should say something like "goes to some non-profit exec leeches"
HN user
freshsqueeze
Tech thinker. Father. Raleigh, NC
they don't care, millions have been going to mitchell baker's pocket for the last decades
maybe cost of $10000s (or even $100K+) to build. this is where your donations go towards!
Because that's a lie and that's their only marketing, resting on their goodwill from when they actually cared and did meaningful things about that stuff.
The current CEO used to be head of the foundation and board, so she was receiving $1M+ a year already, paid with those donations.
rather "privacy privacy privacy" is the only play they have left
the money they burned could have bought whatsapp and instagram.
i guess they should position themselves as software makers then, not social justice advocates https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/
even their layoff post barely mentioned layoffs
goodbye and thanks for all the fish / $500M a yr from google
Google and Microsoft can just take over.
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals from Google, at least they have a lot of experience building valuable user-facing at-scale sites.
Microsoft has done more relevant open source and developer stuff in the last half decade.
The bread makers follow whatever the beancounters say.
Their layoff post began with "fighting systemic racism" and the coronavirus and the future of the Internet or something completely irrelevant.
Netscape may be. Mozilla is the child of some influential hacking community that spun off, back in the early 2000s that then found a lifeline in Google ad money. Since that phase passed, they've still siphoning off those laurels for the next two decades.
Please don't send Mozilla your money...everyone's donations before then went to exec millions of dollars per year salary.
Mozilla is sitting on $500M cash reserves + $500M / year from Google. Don't assign lack of money as the real reason of MDN falling: lack of product direction and leadership.
This is true. Execs at the non-profit foundation have been pocketing millions of dollars. And I cannot really point out what they do. I guess this is common in many non-profits, where people donate, and people at the top siphon it off. There's some corruption at play at the top.
Or at least not funnel millions of donation dollars to Mitchell Baker.
Donations went to paying Mitchell Baker millions of dollars per year, and all the other execs.
Your $10/month donation will go straight into paying their CEO $3 million dollars per year and her inner circle.
They could have bought Whatsapp and Instagram with their spend over the last few years.
Revenue had never dropped for Mozilla. COVID had zero affect on their revenue stream as they lied in their layoff post. They get all their money from Google ad money to $500M a year guaranteed, with $500M in the bank, and $500M/yr upcoming. The layoffs were just to secure the execs' lifetime pensions.
They had $500M in the bank. The whole "COVID affected our revenue" was a made up lie to save face. Every company has been using COVID as an excuse to do a lay off they've been meaning to do.
You can maintain a browser for that cash (or buy Instagram or Whatsapp). But you can't maintain a bunch of execs siphoning money into the pockets while the org runs like a headless chicken.
Collect the $500M ad money and then turn around and claim Google is evil and they are the only company fighting for internet freedom and world peace.
They are more concerned with their public image than innovating. Hence why there are so many defenders of them because their marketing works so well to the tech crowd (just spam "privacy", "freedom", "open source").
There's no grand strategy one can come up with instantly, but their corporate leadership stifled any chance Mozilla could discover the right angles to innovate. With $500M a year, they could've had a sea of strike teams clawing its way towards the right answer. But alas, any such group would suffocate under a top-heavy culture more interested in their image.
moz management is how they got here in the first place. They hire through nepotism and pay themselves lavish salaries. No incentive but to just coast and keep calling themselves fighters of systemic racism and freedom saviors of the internet.
This is true. Mozilla knows well how to market to the tech crowd with the "we're the saviors of the internet, privacy, everyone else is evil" marketing. For the billions burned, you'd expect a lot more. The internet browsing experience feels the same as it did 10 years ago.
Definitely secured for the executives and directors. They have very little incentive to make things work and continue to hire their friends and pay themselves lavish salaries.