Will Firefox Lose Google Funding? 644
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the cutting-you-off dept.
from the cutting-you-off dept.
SharkLaser writes "Mozilla's future looks uncertain. Last week Chrome overtook Firefox's position as the second most popular browser, the new versioning scheme is alienating some Firefox users, and now the advertising deal between Mozilla and Google, the one that almost fully funds Mozilla's operations, is coming to an end. One of Firefox's key managers, Mike Shaver, also left the company in September. 'In 2010, 84% of Mozilla's $123 million in revenue came directly from Google. That's roughly $100 million in funds that will vanish or be drastically cut if the deal is either not renewed or is renegotiated on terms that are less favorable to Mozilla. When the original three-year partnership deal was signed in 2008, Chrome was still on the drawing boards. Today, it is Google's most prominent software product, and it is rapidly replacing Firefox as the alternative browser on every platform.' Recently Mozilla has been trying to get closer with Microsoft by making a Firefox version that defaults to Bing. If Google is indeed cutting funding from Mozilla or tries to negotiate less favorable terms, it could mean Mozilla's future funding coming from Microsoft and Bing."
OMG NOES!!! (Score:1, Funny)
You mean version 87459.0 will be the last version of Firefox!?!
Genius plan (Score:5, Funny)
Finally Microsoft found a way to kill Firefox: pay it to use Bing!
Re:Free market for the win (Score:0, Funny)
There are like 5 clearly labeled checkboxes in the chrome options which turn off all of the "enhanced" features which report to google. If its really that big a deal, you can turn them off and not be stuck with a crappy browser like Konqueror.
Or just, you know, use Chromium.
Or use Iron.
Re:Free market for the win (Score:5, Funny)
I am not an IE fan but If I get your free market logic, IE is winning because it's the better browser
As is Windows on the desktop.
Re:HOSTS = Faster than external DNS (fix inside) (Score:4, Funny)
Is there a hosts file to block APK spam posts?
Honestly, the idea of a massive hosts file just to do what NoScript does by default seems... silly.
$100M a Year for Firefox? (Score:4, Funny)
Firefox isn't all that great (showing how not that great the competing and mostly inferior browsers are). What does Firefox do in a year that costs $100M? It seems that a company with $5M in revenue could have done what Firefox has done in the past year, and that includes 3 "major version numbers".
If you gave me $100M I could pay a team that not only wrote an HTML4 browser (and HTTP/FTP/whatever protocol) from scratch, but also HTML5, and probably a JVM, too.
Re:Free market for the win (Score:2, Funny)
1. failed to migrate my email accounts for the last 8 years (good thing I have backups)t ... again ...
/etc/xorg.conf with /etc/xorg.conf.d/+a wad of files)
2. killed wifi
3. brought in an incompatible video scheme (replaced
4. the "firefox kills the system for 10 seconds at random intervals" bug is still not fixed 6 months later
5. not one of the desktops survived the latest "cruftification + shiny"
6. My "linux-supported multi-function color laser" still isn't supported.
There are more ... but after 15 years, I'm fed up with software that works like it was put together by a bunch of amateurs working part-time. Even Vista is now more stable. So, off goes linux, on goes FreeBSD. While the linux kernel is fine for infrastructure (though it's starting to develop its own brand of cruftiness), I'm done distro-hopping.
People have said "switch to $ANOTHER_DISTRO". Not again ... I'd still need Windows as my printer driver. I'd still need Windows to grab anything from my camcorder. I'd still need Windows to use my laptop anywhere but at my desk. The fact is, Vista, with all the updates, has been MUCH more stable than opensuse for over a year. That's just messed up, but it's the way it is. And yes, it runs IE9, which, despite its flawed history, now runs better than Firefox or Chrome.
The firefox debacle just highlights that open source, in many ways, is suffering because it lacks a proper way of raising money strictly for software development and sale, being too dependent on advertising. Thank the GPL for that failure.
Re:Their own fucking fault (Score:4, Funny)