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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service

It is just Mozilla have a tendency of chasing hype rather than focusing on what they are doing. During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS with Javascript ( Firefox OS ) that works on a $35 Smartphone.

Now they are doing it again with AI. Although this time around Firefox is in fairly good shape I guess this isn't too bad. But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google. And LLM service isn't it.

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I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric.

It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primarily worked in) and the floor we were on easily had 200 people in that one -- relatively small -- location.

B2G/FFOS gets a lot of well-deserved hate -- I quit after a year -- but its impact has been wildly blown out of proportion.

FxOS at its height was an absolutely huge resource and personnel commitment; I seem to recall it being half of MoCo, maybe more.

Mark Mayo, then SVP Firefox, was quoted in a 2017 interview with Walt Mossberg:

> Mayo says [FirefoxOS] took the focus off of Firefox. “It was close to a bet-the-farm effort”

Cite: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14376710/walt-mossberg-mo...

As a user I always wished Firefox OS had stuck around - I think it would absolutely be practical today with so many PWAs around these days, and KaiOS seems to have done surprisingly well on its Firefox OS base.

But that's the thing, KaiOS is exactly the best that Firefox OS could have hoped to achieve: installs on most feature phones. Sure, it's hard to find a phone with KaiOS in the West, but Firefox OS could have never hoped to be an alternative to Android.

Is KaiOS still being used in any newer feature phones? I believe even its biggest customer Jio Telecom has moved on to android in its entry level phones and any new feature phone I see here (India) occasionally are Nokia.

There are still some things I like better about FFOS than iOS / Android. It had a lot of polish needed even near the end, but some of the foundational bits were very solid.

Firefox OS was around 600-700 people strong at the largest.

> But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google

Like by trying other things? Such as a mobile OS, "read later" app, LLM service which they could embed in Firefox? People criticise Mozilla a lot for even trying, but in the same breath say they should figure out alternative income sources. What do you think they're doing? LLMs are part of the hype cycle, yes, but maybe there's still a market for them even after it's blown over?

Correct. Making core Firefox better is not going to generate revenue.

Not sure what people expect, every bold new idea (I.e. mobile OS) is chasing something. And they are trying to do it while being open.

You’d think this HN crowd has never tried to create a sustainable business reading the comments.

>Making core Firefox better is not going to generate revenue

Only because Google decide to pay more for less. Despite Firefox losing marketing share and users.

>People criticise Mozilla a lot for even trying,...Such as a mobile OS, "read later" app, LLM service which they could embed in Firefox?

But which of those did generate extra revenue? And mobile Os and LLM also happen to be CapEx intensive.

During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS

Most of Mozilla’s resources have always been spent on Firefox. There was never a cycle where most of Mozilla’s resources were spent on FirefoxOS.

But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google.

The percentage of revenue from Google has fallen every year since 2016. Mozilla Corporation had a 33% profit margin in 2022 (The latest data on Wikipedia).

It’s a fantastic business model.

> The percentage of revenue from Google has fallen every year since 2016.

"Fallen" is too strong a word: Google still provided 81% of Mozilla's revenue in 2022.

This share probably decreased in 2023, but that's mostly because the revenue increased by $40M thanks to financial operations (see "Interest and dividend income" in Mozilla's annual report for 2023).

Who will pay the bills when Google is forced to end that search contracts?

One of the other bidders, like when Yahoo won the bidding in the early 2010s.

It is unlikely the incoming DOJ will pursue a breakup of Alphabet.

I like Firefox OS, but unfortunately, I rarely saw any smartphones actually running this system. I feel deeply regretful about it.

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