Mozilla's response to proposed remedies in U.S. vs. Google

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/proposed-remedies-browsers/

by pabs3 • 1 year ago

65 42 1 year ago

blog.mozilla.org

Expected, but this makes it clear that Mozilla's morality is dictated by where their paychecks are coming from. They're basically saying that they need to be paid by Google to challenge Google. That's not what Google is paying you for.

The hilarious part is that there's no alternate proposal, and nothing (here) addressing Google in terms of antitrust at all. It's just a plea for half-billion dollar yearly checks from their competitor, for reasons. They want to be paid by Google so they can continue to challenge Google, but don't challenge Google in any way, right here, right now.

The reason Google spent billions on Firefox is for this letter, not for hits from a browser with 5% market share that 100% uses adblockers.

edit: also, how far has Netscape fallen? This is embarrassing for me to read, it had to be embarrassing to write.

cosmic_cheese• 1 year ago

The lack of of an alternative proposal jumped out at me as well. While it’s not explicitly required the post feels incomplete without it.

I think they’re also underselling WebKit a bit. Under Linux it's not too far behind macOS/iOS and work to bring the Windows version up to parity is underway[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43305344

bagacrap3• 1 year ago

You are overselling webkit. It's not at parity, and even if it were, just maintaining parity costs $$$ per year.

Anyway, the obviously implied alternative proposal is: disallow search deals with major players like Safari, not minor players like Mozilla, or find some completely different way to address the search monopoly. The most obvious prior art is the browser choice dialog that was imposed on MS/windows. The DOJ doesn't want that because everyone would pick Google anyway.

ggm2• 1 year ago

Yes, there is a lot of that message in this. We like to think of Mozilla/Firefox as "the alternative" but it's a bit of window dressing to Google, which allows them to show regulators aywhere they tried to foster independent code paths and browser diversity.

Maybe the answer is to donate Chrome to Mozilla along with seed money to invest in the markets, and fund continual development. Mozilla can continue to do the work we need, but independent of the advertising/adblock warfare. And a trickle of the money behind Chrome can be fed to Firefox as usual

oguz-ismail• 1 year ago

Maybe the answer is to donate Chrome to Mozilla

And end up with two shitty browsers instead of one? I don't follow

charcircuit• 1 year ago

The alternative is doing a rev share with another search provider who will not be able to pay as much per user as Google. Or for Mozilla to buy or make their own search egnine which is a lot of work and risk.

Mozilla is trying to compete against Google's browser and not their search engine. I don't see why Google wouldn't be paying for their search traffic as opposed to just letting Microsoft buy it.

bagacrap3• 1 year ago

This point, that Google is able to pay the most per user because it has the most economically productive search, is why I think their behavior is not anti competitive. Search is not a loss leader by any means.

notpushkin7• 1 year ago

In 2023, Mozilla reported $37,574,982 in investment income, accounting for over 58% of the non-profit’s total revenue for the year. [1]

Is that not enough to maintain a browser?

EDIT: this figure is for Mozilla Foundation only, Mozilla Corpotation makes about 9 times that amount (I assume most of which comes from Google). My point still stands though: $37M isn’t a terribly big amount of money, but it’s still a lot.

[1] https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/File:501c3_2023_990_Mozi...

kevingadd• 1 year ago

As someone who previously worked on both Firefox and Chrome, it's not. The mandate of modern browsers is too large.

But Mozilla is definitely wasting a lot of money on stuff that doesn't contribute to their mission.

smegsicle• 1 year ago

does 'a lot' mean like almost half?

hyfgfh• 1 year ago

But Mozilla is definitely wasting a lot of money on stuff that doesn't contribute to their mission.

Yes, I have noticed that too and every year they sink deeper with ads and shady choices

If they keep it lean and with a high standard the community wouldn't stop supporting it, but every 6 month or so they make a shady decision and lose more support

wodenokoto• 1 year ago

I haven't kept up with Mozillas yearly reports for over a decade, but are you saying that they no longer rely 90% on search for income? And what is "investment" here? Doesn't sound like actual revenue.

notpushkin7• 1 year ago

My bad – that figure was for the Foundation only. Foundation + Corporation was ~10 times higher (I suppose that’s the 90% from Google).

Though it’s mind-boggling in any case. I’m sure there’s thousands of brilliant developers who would gladly work for Mozilla for like $50k/yr if it was truly independent. That’s 750 full-time devs from investment income alone (which was Mozilla Corp’s total employee count in 2020, so I assume that should be about right).

(Investment here, I suppose, is what it says: they’re buying a bunch of stocks and use profits from these for their charitable goals. Kinda like endowment kind of thing.)

xivzgrev• 1 year ago

apparently it is. They earned $19M from program service revenue, and profited almost $25M.

So they could cut the entire Google deal, and still be in the black.

Not as profitable as before (obviously they've been investing their profit for a long time, to drive $37M in investment income) but not as dire as this blog post makes it sound

pseudalopex4• 1 year ago

Your research excluded the income and expenses of the company which produces the browser. Mozilla Foundation's program service revenue is Mozilla Corporation paying Mozilla Foundation to use Mozilla and Firefox trademarks.

Mozilla entities in 2023 received $495 million in royalties. This was 76% of revenue. Royalties means search deals essentially. Search deals means Google essentially. Total expenses were $497 million.

flomo4• 1 year ago

They can keep it going for several years, but Firefox marketshare is already sinking into irrelevancy territory, and they have NEVER had a real plan to do anything about that. Mozilla philosophy has been just to ride it down. Just trail chrome most of the time.

Just out of habit, I still test my stuff in Firefox (nobody above me cares). But market share is already getting into "only weirdos use this" territory. And "weirdos" also like a bunch of weirdo extensions. (And I frequently see HNers complaining about this.) So eventually, its like we just don't support weirdos.

notpushkin7• 1 year ago

I mean, that’s the problem isn’t it? If we want Firefox to even have a fighting chance, they have to ditch Google and completely rethink their strategy. (Obviously, that means complete change of management, which is really unlikely to happen until the very minute it all comes crashing down.)

Just out of habit, I still test my stuff in Firefox (nobody above me cares).

Personally, I develop on Firefox, then test on Chrome (and other browsers). I get the sentiment though.

kelnos2• 1 year ago

Sure, but not sure how that's related to whether or not the Mozilla Foundation can fund development off $37.5M per year.

Marketing and evangelism isn't free, but I find it hard to believe $37.5M per year wouldn't cover everything they need to do. At an average of $200k per employee, that's 187 people. As you point out, it's their strategy that's the problem. I'm not convinced they need more money to come up with and implement a better strategy.

(Yes, I know they pay for more than just employee salaries. Presumably they have other income apart from that $37.5M that doesn't come from Google.)

LargoLasskhyfv2• 1 year ago

But market share is already getting into "only weirdos use this" territory.

I think this is a self-reinforcing feedback loop because of bad analytics.

Maybe initially some big, popular, otherwise important sites only supported some Chrome.

Then the 'weirdos' discovered that it worked perfectly with only one mouseclick changing the user-agent.

Time passed, more and more 'weirdos' spoofed their UA by default, because clicking is boring.

Analytics saw less and less FF, more Chrome(simplified).

Management saw less and less need to support anything else.

Pseudo-Cyber-Security rose up high in the sky, shining so bright, that it seemed just right.

Analytics still spitting out falsehoods...

...damagement...

...repeat.

notpushkin7• 1 year ago

One more thing – I’ve started a petition to Mozilla to try to finally ditch Google: https://mozillapetition.com/

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43340948

knowknow• 1 year ago

I feel like browsers are more important to keep competitive than search engines. They dictate the standards that the whole web conform to, while search engines really just redirect people to the same sites. There’s also a much larger cost for users switching browsers than search engines. I still depend on safari as I can’t pay my rent on Firefox, while I can switch to kagi, yandex, or ddg immediately.

Additionally, a bad browser will always be more harmful than a bad search engine due to the shear amount of things it interacts with. Breaking the default search engine agreement is good in theory, but seems worse practically.

illiac786• 1 year ago

I’d argue a search engine with a monopoly could dictate which site get visited at all, based on any criteria. That could include standards.

But agree a browser monopoly is no better.

Finally, question: what do you mean you cannot pay your rent on Firefox? Curious.

LargoLasskhyfv2• 1 year ago

Not OP, but I think badly implemented online-banking. With many banks it's like this:

Chrome on Windows/MacOS/Android, Safari on MacOS/iOS, or their own crap-app and NOTHING ELSE!

(Not even Chrome/Chromium on Linux or some Chromium on xBSD)

If you try to spoof that, and it doesn't work out, your account may be locked down for a while,

until you have proven (in person, in some branch office) that it was you,

and some corporate drone sternly waggles its index fingers at you for having the gall of even trying that (repeatedly).

This seems to be more often the case in the US than in Germany.

Your'e lucky when you have choices which don't fuck this up, or are wealthy, and thus 'important/valued' enough to ignore such shit.

But when you rent your house, you probably aren't, because why else would you?

pabs3• 1 year ago

Should Firefox really be counted as an "independent" browser, when it is dependent on Google for most of its revenue?

userbinator• 1 year ago

It's always been for show; a show that Google's been running ever since it spurred the increase of anti-IE propaganda[1] and eventually caused MS to cave in and end up creating a browser based on what Google controls.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28725293

0dayz• 1 year ago

In a way mozilla is proving doj's point that mozilla isn't an independent company due to the fact that mozilla probably has oriented their business operations with this search revenue in mind.

Thus if Google falls so does mozilla.

notpushkin7• 1 year ago

It’s still not too late to ditch Google. Otherwise... well, let’s hope the phoenix rises from the ashes again.

jameslk• 1 year ago

Didn’t Firefox rise from the ashes during the years of Internet Explorer’s waning monopoly? How did Firefox “take back the web” pre- Google funding?

notpushkin7• 1 year ago

I think Google funding was there from early on. (Though I suppose it’s also because there was less corporate bullshit going on in Mozilla’s early days.)

kelnos2• 1 year ago

It was a lot easier to build and maintain a web browser back then than it is today.

pseudalopex4• 1 year ago

It didn't. Mozilla were part of AOL until 2003. Google funding started in 2004. They released Firefox 1.0 in late 2004. And web browsers were much simpler then.

finnthehuman• 1 year ago

How embarrassing.

Mozilla's response to proposed remedies in U.S. vs. Google

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