• FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network
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    5 months ago

    In my utopia, Google would be forced to continue to pay out the current annual contract sum, at a decreasing percentage every year, for some number of years, to all affected companies, giving them the opportunity to divest and pivot.

    The root problem doesn’t get fixed if the company with enough money to be a monopolist still has the money when this is “resolved.”

      • I always got the opposite impression: people here love Firefox. But it seems that’s part of why they’re critical of its shortcomings.

        At least for me, if I’m criticizing something, it probably means I care at least a little bit about whatever I’m criticizing. Not worth time talking about things I actually dislike.

      • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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        5 months ago

        this does mystify me. only time I nearly dropped firefox was when they did the big change that broke add ons but firefox with the addons I like is the best browser for me. nothing they have done has been consequentially bad. philosophically maybe but the actual effect is not bad compared to any other options.

          • mkwt@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            For the money they are (were I guess) handed to set that it’s clearly worth it.

            Not disagreeing with you. I just want to point out that Google is probably deliberately “overpaying” on this Mozilla deal, because they want to keep Firefox afloat, because they don’t want to catch a court ruling that they are monopolizing the browser market too.

            Dirty tricks with web browsers is the antitrust charge that actually caught Microsoft in the 90s.

          • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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            5 months ago

            oh yeah. duck duck go is for my firefox. duck duck go is another one with a lot of drama that amounts to nothing. have tried a few alts but went back.

      • Thrashy@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Consider that many of the same people think of Arch as a viable daily driver distro for the everyman. Some folks are more accepting of jank than others.

      • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        its an emotional reaction. google has always been bad, them doing a bad thing is just business as usual. who cares

        but when mozilla does something bad? mozilla is supposed to be the good guy! they betrayed us!

      • DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        I don’t think people hate Firefox as much as people hate Mozilla and what they’re doing with Firefox.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It is shocking to me how many people on Lemmy hate Firefox

        Although some people are Google fanbois or reactionary dumbasses, I think most of what you’re misinterpreting as “Firefox hate” is actually love for Firefox and hate for what Mozilla has done to it.

        Most Firefox-critics’ feelings towards it are more like this:

        • db2@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I remember building Phoenix from source when it was basically still an experiment to decouple it from the suite. Good times.

        • Sabata@ani.social
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          5 months ago

          Love the browser, hate the corpos desperately trying to fuck it up because that’s the cool thing to do to your software now days.

    • yamanii@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Don’t you think they dabbled on stupid projects and acquired some companies like pocket precisely because just a browser wasn’t enough to pay the bills?

  • cobysev@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Why does this percentage keep going up? Who keeps inflating the numbers? The first time I heard about this, it was like 64%. Then 77%. Now 81%?! Tomorrow, I’m gonna see a meme stating 97% of Mozilla’s income is from Google.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      The actual numbers are $510MM/y from Google out of $593MM/y total revenue. So 86% if my math is correct. It’s bonkers how dependent on a single deal they are.

      • frazorth@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        Are they dependent?

        All I see is Google throwing a fuck tonne of money at them, and Mozilla spaffing it on pointless crap. They could probably raise more if Google went away, but they could also reduce spend significantly if they didn’t have stupid money get thrown at them.

        Its like giving your kids $100 a day. Sure they could blow it on pay to win games, but what would happen if you reduced it to $10 a day? Probably nothing of note, just less spending on crap.

        • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          I can’t say if they are completely dependent without seeing where the other ~$80MM comes from. If they come from products that require significant staff and server cost, then yes they are fully dependant. If the $$ comes from something they can keep going for much less than ~$80MM, then they are not.

        • stinerman [Ohio]@midwest.social
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          5 months ago

          They could probably raise more if Google went away

          I’m interested in how you think Mozilla would raise more than half a billion dollars if they didn’t take any money from Alphabet/Google. Genuinely. In what ways could Mozilla raise money that they’re not doing right now?

          • frazorth@feddit.uk
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            5 months ago

            That’s not what I said. Their fundraising is dead because they don’t need to raise any more cash.

            They literally throw cash away each month. Without Googles dump truck money I am sure they could increase fundraising to raise what they actually need to operate. Not that they could increase fundraising to match Googles current contributions.

            • stinerman [Ohio]@midwest.social
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              5 months ago

              I think it’s fair to think that they could refocus their efforts on the browser if they didn’t have that large slush fund from Google. I don’t think “hey we don’t take Google money anymore” is going to lead to a lot of new donations, however.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      Google pays because Firefox has Google as the default search engine. That deal is where the problem lies.

  • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Which would ironically give even more monopoly over how the web is viewed to Google. Chrome and Firefox are just about the only two players in that space right now.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      No they’re not, there’s safari and Edge. Don’t forget about opera.

      :|

      Sorry. I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face while I say that…

  • SilentObserver@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I suppose it’s time to fork Firefox. Can call the fork “Netscape Navigator”. Ya, I think that has a nice ring to it.

  • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Penalize Google many much monies and use some of those to endow a trust that gives yearly funding distributions.

    Simple.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            There’s no mention of adding AI to the browser. It’s just an AI platform or ecosystem for development.

            • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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              5 months ago

              Mozilla has a finite amount of money. If they’re (as far as I’m concerned) wasting it on AI nonsense, that’s less development funds that can go toward Firefox.

              • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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                5 months ago

                I don’t know. I think for them it’s an opportunity to draw more attention and investments. Especially now with how hot AI is at the moment.

                I think people are overreacting a bit.

                • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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                  5 months ago

                  While ML does have legit uses in many specific cases, this whole “throw ‘AI’ into everything” hype/trend is just blockchain all over again. IMO, the ones who are overreacting are the ones swept up in the hype.

              • Zorque@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                In that there is a finite amount of money, there is also a finite amount of development that can go on at once. If they just pile tons and tons of bodies on what you might call useful endeavors, it can lead to bloat and the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

      • li10@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        I kinda get why they (and other companies) have to try AI at the moment though.

        It’s not what people claim it is, but it could end up being an essential tool for the modern world, and if they don’t invest in it early their business might end up getting left behind.

        We’ve certainly seen companies fall because they’ve not tried to stay on the cutting edge before.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          But is a bullshit generator even cutting edge in terms of web browsing? Feels like solutions without a problem.

        • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          We’ve certainly seen companies fall because they’ve not tried to stay on the cutting edge before

          Best example I can think of is Kodak and digital cameras. They invented it then sat on it until it was too late because they didn’t want to cut into their film scam.

            • someguy3@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Sears had a massive mail order catalog. Easy to switch that to Internet, right? But they decided to focus on stores.

              • 4am@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                It’s quite unbelievable that it was literally right there. The logistics were like 60% solved for them already, the remaining 40% was just making sure the online content remained linked with inventory and fulfillment, and expanding that capacity.

                “We think online shopping will be just a fad” - the unimaginable hubris…

                • someguy3@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  I was refreshing myself on wiki. They launched prodigy, but it was too early for online shopping. So they probably got a bad taste for that kind of thing. A thing in venture capital is that it’s all about timing.

          • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
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            5 months ago

            Nokia. They were at the top before iPhone. They couldn’t catch up with smart phones at all.

            I believe Intel will be another potential example, but we’ll see about that.

      • Farid@startrek.website
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        5 months ago

        I hate to see AI (I suppose we mean specifically GPTs in this instance) trashed all the time, just because companies use it incorrectly. They shove it in every hole they can to hike the stock price. But it’s a great tool, that arguably needs more time in the oven, which has legitimate helpful uses. Especially in the context of a browser.

        For example, in Arc Browser I can semantically search the page/article for anything and it will show me the location of the information I need (ever tried to find the recipe itself in an article about the recipe?). I can also do some obvious stuff, like summarize and translate sections, which I could do by copying it into a dedicated service, but it’s definitely much more convenient being built-in.
        Would be much better if it ran locally off the NPU, but we are not there yet.