Is that not enough to maintain a browser?
EDIT: this figure is for Mozilla Foundation only, Mozilla Corpotation makes about 9 times that amount (I assume most of which comes from Google). My point still stands though: $37M isn’t a terribly big amount of money, but it’s still a lot.
[1]: https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/File:501c3_2023_990_Mozi...
Just out of habit, I still test my stuff in Firefox (nobody above me cares). But market share is already getting into "only weirdos use this" territory. And "weirdos" also like a bunch of weirdo extensions. (And I frequently see HNers complaining about this.) So eventually, its like we just don't support weirdos.
Marketing and evangelism isn't free, but I find it hard to believe $37.5M per year wouldn't cover everything they need to do. At an average of $200k per employee, that's 187 people. As you point out, it's their strategy that's the problem. I'm not convinced they need more money to come up with and implement a better strategy.
(Yes, I know they pay for more than just employee salaries. Presumably they have other income apart from that $37.5M that doesn't come from Google.)
Not just now, but Mozilla's own argument here is they can't sustain themselves in the long-term without an illegal trust agreement.
PitchBook estimated Brave had 191 employees before they cut 27 last year. Mozilla don't have a search engine. But Brave don't have a browser engine. And they couldn't commit to keep uBlock Origin working.
> Just out of habit, I still test my stuff in Firefox (nobody above me cares).
Personally, I develop on Firefox, then test on Chrome (and other browsers). I get the sentiment though.
> The last unicorn–the web can’t afford to lose Mozilla’s browser engine
Their stated plan is to be the "endagered species", like the Dodo of browsers. Can you find enough weirdos to care about that?
I think this is a self-reinforcing feedback loop because of bad analytics.
Maybe initially some big, popular, otherwise important sites only supported some Chrome.
Then the 'weirdos' discovered that it worked perfectly with only one mouseclick changing the user-agent.
Time passed, more and more 'weirdos' spoofed their UA by default, because clicking is boring.
Analytics saw less and less FF, more Chrome(simplified).
Management saw less and less need to support anything else.
Pseudo-Cyber-Security rose up high in the sky, shining so bright, that it seemed just right.
Analytics still spitting out falsehoods...
...damagement...
...repeat.
On any consumer site, mobile UAs just overwhelm the desktop ones anyway. Nobody cares about Samsung Browser, why would they care about some shit that's way below the fold.
But Mozilla is definitely wasting a lot of money on stuff that doesn't contribute to their mission.
Yes, I have noticed that too and every year they sink deeper with ads and shady choices
If they keep it lean and with a high standard the community wouldn't stop supporting it, but every 6 month or so they make a shady decision and lose more support
Though it’s mind-boggling in any case. I’m sure there’s thousands of brilliant developers who would gladly work for Mozilla for like $50k/yr if it was truly independent. That’s 750 full-time devs from investment income alone (which was Mozilla Corp’s total employee count in 2020, so I assume that should be about right).
(Investment here, I suppose, is what it says: they’re buying a bunch of stocks and use profits from these for their charitable goals. Kinda like endowment kind of thing.)
I am not sure. Can you convince me with evidence?
Not to mention, there are a lot of non payroll expenses to account for.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43340948
So they could cut the entire Google deal, and still be in the black.
Not as profitable as before (obviously they've been investing their profit for a long time, to drive $37M in investment income) but not as dire as this blog post makes it sound
Mozilla entities in 2023 received $495 million in royalties. This was 76% of revenue. Royalties means search deals essentially. Search deals means Google essentially. Total expenses were $497 million.