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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> Mozilla is pretty much powerless since users blame FF if it doesn't support something

Mozilla is pretty much powerless since users blame FF if it doesn't support something and the bulk of its funding comes from one of those corporate interests (Google).

(Both are problems - even if Mozilla had the market share, if it were still funded (almost) solely by Google, these things would still eventually happen, since the power tends to follow the money in the end.).

I really hope Mozilla manages to become financially independent of Google, whether through donations or some other revenue stream.

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> even if Mozilla had the market share, if it were still funded (almost) solely by Google, these things would still eventually happen, since the power tends to follow the money in the end.).

This isn't supported by reality. Feel free to offer any evidence at all, however.

You could just as easily postulate that every privacy enhancement that google adds to their search page is because of influence by Mozilla, which Google is massively dependent on for traffic and therefore revenue, since power tends to follow the money in the end.

Depending on your stat source, at least 1/5 of internet users use Firefox, which means that the percentage of Google users on Firefox is probably that percentage or higher. The Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation, but Google has shareholders. So who is more important to whom?

I really hope Mozilla manages to become financially independent of Google, whether through donations or some other revenue stream.

They announced Directory Tiles a while ago, which is a step in that direction.

that plan was canceled.

That was a misinterpretation of Jonathan's blog post.

Unfortunately, there was a fair amount of misreporting over the weekend in response to Johnathan Nightingale's blog post here: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-e...

The point of the post is that Mozilla is going ahead with experiments like Directory Tiles, but that no money will change hands during testing and development of those experiments. The commitment is that Mozilla will only move forward with seeking revenue if the experiments actually demonstrate added value for users, and that any revenue is collected in a way consistent with the Manifesto.

That is incorrect. See "New Tab Experiments" just for days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725324

They pulled the plug on this pretty quickly. It's not really clear how they'll transform it in the future, but I think the larger point is still valid. They should not be dependent on a single source of revenue.

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