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Comment by moooo99 | Hacker News Reader

I do not think this option alone would suffice, but I think Mozilla under estimates people’s willingness to donate to the development of Firefox specifically.

Nowadays Mozilla seems to be focused on many things, just not their browser. I do think there is a significant amount of people that would be willing to donate if they are sure these funds get allocated to the development of FF instead of AI and AdTech investments or ridiculous CEO pay packages.

Again, I don’t think this funding stream alone would suffice to make up for lost Google money, etc. - but I do think it would be significant enough to be worth a shot.

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Google will just buy everyone and slowly suffocate the rest.

The correct way is to recognize the web standard itself as an enemy and revisit it to make making browsers viable rather than a $200M enterprise in maintenance alone.

Browsers and content aren’t fundamentally different from 25 years ago. But standards are ever growing like cancer, with the “help” of google and other web cartels.

A browser is 99.99% just a text and graphics app with a security aspect. Not a complex ERP system, not a bleeding edge next-gen video game. A browser cannot cost a billion per year, that’s bullshit people want you to believe.

For some contrast, in firefox per month costs:

GTA 5 was 0.7 ff months in development, 3.5 ff years in revenue (one of the most succesful ever).

Cyberpunk 2077 was 0.7 ff months dev, 3.7 ff mohths in revenue.

Star Citizen 2.5 ff months dev (notoriously expensive game!), 3.5 ff months in revenue.

A browser is just a wooden toy compared to all of the above. We can add 10-100x for reach and security and still not get firefox costs. Web cartels are simply sabotaging the web and nobody bats an eye.

> Google will just buy everyone and slowly suffocate the rest.

> A browser cannot cost a billion per year, that’s bullshit people want you to believe.

Those two comments contradict each other. And the second one shows why Google won't just buy everyone out. Competing as a business/org is totally doable if all Big Tech does is throw money at problems.

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