cancer. Not to cure it, just to raise awareness of it.
Honestly, every sentence in there is incorrect.
Are many senior non-profit execs overpaid for underperforming? You’re prob right. But the hyperbole takes away from your point, IMHO.
The NFL's non-profit status has been contentious for years.
> Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code specifically defines professional football leagues as exempt organizations under that section. These organizations are exempt whether or not they administer a pension fund for football players. (Irs.gov)
Strictly from a nonprofit financial perspective and from reviewing its most recently filed public 990, Mozilla doesn't pay its senior staff an exorbitant amount; it looks to be an entity with $20-$30M in revenue and double that in assets, so seeing its highest paid employees making $200-$300K isn't out of the ordinary. It does look to pay quite a bit to Upwork, which I assume is their rent expense. It can be difficult to tell from a 990 if there is fraud going on however.
Which relies on Chromium, which means they aren't doing 100% of the development (and a large part of development is driven by Google, which in turn means, Brave relies on Google).
The non-profit Mozilla Foundation has a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary Mozilla Corporation which makes Firefox.
In theory, this opens up avenues for revenue generation since the for-profit can engage in activities beyond the goals of the non-profit.
It also opens up avenues for revenue based compensation for employees. Non-profits have some legal “reasonableness” tests for compensation that for-profits do not. If the for-profit subsidiary starts raking in huge new revenue it can decide to distribute it to the employees rather than the parent non-profit.
Non-profits come with administrative overheads so they may use a for profit subsidiary to remove those, in the hope of greater overall revenue for the non-profit.
Despite these valid reasons, many feel that Mozilla has no good justification for it and the true beneficiaries of Mozilla Corporation’s status are their executives, not Mozilla Foundation.
Non-profits can be “abused” without needing a subsidiary. Some spend 90% of revenue on expenses and administration and give little to a cause.
It sounds egregious but may not always be. Imagine a couple with a non-profit that’s basically a well regarded website forum to promote understanding of a medical cause. The forum requires a lot of moderation due to trolls. It has revenues of $60k but distributes it all as salary to the two staff.
It's supposed to stay alive and be a viable alternative.
My preferences are generally: FF, Chrome, Safari, Edge in that order. Brave and Opera are just too Canonical.
Curiously, at work from internal analytics, it's surprising how many workers use the default browser.
Overall, the distribution looks power law: Chrome as a monoculture.