- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
The DOJ wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google’s own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox — whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense — competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence.
Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla’s revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization’s for-profit arm — which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added.
Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make “significant cuts across the company,” Muhlheim testified, and warned of a “downward spiral” that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could “put Firefox out of business.” That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change.
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while they have made a lot of dumb decisions, they are also in an almost impossible situation. every time they try to diversify their income they get hammered hard by the community.
Maybe they wouldn’t have needed to diversify into such predatory markets if their execs weren’t pocketing all the money.
i like how you make this sound like users are the ones at fault for not liking shitty things, how about mozilla tries earning money without making the world worse?
The internet runs on either ads, data harvesting, donations or the goodwill of solo developers. Firefox cannot generate revenue with ads or data and currently gets money from donations via Google and other companies. Are you expecting goodwill?
Personally, I’m fine with Google giving money to Firefox to be the default search. Keeps my browser in business and I just change the search. I don’t see a problem here.
Absolutely. If you’re privacy focussed enough to use Firefox then you can change a default browser in minutes if not seconds.
Which makes you wonder what’s the actual motive here
Financing the continued development of Firefox is the motive.
I meant of taking away Google’s ability to pay to be search default.
I am. Why not make it a nonprofit and get the money from donations?
I think you underestimate the costs of development.
I believe the Firefox development organization could be a lot leaner, and not all of the work has to be directly salaried. There are plenty of huge open source projects that are progressing fine without being run by a single for-profit company. E.g. the Apache ecosystem, the Linux foundation projects, FreeBSD, etc.
A huge chunk of FreeBSD and Linux development is done by salaried workers who want specific functionality. Microsoft is the biggest contributor to the Linux kernel for instance. I don’t think there is much apetite for that in web browsers. Linux is an industry leader in the server space, adding features to it that complement whatever you make for profit is a good move. Firefox is unfortunately barely relavent in the browser space, if your product relies on Firefox exclusive features it isn’t going to go well for you.
I think that if that was feasible a successful project would exist already to develop it. it is not like people does not want it to exist. sure, there are tons of projects making variations of existing browsers but none of them do much besides minor tweaks.
From the top of my head Servo is the closest one and it has a big head start since mozilla developed originally. and that is just an engine, not a full browser.
I think such projects don’t exist precisely because Mozilla is still developing it. If Mozilla abandons Firefox then someone else will take up the torch.
Firefox is a way for them to make money for their charitable projects. Always has been.
They’ve been opening secondary streams of income – also via Firefox, like pocket and stuff, but it’s unclear whether that would even allow them to keep developing Firefox. It certainly would mean that Mozilla doesn’t have any money left over to give to others which is their main purpose of existing.
how
Let me donate directly to Firefox development. Stop giving their terrible executives giant piles of money.
they got high off of the google supply, so to speak and became stagnant.what they should be working on is a independant browser, or look for more sources of ad revenue, than just goolge.