Moving Forward with Firefox | Hacker News Reader

Moving Forward with Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

104 pointsehPReth65 comments

"Moving Forward"

"achieved positive growth again and dramatically reset our global search strategy"

Did anyone else find those phrases to be a bit too much corporatese for Mozilla?

Agreed. Longtime user -- I was on the Netscape 4.3, then 7.1, Kmeleon project, then Phoenix, then Firdbird, then Firefox? I cant keep up.

With that being said, Mozilla has been (in my mind) the pro consumer, pro internet org to challenge the establishment. So far, its worked wonders -- we have a diverse ecosystem, new burning edge interfaces and plugin market places to boot. The partnership with the Tor project gave me hope. However..reading that PR blurb/intro made me want to pluck out my eyeballs. Where is the heart? The direction? The challenge?

Mozilla -- Its time you returned to your roots. Find the spark that set you free and fan the flames.

> Longtime user -- I was on the Netscape 4.3, then 7.1, Kmeleon project, then Phoenix, then Firdbird, then Firefox? I cant keep up.

You named 5 things that happened in the span of 3 years over 12 years ago, and one that has been around for a decade. I'm pretty sure you can in fact keep up.

> Where is the heart? The direction? The challenge?

Please.

Exactly. Sounds like someone sorely needs to migrate to Mozilla Sui- cough seamonkey.

/hate -- That was more or less intended to qualify that I wasn't some hit and run commentator talking out of my ass, but a passionate mozillian that has done my fair share of bugzilla triage.

What else you got? Something about the cloud? Add in a few more buzzwords and throw it under the /corporate blog then apologize for it.

I'd love to see some clarity, direction, and a genuine plan for impact in the future. Not a knee jerk deal with a failed search engine paired with some bumbling about consolidation, mergers and yes, the cloud. There is plenty of that type of 'news' on Forbes.

to find the spark, type about:mozilla in the address bar. Works best in firefox.

My guess is they're trying to be especially corporate and professional and bland after the whole Eich debacle.

IBM and GE are all the proof we need that 'corporate' doesn't change the world. Edit; they once offered innovation, now they suck its blood.

"achieved positive growth" is pretty self-explanatory. "dramatically reset the global search strategy" is a bit weirder but they are (most likely) talking about their search deal with Google which they terminated in favour of Yahoo! and yes, that is a pretty dramatic reset.

If you don't want to read corporatese, well, don't read a corporate blog. Mozilla is a great company and a great presence for the web, but Mozilla Corp is still a corp, even if the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit.

Thanks for acting as a translator.

One of them should change their name then. It's confusing and starts to feel like a good cop, bad cop routine.

Which one employs the people who ship the browser?

Mozilla is a nonprofit organization. Governance comes from there.

The Mozilla Corporation employs most people working on Firefox, and is controlled by the nonprofit. It pays taxes and salaries and so forth, but all of its goals are driven by the nonprofit.

It's similar to nonprofit hospitals and similar things, again where there is a nonprofit that controls a for-profit entity (as hospitals need to employ people, pay taxes, etc., like a normal business).

That's posted on mozilla.org, not mozilla.com tho. There's a fine balance between the two.

There's currently no meaningful distinction between the two domains. mozilla.org is the standard domain for all mozilla sites (developer.mozilla.org, addons.mozilla.org, or, in this case, blog.mozilla.org). I think we maybe use mozilla.com for a handful of internal things.

The corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit, so the .org domain isn't necessarily a misrepresentation, either.

The argument for being corporate cant go both way tho.

What matters is how public perceives this, too. Posting corp stuff on the org domain/site means that then they are fully corporate-like. Which maybe is simply the case.

You can't justify that its not the case because Mofo owns Moco.. then say both Moco and Mofo share everything without implying its all just a corp. (or the opposite, but not both).

All I was trying to clear up was that mozilla.org is our standard domain regardless of what's being posted, and thus there was no conscious decision to put "corporate speak" on a .org domain. I dunno exactly why this decision was made, but I'm almost certain having .com and .org both in active use would be really confusing for users (is it addons.mozilla.com? addons.mozilla.org?) and, to a lesser extent, our ops and developers.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the tone of this post is too corporate for a .org and is a bad choice if we want to imply that Mozilla isn't just some for-profit company (which we don't, we like talking about how we're non-profit and open source and mission-driven).

Honestly I don't think anyone cares. We'd get the same trouble for posting corporate speak on a .com vs a .org because by the time you care about that, you already know enough about Mozilla to be bothered regardless of the domain.

I don't really think the problem is that "it's a .org" domain. But this is posted in what's essentially a place where a lot of people who understand why "positive growth" is not only wrong, but a load of brainwashed crap, spend quite some time :).

Phrases like those belong in press releases, not a blog post from an organization intelligent people respect.

> a lot of people who understand why "positive growth" is not only wrong, but a load of brainwashed crap

I mean it's sort've a redundant term, but in context (positive growth of Firefox users, something that has been falling for a while now) it makes perfect sense to me. What did you think he was saying?

> I mean it's sort've a redundant term

Sort of a meaningless term?

How about we replace it with "negative decrease"?

Mozilla.com redirects to Mozilla.org. Mozilla have the dual structure, but when it comes to their web presence, I don't think they are making too much of a distinction.

> "achieved positive growth" is pretty self-explanatory.

Sure, but it's Corporatese for "grew".

They changed the default search provider from Google to Yahoo in the US, Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China. (I believe only new installs were affected by this change.) The word "dramatic" is a bit over the top, but the changes were significant given their longstanding relationship with Google.

> "achieved positive growth again ...

My understanding from reading Mozilla people, and from my own intuition, is that without significant market power for Firefox, Mozilla loses influence for all its priorities, including the open web, end-user control, etc.

Firefox's market share is very important to Mozilla, to everyone who shares Mozilla's priorities, and to everyone affected by them (which might be, simply, "everyone").

Then they should have written "increased our market share again". Growth in corporatese usually refers to revenue or profit, which is not the main point here. Confusing choice of words.

And it's important to remember that increasing your userbase isn't enough to increase your marketshare — Opera, at least until Chropera shipped, was increasing userbase month after month, yet marketshare was falling. The number of people using the web continues to grow!

Less than 1 year ago, when I read Mitchell Baker vapid statement about Brendan Eich's "resignation" I realized that Mozilla has essentially become a show run by politicians who seem intent on delivering political correctness rather than good software. That Firefox will go down the drain from this point seems fairly likely, and the first signs are already emerging.

Corporatese is nothing new on Mozilla's blogs, unfortunately. See this DF post from last year for another example: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla

What is this, a press release or a blog article?

"...a much stronger foundation from which to build, grow and pursue our mission"

"Moving Forward with Firefox"

"Firefox turned a corner"

"Mark’s entrepreneurial drive coupled with his holistic thinking, market orientation, and exciting vision for the future of Firefox make him the ideal person to lead this new team."

I'll probably be downvoted for this, but whenever I see something like this I wonder why the other individual got pushed. There are far too many things unsaid.

"A bit about Mark: he is well known as an elite technical leader not only within Mozilla, but in our industry."

Anyone knows him outside of Mozilla?

He is a former CTO of Joyent.

Oh, that's a GREAT choice for an open source project.

> today we combined our group focused on cloud services with the group focused on our Firefox desktop

What are some examples of Mozilla products created by the "cloud services" group that will now be taking ownership of the browser? E.g. Persona, Sync, ..?

Is the cloud services team separated from the advertising (tiles) team?

These are separated teams.

Cloud services: https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices

Content services (tiles): https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_services

it is all the annoying services. Like sync.

and you can bet anyone coming from one group will, even without noticing, push that group forward in his decisions.

So expect some Gplus like moves from firefox in the near future.

> recently we have been exploring how we can integrate client software on desktops and mobile with cloud service approaches to evolve what Firefox can do for people.

It will be interesting to see how the deliver those services while providing end-user control and confidentiality, and even monetizing the services at the same time. Even if they don't gain a lot of market share, the solutions to those problems could be very valuable socially, and Mozilla of course will liberate their tech and ideas so that everyone can benefit.

I sure hope they've vetted Mark Mayo to ensure that he doesn't hold any problematic political opinions.

That was sure a crazy situation in light of the fact that they have now partnered with (i.e. receiving money from) Yahoo. And it'll be interesting to see what happens in the future with the Yahoo / MS relationship.

I wish there was a page on mozilla.org with the title, 'This is how Mozilla makes money'.

I was thinking the same thing today. I agree.

It's tough to read that post and not think 'how do these people make money?' Not as though there's some reason why they shouldn't — it's just not clear how it works.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2013/f...

> How does Mozilla generate revenue?

> The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search and commerce functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, eBay and others. Mozilla’s reported revenues also include very important individual and corporate donations and grants, as well as other forms of income from our investable assets.

Try: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/documents/

It has their financial statements.

The Mozilla Foundation publishes an annual report[1] on that, which includes statements on its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2013/

Seems like Mozilla is more of an investment company than a software corp.

I believe Mozilla should start an advertising network and offer cloud services like webmail, docs, blogs, photos, etc so people create an everlasting bond with their properties while maintaining the open web motto they are already known and praised for.

An extra couple billion dollars a year wouldn't hurt either.

And, you know, buy a video service and make some glasses too. All in the name of not doing evil, right?

Dont forget maps, reviews, and a social network.

Also, cars.

And drop the services we like a lot.

Just a nice customizable home page would be great, something like My Yahoo or the defunct iGoogle but better. Provide nice calendar and weather widgets and a good API to develop more and you're good to go. Insert ads in the widgets at will. There's not much in the way of competition either.

Valid. Its nice to know where the money flows from. At the same time, I could care less how they make the money and more about 'this is how Mozilla disrupts'.

That, if we get down to it, is what they were originally set out to do.

For the first time ever I had my sleaze senses tingling after a recent Firefox install. There is now advertising on the new tab page. And why was I forced onto yahoo search instead of giving me the option?

1. I believe you can turn the ads off. Firefox needs revenue, like any other organization with employees to feed.

2. I believe you can change your search provider. Yahoo search was made the default because Yahoo pays Mozilla a lot of money for it. Mozilla needs money, see #1. If we can diversify the search market while supporting free software, that's fine by me.

Also important to note that sponsored tiles disappear once you have enough history for the new tab page to fill with your favorite sites. I mean it's still ads (And I don't like them personally) but it's ads in a space that would otherwise be useless to users.

> but it's ads in a space that would otherwise be useless to users.

Um, I don't have a problem with the new tab ads at all but this is a false justification. All those banner/block ads you see on the webs can be justified that way too.

That's funny. I felt almost the opposite, coming from Chrome. I completely blanked out the new tab page in about 5 seconds, and I was able to switch away from Yahoo in about 10. I'm not a big Firefox guy but was swayed by a recent writeup lauding the "Firefox is great for heavy tab users" aspect.

You were forced into google search for the last 15 years but did you complain? It's simple enough to just switch it.

That's hardly advertising.

But Yahoo is?

Advertising on the tab page is advertising.

You need to fully read what OP wrote.

As do you!

Why did they use to force you onto Google instead of giving you the option?

Can't see how you equate the two. One is a default search provider (and easily changed), the other is forcing advertising on you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com