it's not a shitty take; google signed a contract with mozilla and google should have to honour it.
if you want mozilla to be less reliant on outside income... DONATE TO THEM.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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This really sucks. I JUST swapped over to Mozilla about a week ago.
It really is a shitty take. Mozilla are essentially saying they depend on Google remaining a monopoly; and that we shouldn't fight the bad guys because the bad guys might hurt us if we try.
The Mozilla blog post was all about the DOJ asking to end search-bar payments, and how this might hurt independent browser. But I saw no mention of the DOJ saying that Google must sell Chrome; which I think is very relevant to the discussion about browser dominance.
More and more I believe that Mozilla's current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.
More and more I believe that Mozilla's current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.
I think the salary alone is enough evidence of that. There's a point, specifics of which will depend on your living situation, at which wanting a higher salary requires the same infinite greed that becoming a billionaire requires. And I'm very sure that this point is far below 1 million dollars a year. Mozilla's CEO makes over 6 million.
If you feel like you deserve that, you are not fit to lead a nonprofit. You have already proven that you care more about giving yourself obscene wealth than about the benefit of others.
And I'm very sure that this point is far below 1 million dollars a year.
Personally I place the amount around 600,000. Rich enough for anything reasonable.
setting one number is a little silly tho. somebody with 4 kids has totally different needs than a single person. especially if someone has a kid with special needs the costs can be huge. obviously that doesn't apply to these CEOs but I would say one person doesn't need more than 100k
Maybe making a browser doesn't need to be so damn expensive. Let the web standards freeze so we aren't constantly chasing shiny things. The browser is in a really good spot today. What else does it need to be?
A non-exhaustive list:
- creating a webpage has gotten too complicated and time-consuming
- accessibility, light/dark, should be a browser-feature, not something each.single.webpage has to implement
- monetization is an ongoing issue
- browsers need to do too much, are too complex and monolitic
- lots of duplication of software/system tasks in the browser, like process/memeory-management. But on webpage-side too, like video player, see point 1 and 2. Called inner-platform effect
There's a ton of stuff I still want to be supported, especially web assembly.
But for most things, yeah, we could probably slow down a bit.
Hardly surprising, looking at how many former google and Facebook employees are in Mozilla’s management.
Libre Wolf isn’t bad.
Can that continue to function if Firefox dies? Like, is it independent to where it will develop web platform features on its own?
Having been a firefox user for a few years now, Screw Mozilla. What a mismanaged shit-show they've become.
I get that browser development costs a ton, and that they're in a shitty position. But to make this ode to stockholm syndrome blog post... what on EARTH?
Best case, Chrome gets split off into a separate organization free of meddling and they can fund themselves with reasonable donations / investments. In reality, I'm sure Google and other advertising companies will try to get into it and buy the behavior they want, like special-interest groups in US politics.
But if Chrome ended up under any organization with reasonable management who wasn't completely beholden to advertisers, I'd switch back to Chrome pretty quickly (assuming the whole Manifest V2/V3 thing got un-fucked).
Does anybody expect them to say anything else? Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we're talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it's virtually impossible to fund unless you're a giant like Google or being funded by someone with very deep pockets, like... er... Google.
Even MS bailed and ceded power to Google, because it simply didn't make financial sense. Apple does it but they're pretty meh in terms of implementing standards and such... there's a reason 3rd party WebKit browsers are rare. They comparatively run it on a shoestring budget, and they're Apple FFS - their wealth is practically limitless!
People aren't going to start paying to use Firefox, and that money needs to come from somewhere. The community rejects giants paying Mozilla (understable sentiment), rejects paying for Firefox (also understandable), and rejects Mozilla selling data (definitely understandable). Some say donations, but be real, that won't make hundreds of millions per year.
What is the solution here? I'm not trying to be contrarian I just don't know what they can actually do. You'd hope that the Linux Foundation or something would chip in, but nope, they help Chromium instead. I worry for the future of web browsers.
That said, I'm also deeply uncomfortable with Google being able to pay to be default search on so many products. It gives them a huge advantage. I don't want them to have that advantage. It's anticompetitive and scummy as fuck.
Mozilla are definitely between a rock and a hard place here. I don't like some of the decisions they make, but damn, I'm not sure I have the smarts to come up with better ones, given the position and market they're in.
Web engine development is more costly than even OS development
Unfortunately, many applications that used to be desktop applications in the past are now programs that run in the web browser. It doesn't matter anymore if they are a lot less effective than being native.
we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it’s virtually impossible to fund unless you’re a giant
That is the problem - the web needs to be a lot simpler, browser development should cost fractions of that. It got unnecessarily, absurdly complex.
SASS has pushed the work their app developers should be doing onto the development teams of web browsers.
I know I'm in the minority but I would pay yearly to use Firefox. Not sure how much I'd pay, but I am getting into the habit of purchasing software instead of allowing it to purchase me
You can donate to software development freely right now. This and many others developers
As far as I can tell you can't donate to Firefox specifically. I would if I could.
I could but I'd still be getting the same Firefox which has a nagging incentive to cooperate with advertisers and google. The benefit of having to pay for software is that their revenue stream comes directly from me and not from a 3rd party. It's not about supporting the developer for me, it's about knowing that the product I pay for is the product I get
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The correct solution would have been for Mozilla to pursue alternative income a long time ago. Owning a browser gives you a lot of leverage. Instead they made a half-hearted attempt a few years back and half the products failed. I don't know why FF fans were so comfortable holding them as the savior of the web when they were entirely funded by Google.
And now... well I don't see a way forward either. Maybe it should just die then.
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I mean, I see their point, but it's still a bad take. At the end of the day, this monopoly needs to be broken up. Also, have they tried not hiring a bunch of new executives and capping CEO pay at 300 000?
Mozilla is such a disorganized company. Why wouldn't they find another search engine deal besides Google? It's possible that they could find another deal somewhere, but it seems to me that they don't care — more like they're a controlled competitor. I'm not surprised considering they scrapped their wording regarding privacy, which leads to a lot of ambiguities.
Google overpays quite a bit so they have a viable competitor to point to for chrome. If the payment tracked FF's usage numbers it would be way lower now. It makes no financial sense for any other search engine to pay that much.
That's assuming they could even afford it. Most can't
Not to mention a lot of companies are seeing search as a dead end product…
The problem with Mozilla is that their route back to greatness would require consolidation that cannot and will not happen due to lack of trust and diverging goals.
Mozilla + Proton + maybe a third party like Kagi for search (though it is api based) as separate but federated organizations is the only rational option for them ever reclaiming what Firefox used to be.
It feels like the world is too far gone for this to ever happen. Cynicism, pervasive internet and surveillance culture, and apathy just don’t make the world feel like it could go any direction people want anymore. Feels like we know the track for this and any new corporation in tech and the uber etc were the last of the unicorns where we actually bought into tech improving our lives.
/rant
The problem with Mozilla is that their route back to greatness would require consolidation that cannot and will not happen due to lack of trust and diverging goals.
I completely disagree; any capital available to Mozilla would be funneled into all the wrong places. Proton would go bankrupt for the sake of Mozilla's AI and CEO bonuses.
Firefox should split from Mozilla like Thunderbird did, and only then consider partnering with another project. Actually, a partnership between Firefox and Thunderbird would be great.
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I'm pretty sure that the main reason Google funds Mozilla is to be able to avoid claims of monopoly on browsers. I don't think we can have it both ways.
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