Most of Mozilla's money of course comes from Google to make them the default search engine on Firefox. And of course its a way for Google to ensure there's at least one alternative browser engine. Reading about how Texeira was recently fired and how executives have been pushing for AI features for a long time, Mozilla certainly loves chasing trends and then forgetting them, like how Google kills lots of products. It seems like the company can't stand on its own two feet without Google's funding and is poorly run.
What happened to Mozilla over the years? How much effort did they put in to trying to be a successful tech company? because it hasn't been until the past few that I really started following Firefox and Mozilla news.
I wonder if Mozilla could've been Proton, years before Proton AG existed, making their own comprehensive suite of privacy-friendly tools, since Mozilla makes privacy their brand. And they were late to the smartphone game with Firefox OS. If they were smart, they would've ensured their long term survival with an actual business, to continue funding development of their privacy and FOSS software like Firefox, without large funding sources like Google.
Gecko is the main reason Mozilla is important.
I'd say Proton has become Mozilla more than the other way around, now that they're also a non-profit. Mozilla does have its own set of privacy-related tools (Firefox Relay, Mozilla Monitor, Mozilla VPN, ...), but not all of them have been successful, and some have been discontinued (e.g. the password manager). All of those were/are certainly attempts to reduce the dependence on Google money.
Wasnt there an announcement a few weeks ago that they are deprioritising relay and the VPN in favour of AI?
The announcement was that they were deprioritizing all non-browser projects, iirc.
I'm not sure if those specifically were in favour of AI, but yes, they did get less investment. Another sign that they're struggling to bring in enough money with other projects.
(I do wonder, given how many of Proton's projects have launched relatively recently, how many of those projects bring in enough money to offset their own costs. Possibly we're in for a couple of similar announcements from Proton at some point? Let's hope not.)