We’ve recognized that Mozilla faces major headwinds in terms of both financial growth and mission impact. While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run. Mozilla’s impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways. That is why we’re working hard on all of these fronts.
↫ Mark Surman on the Mozilla blog
None of this is new to anyone reading OSNews. I’ve been quite vocal about Mozilla’s troubles and how it intends to address those troubles, and I’m incredibly worried and concerned about the increasing efforts by Mozilla to push advertising and “AI” to somehow find more revenue streams. I think this is the wrong direction to take, and will not make up for the seemingly inevitable loss of the Google search deal – and my biggest fear is that Firefox will get a lot worse before Mozilla realises advertising and “AI” just aren’t compatible with their mission and the morals and values of the last few remaining Firefox users.
I don’t have any answers either, of course. Making a competitive browser is hard, and clearly requires a lot of people and a lot of time. Donations are fickle, nobody will pay for a browser, and relying on corporate sponsoring in other forms than the Google search deal will just mean Firefox will become like Chrome even faster, with more and more exceptions for “allowed” ads and additional roadblocks for adblockers to try and work around. In essence, I strongly believe that it is impossible to both earn money from online ads and make a good browser. It’s one or the other – not both.
There’s basically no competition in the browser space, and if we lose Firefox, the only other option is Chrome and its various skins. Not a future I’m looking forward to.
> Donations are fickle, nobody will pay for a browser
A bit like no one is willing to pay into websites?
From what I am reading, mozilla’s problem is the incredible amount of corporate fat, not the income stream (even without the google income).
To see what I am talking about, just look at how many people they added to the thunderbird team in the past year, with the resulting software actually getting worse in quality nowadays, and that’s without even mentioning the needless ui changes.
I hate that you’re at least partially correct. Mozilla has been bloated for a while. They’ve spent money on cool things that had little chance for success, while their main projects languished. I had to stop using thunderbird years ago due to non performant behavior. However, without the Google income they are just screwed regardless of how much fat they’d trim. They’d have to cut deep into muscle to survive, if what they end up with would be of much value.
Unless something changed – thunderbird isn’t part of Mozilla since more than 10 years.
It’s quite simple. The Mozilla Foundation used to support Firefox. Since 2005, this structure was inverted: the Mozilla Corporation develops Firefox in order to make profits to support the Mozilla Foundation. They need to revert back to the Mozilla Foundation’s purpose as a charity to support the development of a high-quality browser, rather than whatever nebulous NGO goals they currently pursue.
Unfortunately the long march through the institutions is complete and Mozilla is stacked with “activists”. Very unlikely that they can change the organization to focus on the tech and the browser and thing else.
You are exactly correct, as is Munchkinguy.
Ok, I’ll just call up Sun as ask them to restart their funding of Mozilla. Any one know Scott Mcnealy? Anyone have his BB Pin?
Your comment is nonsensical.
Munchkinguy,
Every organization eventually goes though a mission shift.
Google used to have “organize world’s information and make it universally accessible”. Nokia used to be a paper mill. Nintendo? A card company.
Either success (as in eradicating the polio disease by The March of Dimes), failure, or even just seeing opportunities cause this.
For Mozilla?
It is probably a mix of greed for new opportunities and failure to hold browser market share.
I’m not sure there are enough people on board to return to the original mission though. So, I don’t have a solution.
Said it once, said it many times. The cash Mozzila currently has could fund their current dev team for over 20 years.
They have forgotten why they exist.
I really encourage anyone who still believes in mouse and keyboard desktop applications to check out Pale Moon.
The only thing I want Mozilla to do is make a 1pass like password service that works outside of their browser (including for other browsers). Also, make Firefox a little less old looking – something like this: https://github.com/CaptainN/firebend
They tried that and failed.
They tried a separate app on mobile, but I don’t recall one that ever worked on desktop. On mobile they still have that functionality, they just re-integrated it with Firefox. I still haven’t seen that on desktop. It’d be fine if they did the same thing – integrate it with Firefox desktop.
I would donate for Firefox/Thunderbird development and ONLY for Firefox/Thunderbird development. If I donate today my money will likely go towards some “AI” initiative so why do it?
As for Chrome, what’s the point of installing all kinds of privacy plugins on a browser that sends all your data to Google?
Safari doesn’t support uBlock Origin so it’s out of the question as well.
“Privacy-respecting advertising”
Now there’s a contradiction in terms!
You don’t remember when ads were spewed out between parts of a tv program or on the sports page of your daily newspaper? Its entirely possible to do, but sending a message to 100k people that aren’t your target market is always going to be more less lucrative then sending it to 10K that are.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
Everything is flooded with ads and trackers now. I hated the experience of buying a new TV. There were no great options. We got a samsung for the quality, but the smart features you need to slog through just to switch HDMI ports makes if clear owners are not in control of the experience. Infuriatingly I learned that some local features were locked behind online activation. WTF! Voting with one’s wallet doesn’t work when they all bundle anti-features and don’t clearly disclose them up front.
Well at least if we’re left with Chromium, at least its mostly open source? Better than the IE past we once had.
Whether it;s google or somebody else, it;s imperative to find somebody to pay the bills. I don’t really like it but advertisers have the money and are willing to pay for eyeballs. I concur with those who dislike this business model, but it creates a significant dilemma for me that boycotting mozilla would only serve to solidify google’s grip on the web. Most people are oblivious to it, but mono-culture will end up harming both innovation and freedoms in the long run.
As for mozilla’s plans for open source AI, it should be judged on what they actually do and not automatically condemned. Open source models, if genuine, could alleviate many concerns that have been brought up with proprietary AI. For this reason I don’t think we should just clump everyone into the same “AI bad” arguments. I know many people have an apprehension for AI, but AI is not going away and many people are effectively throwing away their votes for what good AI should look like. If more people don’t stand up for good AI practices, then I’m afraid that bad AI practices will win and we may not get a better opportunity to shape the future of AI.
I think there’s a market for Advertising engine outside of surveillance economy.
I wonder how EU legislation fits into this. If Mozilla could be a pioneer in EU compliant AD push esp. with soaring EU-US relations under Trump administration they could find a sustainable niche.
There is an alternative currently in the works. It is called “Ladybird”.
I’m not about to fund Firefox/Mozilla. It has followed Chrome down almost every user-hostile change, despite the outcry from their base. It’s a little better than Chrome, but not much. If Firefox goes away, a cheap option will be deGoogled chrome forks which don’t take much dev effort.
If I’m actually going to support browser development, it would be Dillo. A little bit of cash would go a long way there. And the result would not just be a hair better than Chrome, but worlds better… running 10x faster, usable on way older systems, streamlined UI, etc.