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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

The charitable entity known as the Mozilla Foundation and the development entity known as the Mozilla Corporation are not the same. Nothing wrong with the foundation doing these things with their spare cash, it literally does not impact Firefox at all.

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The concern, I think, is that their spare cash is dwindling and thus financial prudence might be beneficial - especially for those who rely on the core Mozilla propositions like Firefox.

Mozilla's assets increased again in their most recent financial statement.[1] Investing in AI startups will have high risk however.

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

> is that their spare cash is dwindling

They're an NGO, you can just... look this up, it's public.

Sure and my time is limited.

The last I heard was that the Google rev-share agreement was on the skids and they stopped developing projects like Thunderbird and Fake Spotter because they were capital constrained.

If you know otherwise then you're better informed than I am I guess

This might be financial prudence of sorts - doesn't something like 80% of their yearly monetary contributions come from Google, particularly for search partnerships? If they are concerned that Google will start paying them less because search has diminishing future returns, diversifying their income sources through investments in AI might be a good idea.

That’s one interpretation. Another is that people typically support foundations not simply because they “do good,” but because they advance a specific cause the donor personally values. For example, if I donated to a foundation focused on developing cancer treatments, and that same foundation later shifted its efforts to addressing melting ice caps, I would likely feel frustrated, since that was not the purpose for which I chose to support it, and I don't really care that both actions "do good" in the world.

> people typically support foundations

While I agree with the general point that non-profit donors have a legitimate interest in the use of funds, in the particular case of the Mozilla Foundation, I believe the vast majority of that money is from placement fees Google paid to be the default search engine in Firefox. As the pay-for-placement market has evolved and Firefox's browser share has fallen, this income has also fallen dramatically.

On the general point about non-profit donations, legally non-profit's use of funds are governed by their board of directors and charter, which often are not constrained in ways donors may assume, hence the need for due diligence prior to giving.

Mozilla Foundation's 2024 revenue was 60% investments, 28% program service revenue, 11% contributions and grants.[1]

Most of program service revenue was from Mozilla Corporation. They paid Mozilla Foundation a small part of their revenue for trademark licenses, legal services, and so. And most of Mozilla Corporation's revenue was from Google.

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...

Although I haven't looked at the actual reports in a long time, I think that's consistent with my understanding. The Google money (program service revenue) was a much higher percent in the past, creating the $1.4B nest egg. Now the Google money is greatly reduced and the majority of the income is from the nest egg.

I intended the percentages to support your point donations were little of Mozilla Foundation's revenue. But you missed Mozilla Corporation held most assets.

Yes, I didn't take your post as disagreeing. I appreciated the current data since I haven't looked lately.

Mozilla's AI investment strategy is more than Mozilla Foundation spending spare cash.[1]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/

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