Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla
lunduke.locals.com
lunduke.locals.com
Basically everything here seems biazarre and makes trusting Mozilla very hard. Does anybody believe that they can stand up against Google, when Google, at any point they want to, could crash their whole operation?
I think it is quite likely that Google is keeping Mozilla afloat to avoid anti-trust allegations. Mozilla existing is worth a few hundred millions to Google. But Mozilla apparently has no real use for that money, they spend around 200M on software developmemt that means one thousand high paying software developer positions. And they could hire hundreds of more developers at any point.
1) being financially dependent on Google
2) spending resources on literally anything except Firefox
3) doing anything that smells like monetizing Firefox, no matter how innocuous
Spoiler alert: They have essentially no hope of avoiding 1 without doing at least a little bit of 2 or 3. Unlike Google, Apple, and Microsoft, they don't have billions of dollars coming through the backdoor from other business units.
As for "whether they can stand up to them", they can and do, all the time. Including _literally this week_ with Google's Web integrity bullshit. Whether it accomplishes much is a different matter, but it's not for lack of an attempt on their part.
You summarise pretty much everything that is wrong with HN started appearing somewhere around 2013 before becoming mainstream in 2016+.
That is having zero understanding on business. Cash Flow, Revenue Generation, Sustainable business model, and market monetisation. Ironically on forum that is about startup and VC.
In their current position they exist to give Google some protection against anti-trust allegations. That is about the worst spot for their organization to be in.
>As for "whether they can stand up to them", they can and do, all the time.
You are right. Google likely knows that they can completly ignore them, so they can say whatever they want.
Based on what logic? It's 20+ million lines of code touching half if the "hard" problems of computer programming - graphics, fonts, encodings, localization, JIT engines, hardware acceleration, support for multiple architectures (including aforementioned JIT), support for multiple operating systems, massive parallelism, sandboxing, WASM support, hardware support abstractions like WebUSB and WebMIDI, etc, and a massive swamp of compatiblity hacks, and literally books worth of new standards they have to implement every year.
Much of which has to be as high performance as possible while simultaneously not being ludicrously insecure, because the threat environment is basically as hostile as it gets.
The fastest way to "become a lean organization" would be to just give up and become yet another Chromium clone. Barring that, they have a lot of software to maintain if they want a truly independent browser. A modern browser is comparable in effort to supporting an entire operating system, because that's what browsers kind of are nowadays.
About the only other option is to lay off all their staff in SF and Paris and other HCoL areas and relocate to Central and Eastern Europe.
The specific number they pay is also not that relevant, what I am concerned about is their position. They have one "customer" that enables their entire operation. That is bad for any organization, if that is also your main competition you are in an even worse spot. The longterm sustainability of Mozilla depends on being able to operate independently from Google funding.
I don't understand this comment at all. Is making money a bad thing now? I thought that was the whole point of being a hacker and starting a bsiness and then getting funding and doing hard work and then boooom .. revenue, money, profit! Success!
No? Not anymore? Or is Mozilla special and are they not allowed?
(Sarcasm - please do not respond)
Obviously the don’t have share holders
At 10% conversion, and $20/year price point, Mozilla would be making the same money it now makes from Google, but it would be coming 100% from its users, aligning all incentives. Then it is a whole new reality regarding product and company decisions.
The browser is the most intimate product we spend hours in every day to access information. The age of paying for your browser and have it work in your interest should re-emerge.
It is a serious question - how do you expect this to work in such a way that you feel you contribute directly to the development Firefox? What does that mean in reality? Is that even possible?
[1] which develops more than just firefox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mozilla_products but
Many of the people saying this have as much interest in improving the things they complain about as anti-renewable comments have a genuine interest in reducing bird fatalities.
Mozilla (and Wikipedia as mentioned by the OP) have been subjected to a long running culture war boycott.
Similar to wind power, I'd guess their continued success in the face of this contributes to the feelings of anger towards them.
The concerns are legitimate and ofen raised by people who genuinely want Mozilla to be better. Accusing people of concern trolling when they point out legitimate issues is a sure way to never get these issues fixed.
>Similar to wind power, I'd guess their continued success in the face of this contributes to the feelings of anger towards them.
This is such an abysmal mindset. Both Mozilla and Wikipedia should operate with the goal of improving their product. Both are severely mismanaging funds away from the things people actually care about. The only things they really are successful in is raising funds.
Success for Mozilla is having a popular, open, sustainably funded and independent browser. In this regard they are a failure, but I absolutely don't want them to be.
Wikipedia is just trolling suckers into giving them money by pretending they are about to go under, when they are extremely well funded, so much so that huge amounts of funds vanish into undisclosed webs of charities.
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/muc18q/whats_the_dea...
Cherry-picking expenses that total barely 500k out of a 500M budget and hiding it behind "noooo we don't get political here promised" is also pushing an agenda.
The Mozilla Foundation does plenty of stupid shit. I don't agree with much of what they're doing, starting from Baker's insane pay for how terrible of a job she does. But 400k to an association... At best that pays for two rallies that total 500 people, at worst it's giving money to friends.
How about the many millions of dollars the Mozilla Foundation spends on grands and research supporting so many individuals and organizations that help make the world a better place.
The full list can be found at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...
2) They still have no job focusing on these things when their browser, their main product, is loosing market share like crazy. Why not spend all that money on Servo and Oxidation instead?
3) It's not politicizing to say that a software developer is using money for political purposes instead of making software. You are the one politicizing this because you deflect from this valid criticism into a discussion about the author's politics.
Fortunately, they are very easy to read if you haven't done so yet, thanks to Archive.org.
1. Here is the first statement by Netscape, clearly showing Mozilla's original intent to help develop Netscape's client: (https://web.archive.org/web/20021004080737/http://wp.netscap... )
> NETSCAPE ANNOUNCES MOZILLA.ORG, A DEDICATED TEAM AND WEB SITE SUPPORTING DEVELOPMENT OF FREE CLIENT SOURCE CODE
> Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:NSCP) today announced the creation of mozilla.org, a dedicated team within Netscape with an associated Web site that will promote, foster and guide open dialog and development of Netscape's client source code.
2. Here is the second statement by the newly formed entity, clearly showing its goal to "lead open-source browser efforts": (https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2003/07/mozilla-org-announces...)
> Mozilla.org announces launch of the Mozilla Foundation to lead open-source browser efforts
There's even a side paragraph "About mozilla.org and the Mozilla Foundation" that states the following mission statement:
> Mozilla.org (www.mozilla.org) is the group that exists to make Mozilla a successful open source project. Mozilla.org provides open source Internet client software that includes a browser, mail and news functionality, and a toolkit for developing web-based applications. Mozilla.org was founded by Netscape Communications Corporation.
DuckDuckGo would be the "obvious" choice, but I doubt they can come up with the same kind of numbers.
Brave Search might be an option, but unlike Google and Microsoft the browser is Brave's main product so they might not want to deal with a competitor, they probably have a lot less cash lying around, and they have some history with Mozilla.
Yahoo! Search is still around, maybe some others? I don't think anyone other than Microsoft and Google have a spare ~$500 million lying around for this though.
Google probably makes at least 3x of what it pays Mozilla in search royalties. At least. Who knows what Google makes with what it does after Firefox has done its small part.
This is a hugely profitable business for Google. That has _nothing_ to do with "spare money lying around". This is a cash cow for Google. Specially since they do the same with other players like Apple. Many many billions of dollars are at stake.
Firstly, Firefox's remaining userbase is pretty technical. They aren't the sort of people to blindly use defaults because they don't know how to change them. Even if Google cut Mozilla off entirely, tomorrow, 90% of Firefox users would continue to search on Google by default.
Secondly, what would Firefox switch to? Bing? What if MS don't care about paying Mozilla either, or only are willing to pay a fraction of what Google pays? What's Mozilla going to do? They'd have to go with Bing anyway because it's that or nothing. There are no other search engines willing and able to pay lots of money for browser traffic.
So Mozilla would be in a double bind: even if MS paid them to replace the Google deal, (a) most of their users would change the default back again, so they'd refer very little traffic and (b) Microsoft could cut them a very bad deal and they'd have to take it anyway. They'd still suffer a huge drop in income overnight.
No matter what Mozilla does, they will be depending on one of two companies BOTH of which make competing browsers and frankly, both of which would be quite happy if Mozilla just went away and died, given that from their perspective Mozilla's primary contribution to the web is telling the Chrome/Edge teams they can't do things.
I don't get the anti-trust angle. There is browser competition: Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, etc. If Mozilla tried to claim that Google ending their deal was anti-competitive, they'd just immediately lose in court.
My guess is that Google continue to be Mozilla's sugar daddy for legacy reasons. They've done it for a long time, cutting Mozilla off would upset a lot of techies and the money is irrelevant to Google. But one day that calculus will change.
What might cause the calculus to change? Most obviously, if Google decides that Mozilla is no longer actually developing their browser properly, or if Mozilla's management just upsets the relevant point-person at Google badly enough. Baker obviously stopped caring about web browsers years ago, if she ever did at all, and is now treating the Google deal as a piggybank for pushing her political ideology. All it takes is for the person responsible for the Mozilla deal to be replaced by someone who hates anti-white wokeness and they've got all the ammo they need to just defund Mozilla completely. A less sympathetic organization is hard to imagine.
That you write this utter nonsense tells more about you than about Mozilla ... shows your true colors. Wow.
Mckensie Mack is a public speaker who regularly discusses her anger at “White Colonialism” and her dislike of “CIS” men and women.
That founder, Neil Lewis Jr., appears to have focused his career on “vaccine acceptance”, problems with “white” people, and his theory that “white people” can not be victims of discrimination.
They provide links to back these claims up. It's not what you'd expect from a browser company.
And another $100K to an "Action research collaborative" that sounds like another social justice org?
WTF? This sounds like money laundering. I just want a good browser. I'm now regretful that I was donating regularly to Mozilla.
- "What, exactly, is “Action Research Collaborative”? That is a surprisingly difficult question to find an answer to, as they have no website whatsoever. One of the few references to it is in a Cornell newsletter from earlier this year..."
- "$30,000 to “MC Technical Inc.” in 2021. Who are they? Well, they don’t have a website, that’s for sure. The business registry listing is about the only thing of the company that seems to exist. The listed address is someone’s house."
- "Why do some of the recipients of Mozilla money appear to be nothing more than empty shells of companies — not even having a simple website?"
- "Why does Mozilla continue to take donations if it doesn’t need them?"
- "Where does Mozilla spend those donated dollars?"
- "Why is Mozilla decreasing software development funding when development of Firefox is the cash cow?"
This is extremely suspicious on Mozilla's part. I hope there is further investigation into all this wild spending they are doing using public donations without any accountability.
It is a nice round number so it is probably someone who did some work for them and sent them an invoice. There is nothing special about that. Unless you have an agenda to make it sound like something bad. Which I think the author does.
Many hacker news readers have their own incorporated with weird names that are registered to their home addresses. Because when you provide services to a company you ideally need a legal entity. Having an address is a legal requirement. And having a website is not.
It is that simple. The Mozilla Foundation probably has many contractors that do work for them.
Similar to "Why do some of the recipients of Mozilla money appear to be nothing more than empty shells of companies — not even having a simple website?" - it just shows the author has no idea how small non-profit / 501(c) world works. It is easy to make it sound like a headline but in reality it is probably just small non profits struggling to get funding to do interesting things.
This is exactly how many readers here at hacker news also run their business: you need an official entity to receive money.
And if you are doing something interesting that the Mozilla Foundation would like to support with a grand for example then you will need to have that "empty shell" because if you receive funding for a project personally you will be taxed the shit out of it and lose many benefits. There is literally nothing special about this.
should really read
"Where does the Mozilla Foundation spend those donated dollars?"
Because although the author conflates Foundation and Corporation they are in fact separate entities and money does not go into a single bank account.
If you want to know where the Mozilla Foundation spends your donated dollars then you can read their financial report. There are many dozens of line items that list where money goes.
Because raising money is literally what non profits do as their primary means of income. They cannot just "take" money from the "cash cow", the Corporation which is a separate entity.
What I absolutely fail to understand though is why they don't have long-term focus on diversifying income? All their alternative revenue sources are neglibile, and their strange attempts to provide paid products seem to be either hobby-projects of someone at mozilla (ex: pocket) or a cheap rebrand of a product (ex: vpn).
Am I wrong to expect more from such a technologically capable organisation?
They're doing a merely ok job. It's not clear if that's intentional or because they're badly run.
There's a story there, this article seems to mostly be political winging.
The compensation to execs seems irrelevant. That is almost literally just a Google bribe.
Mozilla pays 200M for software development, from that I can only assume that they pay quite generously and they seem to have absolutely no issue with money, as they are funded by Google.
To me it seems hey have more money than they know what to do with. Hardly something which could be fixed by workers rising up and taking care of distributing Googles Millions.
They're funded by Google because Alphabet doesn't want another IE6/MS anti-trust case. They are planned/fake competition. The fact that there are privacy aware forks of Firefox (like Librewolf) speaks volumes.
That's inaccurate and unfair. He resigned (was not forced out) and the backlash he faced wasn't because of his religious and political views, but because he was working to impose his religious and political views on others. Nobody was demanding that Brendan get gay married, but he wanted to prevent others from getting gay married if they wanted to.
"only small companies can be worker owned" is a bit antiquated.
Mitchell Baker - Lawyer, wrote the MPL (involved since Netscape)
Laura Chambers - Stanford MBA, ex-McKinsey, ex-eBay C-suite, ex AirBnB, ex Paypal. Currently CEO of a wearable breast pump company.
Kerry Cooper - Harvard MBA, currently also in the board of PG&E, Upstart, Gradient, Fernish, Fictiv as well as an executive-in-residence at Acrew Capital.
Karim Lakhani - PhD in management at MIT, Professor of Business Administration, publishes papers on management and once a decade a paper on open source/open contribution.
Bob Lisbonne - Stanford MBA, venture capitalist, ex Netscape/Mozilla
Hugh Molotsi - Computer Engineering Masters, ex Intuit, specializes in intrapreneurial actions
Kristin Skogen Lund - INSEAD MBA, ex Coca-Cola, ex Unilever, various governmental positions in Norway
The amount of people with technical knowledge on that board is low. The amount of people that aren't MBA leeches is low. The board is perfectly happy to keep the grift going.
What I have to say is that Brendan Eich lost his respect with hia peers inside Mozilla after donating for the campaign against gay marriage, so it was entirely his fault.
Your irrational animus toward me may be making you sloppy with that false claim about Mitchell in your first sentence, but your second paragraph just makes stuff up out of whole cloth. Lying, in a word. Mozilla rank and file as far as I know wanted me to stay. I have many letters and emails testifying to this.
It doesn't do you any credit to fulfill wishes this way, even on HN where a noisy but surprisingly small cohort do it vs. me, endlessly.