Mozilla: Proposals in US vs. Google threaten vital role of independent browsers
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
The undisputed reality is that Mozilla is almost wholly funded by the dominant (i.e. monopoly) search provider.
This blog post as well as basic Firefox design decisions (compromised privacy by default) are fully conducive and reflective of this reality.
In other words, this opinion was bought and paid for by Google.
I also have to say I find it difficult to take "Mozilla is Google by proxy" complaints seriously when the same people tend to simultaneously moan and complain any time Mozilla tries to branch out and cultivate independent revenue streams. It's unreasonable to on one hand whine about their financial dependence on the Firefox default search deal with Google and then on the other hand whine any time they make a little bit of revenue on a VPN partnership, or Pocket, or a Disney movie about a Red Panda.
I don't know what "same people" you're talking about, but the criticism I see is typically about a) Mozilla's attempts to branch out which failed, b) Mozilla's "branching out" attempts that are just as bad as their reliance on Google (like how they bought an ad company and are pushing their form of "anonymous tracking" or whatnot.)
I liked their partnership with Scroll, before it got destroyed by the Twitter acquisition.
I don't wish to cause too much argument, but it might be worth to consider that not all naysayers are from the same cloth. It could easily be several different groups of people that might not overlap. Each might complain about Mozilla, but for different reasons. I.e. Group 1: "Mozilla takes money from google, and that's bad! They rely too much on Web Browsers!" Group 2: "Mozilla is too distracted by side projects! They need to focus on what they're best at!"
Both of those groups might not agree with one another, but at other times there might be some overlap in complaints, too. I could see group 1 and 2 both complain that, for instance, "AI is an untested, trendy/gimmicky idea that they shouldn't be focusing on right now."
I'm not terribly wrapped up with what Mozilla does, or does not do; Mozilla can do whatever they want...I don't work there, so I don't care too terribly. I do my best to judge ideas on its merits.
If you think that Mozilla is too dependent on a search engine deal, would it not be wise to hedge against the fact that search itself may be less relevant in the future? Certainly Google, Apple and Microsoft are not ignoring AI as a browser supplement / replacement. But they're all incentivized to do it on their own proprietary systems, whereas Mozilla is incentivized to use local, open source, small models. That's potential differentiation.
>I'm not terribly wrapped up with what Mozilla does, or does not do; Mozilla can do whatever they want...I don't work there, so I don't care too terribly.
I don't think GAI (generative AI), in the commercial sense that it has been marketed in the last year or two, has been around long enough to critique it with any verifiable wisdom or insight - ChatGPT for example only launched around mid 2022 - we aren't far enough removed from its hype to make any kind of neutral assessment.
In more broad terms as a field of computer science ala machine learning, computer vision, deep learning, etc. it's far too niche an area for me to really assert any insight on - I'm at the kids table.
As an overview, I typically favor optimism over the long-term (15-20 year) on technological advancements - spellcheck is in a better spot than it was in 2004 for example, however, I have also been exceedingly dismissive over some things: online video (YouTube), streaming (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), and microblogging when they were new. They, of course then became explosively successful several seconds after the words tumbled out between my lips.
GAI is simply too new a technology in its current form to say if it is a: positive, negative, neutral, or somewhere in-between. And if it doesn't seem smart to speculate one way or another about GAI, it seems even more ill-advised to speculate whether it is profitable to invest in GAI.
This opinion is fully consistent with Google's self-interest.
Coincidence? I think not --- there are about $400M reasons for it.
(In another thread a couple of months ago, it was postulated that Firefox development accounts for at most $200M of the budget, and likely much less than that.)
Basically, they are using Firefox search deals and other revenue streams to fund their political and educational campaigns. Not that I disagree with their ideals, but I really wish they left the activism to other orgs like EFF and just focused on making a browser.
It's incredibly material to this discussion - as it's Google who is funding Mozilla.
I think the answer is a pretty definitive "no way in hell". All browsers will start pulling "the old tricks" like replacing adverts on websites to fund themselves.
This trend has continued to this day, as evident in your mention of compromised privacy, where Mozilla may take some steps to protect users but then introduce subtle changes that include analytics and tracking.
Additionally, the funding likely retained a lot of talent at Mozilla that could have otherwise contributed to the former SerenityOS's browser, now known as LadyBird, thereby diversifying the ecosystem.
That's a creative way to put it considering there is only one independent browser (singular) that's being harmed by this. A more straightforward title world be `Proposals in US vs. Google threaten the only viable independent browser maker left`
But I guess that falls apart when we treat Safari as dependent on Apple, which it is.
Opera also has a search deal with Google.
Such as? I have no idea what the solution to this issue is and, it seems, neither does Mozilla.
Markets need to emulate evolution. Consolidation is emulating invasive clonal individuals that eventually crash. We need to emulate offspring and the death of the parent.
You'll notice which one you got to after the redirect obviously. Reset credentials isn't a huge deal either, it happens after hacking attacks all the time.
> How are certs handled?
I don't understand this question. There are two different companies afterwards, with their own certs and their own name. No problem at all.
> What would anyone gain from one Google becoming two, identical and indistinguishable Googles?
Indistinguishable? No. They must rename. And they will diverge over time as they try to compete. You know.. like markets are supposed to work.
I think a lot of us Firefox users would see that as a good thing, or at least no worse than the status quo. Firefox is now a small slice of the market, and it seems Mozilla has lost the will to ever truly challenge Chrome again. Maybe removing the easy Google money would be, shall we say, motivating.
They never intend to challenge Chrome in the first place. Once they displaced IE, and Chrome gained ground they considered themselves mission accomplished. Although I cant search for the reference where Mozilla said this. It was in the early 10s.
Much more looking forward to Ladybird.
Rehire the servo team.
Focus on the devs.
There was a time, when firefox with the firebug plugin was the dev tool for the web.
So people made sure websites worked in Firefox.
But since quite a while, chrome dev tools are superior in allmost every regard and the ff ones unusable to me.
Oh and let go of the expensive management. The one that openly talks about privacy, but ships FF with tracking and advertisment integrated by default. Stuff like this burned my trust.
So I still use FF, because chrome is not better in that regard, but that is the only reason.
That’s how I would start. I have lots of other ideas for longer term projects all focused on the browser.
How is it that despite this tremendous funding, no other company is using the gecko engine? How did Microsoft end up using Google's engine over Mozilla's?
Mitchell Baker has a lot to answer for. She is single-handedly responsible for pillaging this opportunity. How she has lasted as the CEO for so long is criminal.
And the fact that Mozilla is under agreement with Google to send search data to the company in return for hundreds of millions in revenue, without which Mozilla would allegedly cease to exist, is a fortuitous coincidence.
We could could modify this statement to be more truthful as follows:
For the past seven years, Google search has been the default in Firefox in the US in part because Mozilla believes it provides the best search experience for our users.
As a longtime user since the Netscape Navigator days, I have yet to receive a user survey from Mozilla asking me what I believe "provides the best search experience". In fact, Mozilla never asks users what they think. Instead they attempt to spy on them through telemetry.
> For the past seven years, Google search has been the default in Firefox in the U.S. because it provides the best search experience for our users.
Isn't Google search the default because Google pays to be the default?
I have more questions after reading than before!
Google could still pay to be the top sponsored option.
Would Google still pay Mozilla in this case?
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/278/files/2024...
Calling Firefox an independent browser is kind of like calling Internet Explorer an "independent browser" - it very well may be a different organization, but Microsoft is hardly independent as some kind of thin, agile, and flexible upstart looking to "take on old man google".
That would be tax fraud. Tax-exempt charitable donations from MoFo can't be used for product development by MoCo, a for-profit company.
How, exactly? Excess from Google's money drops?
If their corporate structure is a barrier to using donations for development, I think they need to change it. If "MoFo" can't send money to "MoCo," but I bet the opposite could be made to work. Maybe "MoCo" should gift the browser software and development teams to "MoFo," and pay the Google money (as long as it lasts) to the foundation to license it back to distribute it with search engine-placements, etc.
All the lackluster AI, VR, and other toys have been wasted efforts though.
There's no "alternative revenue stream" that would bring in that quantity of money without requiring significant investment that would detract from Firefox engineering, which people would then also whine about endlessly.
It’s not like those alternative streams have been very successful. Feels like they’ve been floundering from project to project for a decade now.
That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
What if they monetize an aspect of the browser that people will actually pay good money for (something more than Pocket).
Heck even Brave is trying something with its model.
Personally I'd like to see them try to recreate what Scroll were doing a few years ago before the Twitter acquisition destroyed them. They'd have to make it cross-browser though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380899
We talked to Tony Haile and Scroll before they exited. I asked him how selling (enterprise pre-sales and sales) to publishers was going. Tony said "it's like stabbing yourself in the eye a different way each day".
Publishers do not want to share subscriber data, period full stop. They also hate ad blockers. For Brave, we had to make a primal choice: user-first means blocking ads and trackers, not trying to serve publishers too. House divided will fall, and this kind of conflict of interest between fake blockers who sell whitelisting or otherwise cater to big publishers has hurt Eyeo GmbH among others famous cases.
Maybe Firefox could release an ad-supported edition?
On Firefox doing ads, you must have missed https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... (Brave post on a related move by Mozilla and Meta at https://brave.com/blog/mozilla-ppa/).
That strategy only works for browsers that are basically just thin wrappers around Chrome or Webkit, with basically no development cost for the core browser tech and low divergence from those platforms. It's not going to sustain a fully independent browser stack.
But now i would never want to support them. The goodwill is just gone and if you give money to mozilla right now it gets wasted on nonsense, they have so little interest in firefox. I'd rather support any of the forks.
Firefox is developed by Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blogarchive/blog/2021/01/08/we-need...
Calling for algorithm and advertising transparency should not be controversial.
It's not. You just picked the least controversial one.
> Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation.
I don't care what they define as factual. Give me what I look for, not what I did not look for.
You would take issue with a note that says "FYI that's not true at all, here are videos explaining that"?
Mozilla is all preachy about privacy but is in bed with the greatest private data hoarder in the world. They take the blood money and continue to enable the monopoly status quo.
Mozilla is in favor of more competition to combat Big Tech, but as soon as an actual measure is taken that does that but has negative second order effects for themselves, it's...wait, not like that.
Mozilla is looking out for all types of marginalized folks if you have to believe their activist blogs but in reality spent huge sums on leadership that failed to achieve any target at all for a decade in a row.
Mozilla is the definition of woke capitalism. Hypocritical to the bone.
This is an organization that ordinarily cannot exist. It is showered with money for doing nothing at all: just keep the search box pointed at Google. Half a billion to piss away at hobbies. There is zero accountability to any one or any thing.
The only true principle Mozilla has is that it likes to continue this toddler organization. Free money, no accountability. All the do-good talk is a cover for this.