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.
Um, it’s actually 114% of Mozilla’s total income.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Fire their overpriced C-Suite for starters
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.
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.
well then they can start resetting duckduckgo as the default search engine
They honestly should partner with DDG. They are in the same industry.
If think of it then there be no competition any more even by a little. If Google Decide to give up on chrome and make there own close Source web engine. Nothing really stopping them as they control the web and search even taking then to count not going make them support the chrome web engine. Firefox just uphill battle even more now as user can’t give up ther chrome habits and the forks.
They don’t need a brand new closed source browser, chrome is already closed source. Sure, a lot of the heavy lifting is done inside the open source chromium’s code , but all the things that turns a profit for Google is the closed source additions (a million kinds of telemetry) .
Am I the only one who never realized how dead inside the lady looks in the first slide?
I’m too OOTL here, is the meme for reai? Is Mozilla without funds now?
The meme is real, but that doesn’t mean that Mozilla is suddenly bankrupt. I can’t speak to Mozilla specifically, but there are non-profits like Wikipedia that set up stores of money equal to at least a full year of operating expenses, so that they can work to pivot in the face of exactly this kind of eventuality.
Google will appeal the ruling, which will drag out the measures for a while still, and no one knows yet whether they’ll actually be forced to stop paying Mozilla. Presumably, Mozilla will mention in court that this is a real fucking problem and would actually weaken Google’s competition. But the concern is still there, yeah.
Firefox seems fine now and it’s open source. I get that no software is maintenance free, but how much work actually needs to be done each year?
For a browser…
A huge amount
That’s a valid question. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to quantify.
The state of browsers in general has been a moving target since NCSA Mosiac; about around 1993 or so. So the last three decades has been a ceaseless grind of new features, security enhancements, performance enhancements, and so on. And this feature set is absolutely monstrous in scale, as it includes backwards compatibility to most of those features (if not all of) back to that beginning over 30 years ago. So, work on any browser is by definition perennial, and it only ever gets more complex.
For Firefox, well, just take a look at their bug tracker. It’s broken down by component, but each link on this page is its own fresh hell of things to do, many of which are barely a year old: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox
I would also argue that the only other software projects that compare to a web browser in terms of sheer scale, compatibility, and longevity, are things like the Linux Kernel or maybe the entire Microsoft Office suite. IMO, software in this class is a lot of work to keep going, no matter how you slice it.
Tell me you’ve never worked on a long-running software project without telling me you’ve never work on one.
Seems like a rude response to me asking a sincere question.
I think the point is that the world is constantly moving. If something isn’t maintained properly the technical dept builds up to the point where it can’t be salvaged. (See Xorg)
It’s around 30 million lines of code. You need actual human beings who have enough knowledge of this code to make decisions.
When I’m on a project with 30000 lines of code as a reasonably experienced dev, I consider that rather challenging to know most details of. This is obviously some complete ballpark math, but that would mean they need 1000 devs.
They had around 750 employees in 2020, after they laid off 250 employees. This includes HR, management, IT support and such, so possibly 650 actual devs, of which not all are working on Firefox.
lol is this a joke or are you being serious?
You can’t just maintain a browser, the web is ever evolving.
That’d be a good way to get left behind. Even now there are technologies that chromium supports and ff doesn’t, e.g. the new-ish webusb api. (Actually checking now it is supported as experimental, but my point stands)I think they dont implement it on purpose
A browser is one of the most complex pieces of software you will find. There’s a reason why only 2.5 browsers exist (I’m counting chromium and safari as 1.5 because they are not the same but they are both WebKit). Maintaining a browser is difficult and making a new one is even more difficult.
Take Microsoft, one of/the most valuable company in the world. They had a browser (internet explorer) that has been state of the art, then they couldn’t maintain it anymore and it became a joke. They made a new one instead (old edge) with all the intention of making it a real player. Fucking Microsoft couldn’t do it and had to give up. They replaced it with a reskin of chrome (new edge).
Apple and Google manage to maintain chrome and safari both thanks to their position of monopoly, and because their position of monopoly depends on it. Firefox exist(ed) as a tax sponge for Google, but it’s definitely behind chrome in technology, but if it was a new browser, and not one order than safari, they would never be able to make it.
If tech giants such as Google cannot be broken up, then their services should be required to be compatible and all data exportable to competitors. See the EFFʼs “Competitive Compatibility” concept. Buy a movie off Google’s YouTube but Google misbehaves? It must be exportable to a market competitor that you do support. Don’t like how Google handles your email? You should be able to switch your email address to a competitor just like you can change phone companies without losing your phone number.
Basically, if the US Federal government cannot discipline monopolies by breaking them up directly, they should break up the moats and walled gardens the monopolies built to keep customers locked in to maintain their monopolies. See Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
I doubt they would make Google stop paying Mozilla. That would make Google more of a monopoly
Google pays because Firefox has Google as the default search engine. That deal is where the problem lies.
Maybe that’s not bad for firefox.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects and just focus on delivering a good browser.
Algo the lack of google as financial support means they’ll rely more on donations, which would mean that they really need to focus on offering a good browser.
I’ll gladly donate to firefox if I would see they are really focusing on it.
Maybe you have noticed it, but they try to widem their portfolio with paid services in the last couple of years. They have seen it coming.
I pay for at least one of their new services.
The problem is that building a plain simple browser doesn’t pay.
In reality it means they’ll have to focus more on monetization, which will create more enshittification and not less.
What they need is to focus on enterprise functionality and privacy services. Maybe they could even do some sort of consulting
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects
Like Rust?
I really hope that’s sarcastic, because Rust is one of the most valuable additions to the whole IT field in a good while.
Entire industries have been stuck on C/C++ for decades. Industries, which are normally extremely late to any form of modern software development, are now practically jolting to get Rust integrated into their toolchains.
Similarly, languages without runtimes allow for building libraries that can be called from other programming languages, which so far meant C/C++. That’s a big reason why many widely used open-source projects like OpenSSL, SQLite, OpenGL etc. are written in those.
Even if, for whatever reason, you think Rust is awful, getting a third language into the mix will allow many more people to build similar libraries, which is again really good for everyone.For userland code that basically fingerbangs every server on the web, some forced memory-safety might not be a bad idea
The moment that it’s possible to donate directly towards the development of firefox, there’s roughly 10€/yr with their name on it. As it stands however, Mozilla is not funding FF at all, but rather extracting money from the project.
I donate to lemmy and mastodon instances. As I do believe they are using my money for good things.
I donate around 5 dollars to Wikipedia every month. Another 5 to Mozilla isn’t an issue for me.
… will you though?
I just signed up for monthly donations of 5 USD per month. 5.60 USD technically since I also opted to pay the transaction fees.
Suck it.
Present it. 😮
I have nothing to prove to you. Besides, even if I did present it, you wouldn’t believe it. Even if I presented it with doxxing information you would note it for future harassment campaigns and also claim you don’t believe it.
So… as I said previously… suck it.
5.60 USD to mozilla every month. Not much, but if everyone did it, they would be bigger than google and tell them to eat shit livestream.
Your dick dumbass. Not a copy of your fucking bank statement lmfao. Were my lips on my dick sucking emoji face not clear enough?
Ya’ll take yourselves way too seriously lol. I’m glad you contributed. I haven’t, besides hopefully spurring you on to, in which I’ll take some of the credit for it. So you’re welcome.
If I had the money, an extra $5 or so would definitely be something I’d spend monthly on donating to Mozilla/Firefox.
If I had the money, an extra $N or so would definitely be something I’d spend monthly on X
I have donated in the past while still living in a third world country. I stopped when I realized how my donation was squandered.
I think in the future I will try to donate like 10 dollars a month for free software that I use, including Firefox, KDE, Thunderbird, Wikipedia, Lemmy, etc.
I think it’s very important to support open source financially, because without it we would all be fucked by huge corporations. And I might sound overly anti-capitalist, but I think that most of them should be broken up.
Google got rid of the side projects, increased the CEO’s salary, and laid off a bunch of employees during the pandemic. It basically got rid of the innovation that could have made Firefox a faster, more secure, and pleasant experience. Rust and Rust-based Servo, as a replacement for Gecko, were two of those side projects. These are the things Mozilla needs to invest in.
Also, I think Mozilla needs to ask the user upon install what the default search engine should be from a list of search engines including Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing, and Yahoo. Maybe the order of those could be arranged based on how much they’re able to finagle from the search engines.
The real monopoly is their control over Chrome. That’s what they should be forced to split from the company that owns the search engine. Development and design of Chrome should not and cannot be done by the company that runs the search engine and gets its revenue from ads.
Maybe the order of those could be arranged based on how much they’re able to finagle from the search engines.
That’s the issue that caused this. Google was paying Mozilla to be the default search engine at the top of the list in Firefox and other browsers.
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Right now it’s already set as the default search engine and you have to work to change it to something else as I understand it. I’m proposing that no default is set and that the user is asked to select one upon first installing Firefox from an ordered list of search engines. If that’s already the case (it’s been a while since I installed Firefox from scratch), then I’d argue that’s fine. And it allows other search engines to contribute to be higher up in the rankings.
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I can’t think of anything that would replace the revenue that Google pays Mozilla that sustains the development salaries to hopefully keep Mozilla competitive and hopefully making it the best performing, convenient and private browser.
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Google got rid of the side projects, increased the CEO’s salary, and laid off a bunch of employees during the pandemic.
How did Google do any of that? Wasn’t that all Mozilla Corp?
Not saying they did, if you’re paying for a thing, you a lot of control of that thing.
Major brain fart/typo, haha.
Development and design of Chrome should not and cannot be done by the company that runs the search engine and gets its revenue from ads.
I’d go so far as to argue the exact same for development of: Operating systems, automotive, smartphones, residential fiber…
The ulterior motive is simply never in a user’s best interest when every function ultimately becomes part of the “influence towards the purchase of goods and services” funnel.
While I find your assertion inspiring and very worthy of consideration, I have to wonder what the incentive is to sustain Android development. Apple sells the hardware that goes with its OS(es), so they get the hardware revenue (not to mention the App Store and iCloud subscription revenues). They would have to start charging devices to use their operating system or something, and I have to wonder if that would be possible under open source licenses.
I would love an open, sustained, and even open source, secure operating system for phones that’s the target of app development. I think the Linux stack should should develop an NPR/PBS type ecosystem public funding of development (with maybe the corporate underwriting of those networks being equivalent to contributions from corporate employed developers to the open source code) and I’d love for it to be a real competitor in the smart phone market (knowing the Android stack modifies and sits on top of Linux).
I have to wonder what the incentive is to sustain Android development
Cuts from app purchases and in-app purchases. Of course, developers can implement their own payment gateways and distribute their apps in third party stores, but nobody would do this at risk of being removed from play store.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects
Like Firefox?
It really seemed like it’s been a bit of a side project those last few years…
They are throwing things at the wall hoping something sticks.
For some reason people don’t want Mozilla to make money or perhaps they assume browser development is lucrative.
For some reason people don’t want Mozilla to make money or perhaps they assume browser development is lucrative.
By their own account, it’s not meant to be lucrative.
"Corporation. Foundation. Not-for-profit.
Mozilla puts people over profit in everything we say, build and do. In fact, there’s a non-profit Foundation at the heart of our enterprise."
Straight from Mozilla’s About Us page for you. Maybe they ought to live up to their words and start focusing on making a solid browser that respects users’ privacy with the majority of their time, funding and energy, rather than squandering these assets on current tech hype nonsense that people don’t actually want.
You’re right of course, but you’re also wasting your breath.
In 2024 the business sociopaths have so many people so twisted and screwed up in the head that they can’t even CONCEIVE of the idea of a person or organization focused on delivering a product sustainably rather than “MONEY MONEY MONEY, NOM NOM NOM!” for eternity.
Always that Bing money!
When I heard the news, my first though was a mix of “Oh. oh no…”, “yay! no vendor-lock-in”, and “OH, NO.”
My expectation for the future is that a crowd fundraiser like on Wikipedia (does anyone remember those?) will be on the way for Mozilla… there is no way they can survive a 80% drop in the budget gracefully.
Revenue of Mozilla Corporation. Not Mozilla Foundation.
Meh. It’s just Monopoly money /j
Should we buy Mozilla?
Sure, how much could a web browser cost anyways? Here’s $20.
I would actually like to know how much it cost. And how much each user “should” pay so it becomes viable.
Though I would really think that public institutions should use firefox as a base browser instead of edge/chrome as being open source is usually a big plus for public agencies that need to really control what’s going on in their computers. And thus being a big source of financial support for firefox.
Someone above posted that they have a revenue of 593 million dollars per year. Presumably somewhat below that is going to be their yearly costs.
And according to this, they have around 160 million desktop Firefoxes showing up, which is going to be roughly how many active users there are.
593 / 160 would be $3.71 per user.
Maybe ad-supported version?
Like the Opera browser in 2000s.
Yes. Can we ? Eh …
I have a very mouthy Jackson who says no.
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.
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…
Edge is a Chrome clone. Safari exists purely because of Apple. It is designed to not work well so you get trapped in the Apple app store.
Opera and Edge are Chromium based. Even most of the alternatives are still Google controlled.
There are still versions of Opera with their own original engine going around.
Damn, Presto should return. That thing could load like 300 tabs in like 30, maybe 60 MB RAM tops.
Lightweights!
