Mozilla Lays Off 70 As It Waits For New Products To Generate Revenue (techcrunch.com) 55
According to TechCrunch, Mozilla has laid off about 70 employees today. From the report: In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization's new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this decision. The overall number may still be higher, though, as Mozilla is still looking into how this decision will affect workers in the UK and France. In 2018, Mozilla Corporation (as opposed to the much smaller Mozilla Foundation) said it had about 1,000 employees worldwide.
Baker says laid-off employees will receive "generous exit packages" and outplacement support. She also notes that the leadership team looked into shutting down the Mozilla innovation fund but decided that it needed it in order to continue developing new products. In total, Mozilla is dedicating $43 million to building new products. "You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of search. This did not happen," Baker writes in her memo. "Our 2019 plan underestimated how long it would take to build and ship new, revenue-generating products. Given that, and all we learned in 2019 about the pace of innovation, we decided to take a more conservative approach to projecting our revenue for 2020. We also agreed to a principle of living within our means, of not spending more than we earn for the foreseeable future."
"As we look to the future, we know we must take bold steps to evolve and ensure the strength and longevity of our mission," Baker adds. "Mozilla has a strong line of sight to future revenue generation, but we are taking a more conservative approach to our finances. This will enable us to pivot as needed to respond to market threats to internet health, and champion user privacy and agency."
Baker says laid-off employees will receive "generous exit packages" and outplacement support. She also notes that the leadership team looked into shutting down the Mozilla innovation fund but decided that it needed it in order to continue developing new products. In total, Mozilla is dedicating $43 million to building new products. "You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of search. This did not happen," Baker writes in her memo. "Our 2019 plan underestimated how long it would take to build and ship new, revenue-generating products. Given that, and all we learned in 2019 about the pace of innovation, we decided to take a more conservative approach to projecting our revenue for 2020. We also agreed to a principle of living within our means, of not spending more than we earn for the foreseeable future."
"As we look to the future, we know we must take bold steps to evolve and ensure the strength and longevity of our mission," Baker adds. "Mozilla has a strong line of sight to future revenue generation, but we are taking a more conservative approach to our finances. This will enable us to pivot as needed to respond to market threats to internet health, and champion user privacy and agency."
But... (Score:2)
Didn't Mozilla make half a billion USD in revenue in 2017 and almost as much in 2018?
Re: But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Under-performing "chaff" (Score:1)
First of all: Those are *people*, you psychopath!
Second of all: Isn't there *always* an under-performing half of the staff? Given that there is always a bell curve? If you cut off the lower half, you still end up with a bell curve. Only, now, your *total* force is reduced.
Which is as dumb as cutting of the slowest of the two wheels on a bicycle.
Re: (Score:2)
In engineering, when in doubt, remove the part causing the root problem.
If your 737 MAX keeps crashing into the ground, get rid of the ground! Problem solved.
Re:Under-performing "chaff" (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is as dumb as cutting of the slowest of the two wheels on a bicycle.
Its just as dumb to chasing a losing proposition, while paying the salaries of people who will inevitably fail. When a layoff is strategic (shutting down a project division), and the "culling" a small percentage of the workforce, it improves the survival of the commercial enterprise.
How the hell does a browser... (Score:1)
...need to employ 1000+ people? Are most of these nepotism hires?
Re:How the hell does a browser... (Score:5, Funny)
No, they're all highly useful and productive, telephone handset sanitizers, account executives, consumer experience consultants, customer engagement specialists, and so on. Oh, and there's Bob, the guy who works on fixing reported bugs in Firefox.
They're thinking of letting him go though, they'd be far more streamlined with zero developers focused on that than one.
Re:How the hell does a browser... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Mozilla wastes a lot of money. Have you seen their building? Fancy bullshit located in one of the most expensive places in the country. They are certainly not non-profit.
They should be located out in Oklahoma or something. Firefox might not be complete shit if they actually put money into its development instead of funding rockstar lifestyles.
Re: (Score:3)
They should be located out in Oklahoma or something
Where are you going to find professional coders that will want to move to Oklahoma? Does Oklahoma even have cheap internet infrastructure? Smart companies are moving away from Silicon Valley, but they're going to places where they can find competent employees (and coder migrants) who want to live in the location. (Massachusetts, near the old "tech" corridor is probably a good bet.)
Firefox might not be complete shit if they actually put money into its development instead of funding rockstar lifestyles.
Management may have thought they needed to recruit gullible coders on the fringes of Silicon Valley in order to succeed. It
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
[citation needed]
Aren't you jumping the gun a bit? We didn't even get a chance to berate you first!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Revenue is income before spending, so if they have half a billion in revenue and spend $499.999 billion, they only have about $1 million left. That's ten programmers at $100k salaries and benefits.
It depends on their net profits, which depends on their expenses and revenues. Has revenue changed? Have expenses increased? Etc..
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't Mozilla make half a billion USD in revenue in 2017 and almost as much in 2018?
Not quite, around $423m in 2018 and a bit less than that in 2017. Mozilla is a 501(c)(3), so all of that information is public information [mozilla.org]. You can additionally inquire about the information from the IRS directly with their EIN: 20-0097189. Figure I would share.
I have questions. (Score:2)
Did Firefox ever hire any ex-Netscape programmers?
And were those programmers part of these layoffs?
Were any of those also ex-Collabra employees?
Re:I have questions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, they hired Brendan Eich for example. Well, technically, he helped found Mozilla after his employer Netscape imploded, so "hired" isn't entirely accurate.
However, Mozilla definitely "fired" him when pressured to do so by people on Twitter, who are well known to be sage-like in their collective wisdom.
Anyway, Mozilla as it stands has nothing resembling a product that can be monetized. They had one, FirefoxOS, that they abandoned. It's sad that they did. FirefoxOS could have been a great thing if they stuck with it, but it would have required hiring a number of really talented engineers and programmers with Twitter-approved opinions, and they weren't able to do so for mysterious reasons.
I'm glad there are great companies like Google out there to do the important work of world class engineering and programming for the future. Loss of privacy is a small price to pay for a fantastic Web browser and mobile phone OS.
Re: (Score:1)
However, Mozilla definitely "fired" him when pressured to do so by people on Twitter
No, they fired him under pressure from Mozilla employees. His wikipedia page has quite a lot of detail on this matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Note that it's not even clear if his resignation was anything to do with his support for Prop 8, it may just have been because he was shit at his job. Coincidentally after he left is when Firefox started to rapidly improve to the point where people are switching back to it now.
You are right about their lack of monteizable product though. If they fixed Firefo
Re: (Score:3)
> it may just have been because he was shit at his job. Coincidentally after he left is when Firefox started to rapidly improve to the point where people are switching back to it now.
He's helming Brave now, which is the best browser currently on the market. So we can make some assumptions about how he wanted to go based on how he went.
It seems like he was refusing to fund code modernization efforts (e.g. Electrolysis) for years, to make staying with Gecko impossible. That was probably counter to the con
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Brave isn't a proper, independent browser, it's yet another Chromium skin.
Firefox and variants are the last real stand against Google's complete dominance.
Re: (Score:2)
Brave sucks. It's basically Chrome but with a sub-par adblocker/privacy blocker built in that you will need to supplement with a decent one.
On top of that they have set up a crypto-currency scam in the browser itself. Do you trust your security and privacy to a company running a crypto-currency scam?
All the popular web sites I try in Firefox render fine. Can you perhaps name one that doesn't? I suppose from your point of view it would be best if all browsers were just Chrome skins so that sites render perfe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Revenue-generating products? (Score:2)
VR?
Games?
Re: (Score:2)
Which they wouldn't have because iOS and Android are so entrenched
Had a window of opportunity with Huawei. Google is probably migrating to a post-android, closed environment (like their Project Magenta(?)).
Best laid plans (Score:2)
I get why they would like to be less dependent on search partnerships; but those can certainly be lucrative (see how much Google is paying Apple for exactly this). And I wonder what other markets Mozilla can practically expect to play in.
Mozilla wants to sell subscriptions, just like every other modern company seemingly does. But it's hard (for me anyway) to see how the upcoming products they're talking about are going to attract more than a handful of paying customers.
I stopped using Firefox years ago. (Score:4, Informative)
Mozilla developers refused to fix a bug in Firefox that made it useless for usage as a sysadmin; basically there was a common SSL error when accessing embedded devices that could not be overridden.
I've since been using Safari and Chrome and have been happy with both. The fact that they were so high and mighty and "we know what's best for you!" in refusing to fix a serious problem that other browsers did not have is what drove me away in the end.
I'm still sad to hear about the layoffs, though. Mozilla has done some great things for the Internet community. I don't want them to die, I just want them to be more responsive about fixing bugs.
(The bugzilla URL for the bug, if you're curious: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org] )
Re: (Score:2)
Errr . . . stock firmware on a WRT54G? (Score:2)
In fairness . . . it's kindof insane to still be using the stock firmware of a WRT54G, even back then. And that's definitely a failure condition pretty unique to the kind of half-assed implementation of things that the stock Linksys firmware had.
That being said, I do feel your pain, and it seems strange for Firefox not to offer any "no seriously, I know what I'm doing, I take full responsibility if this goes horribly for me" override option.
Re: (Score:1)
The problem is that there is no money in making a web browser. Browsers are free and if you charge for yours no-one will use it. Search is free. People won't pay for stupid skins and anyway Firefox already supports them for free and removing that wouldn't go down well.
VPN probably won't make much money, I pay â5/month for one that's fast and has many servers world-wide so it would have to be pretty spectacular to tempt me away from that.
FirefoxOS is dead. People demand privacy from their browsers so in
Re: (Score:2)
VPN probably won't make much money, I pay â5/month for one that's fast and has many servers world-wide so it would have to be pretty spectacular to tempt me away from that.
You're underestimating the "power" of affordable laziness; think non-techie users and business customers. Its an apparent marketing move; hopefully they fired the marketer that came up with "Pocket".
FirefoxOS is dead.
Not if you're in the telecommunications industry based in an autocratic nation. Conversely, FirefoxOS is also not necessarily dead if it was repurposed towards user privacy (an anti-chrome) and optimized for ARM architectures.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Did you at least check out Firefox ESR?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't want them to die, I just want them to be more responsive about fixing bugs.
Firing the lower performers when Mozilla can't keep bleeding salaries on projects they fiscally have(?) to abandon is staying alive. Prioritizing bug fixes is really for a company with established revenue streams, not one that needs to quickly evolve into their new business model.
Solution: fire the entire Diversity Department (Score:5, Insightful)
Diversity and Inclusion [mozilla.org]
Re:Solution: fire the entire Diversity Department (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
more on diversity than making a good product.
With a few notable exceptions, a large portion of computer users would describe most OSS projects using any word other than "good". Complicated, confusing, user-unfriendly, and those people who are able to get around those problems will find the resulting capabilities extremely good.
"Good" as a definition varies greatly between people.
Re: (Score:2)
And part of how you find different flavors of good, and make a product that's better for a larger audience, is to have people who are different from each other.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
> Complicated, confusing, user-unfriendly
Too many FLOSS programmers suffer from Dunning-Kruger and assume they are skilled (or even competent) at HCI, even though it's a completely separate branch of software engineering.
Just because something is easy to use, they assume it was easy to build.
I've seen good HCI people try to contribute changes to FLOSS projects several times, and usually how it goes is programmers snarkily tell them to write the code and they'll consider it, knowing full-well that they're
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen good HCI people try to contribute changes to FLOSS projects several times, and usually how it goes is programmers snarkily tell them to write the code and they'll consider it, knowing full-well that they're not coders. So, in large part, they get disillusioned by the culture and move on to paying work.
Unfortunately the problem is that you often end up in the other ditch. Unpaid designers often want to make something flashy for their portfolio, like a designer dress or concept car that's fancy to look at but horrible for daily use. They come in, look at a phone and say let's remove the user-swappable battery, the microSD card and the headphone jack then we can make a more stylish phone. It's going to be controversial at best and a lot of developers are going to tell them to get lost. Somewhere caught in t
Re: (Score:1)
Firefox has seen dramatic improvements over the last few years. It went from a slow, single threaded browser with severe security and stability issues to being smooth, fast, stable and in many ways superior to Chrome. People are moving back from Chrome to Firefox now it has finally gotten good again.
That was no mean feat considering the codebase they had, parts of which date back to the Nutscape era.
While correlation is not causation, at the very least all that great work was done during the same period tha
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe if they want back to writing good code instead of producing product they wouldn't be in such dire straits.
No, securing a revenue niche is critical to survival. Prioritizing perfect code may make users a little happier, but they'll still abandon that browser when it doesn't meet their user needs as well as Chrome. XUL wasn't perfect, and it may have been stupid to abandon it, but "alea iacta est".
And they're trying to go back to writing good code. The problem is refactoring is usually what kills startup companies with a released product.
Icons, baby! (Score:1)
Good thing they spent all that money on new icons. I'm sure those 70 getting the axe appreciate that their former employer has a new, glossier look.
Soo ... suicide by starvation? (Score:3)
Google actively tries to murder Mozilla by forcing it to run crazy fast to keep up with a Chrome devellopment that deliberately adds countless useless features exclusively for that purpose, ... and Mozilla cuts off some of its legs??
Talk about standardized short-sihted management behavior!
I wouldn't be surprised if that is the beginning of their end, and of the end of advancements on the web ... again ... with Chrome being the new IE.
Anyone interested in already planning a new Phoenix browser? Something that separates applications from the WWW, amd makes it one huge interactive multimedia book again? And leverages that TO eviscerate Chrome.
Re: (Score:2)
Google actively tries to murder Mozilla by forcing it to run crazy fast to keep up with a Chrome devellopment that deliberately adds countless useless features exclusively for that purpose, ... and Mozilla cuts off some of its legs??
No one asked for Mozilla to turn into Chrome. And no, the web standards don't move crazy fast. A large majority of what Chrome is working on is not defined in any standard, and not part of any website, has no widespread plan for adoption, and above all does not need to be duplicated.
Mozilla is the master of its own shitty destiny. You can see that with the move to encrypt DNS queries, oh look how they copied Chrome by doing something completely different from Chrome!
Another well researched opinion brought t
Re: (Score:2)
No one asked for Mozilla to turn into Chrome.
And maybe not making that choice is what kills Mozilla as a commercial entity. Its kind of disturbing that Microsoft even gave up on their Edge browser, and thinks that user interface customization and providing a basic web browser is the most cost effective move for them.
And no, the web standards don't move crazy fast.
No they don't, but I don't think Firefox even was looking at that. They probably got Agile religion, and think the only way they can stay competitive with Chrome is to put tons of tiny changes, rapidfire! Hopefully, they rethought that
Get woke? (Score:1)