Firefox Could Be Doomed Without Google Search Deal, Executive Says (theverge.com) 84
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge:
Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the [U.S.] Justice Department's proposals to restrict Google's search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. "It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.
The Department of Justice 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.
Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy. Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.
The Department of Justice 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.
Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy. Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm very fond of Firefox, I don't think Mozilla have made good business choices in the last few years.
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The business of Mozilla is a different matter, way too little of their significant money is spent on technicalities, instead it is spent on exercises without much of a logical link, high cost of management comes to mind.
Mozilla has at least shown some foresight by making Thunderbird a separate business entity.
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Mozilla has at least shown some foresight by making Thunderbird a separate business entity.
More like they have done the urgently needed far too late.
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If they did not do this, chrome engine would be the only one out there. Where they are already enforcing their monopoly by banning ad blocking tools that dont play ball with them.
The problem isnt these few small changes they make in their UI, the problem is keeping around a rendering engine competitor and keeping it open source.
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. One part of how Mozilla hasn't made good business choices, is how it has prioritized development within its browser. For example, a clear high priority for users, is ad blocking. Other browsers like Brave have made ad blocking a core of their browsers. That alone has me typing this in Brave, rather than Firefox. Brave's ad blocking is better than even uBlock Origin. One example is that Brave blocks all those pesky pop-ups on random sites asking you if you want to log in using your Google account, while Firefox and uBlock don't.
Item #2 is auto-play videos. Yes, I know Firefox has a setting to disable auto-play videos. But it only works some of the time. In my opinion, videos should never auto-play at all ever. I'll click that play button if I want to. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard to lock down the video player component to that degree.
If Firefox wants to hang on to users, Mozilla needs to start listening.
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:5, Informative)
>"One example is that Brave blocks all those pesky pop-ups on random sites asking you if you want to log in using your Google account, while Firefox and uBlock don't."
Firefox/Ublock can do this with an added filter rule, and it works perfectly. Add this single line:
||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe
>"In my opinion, videos should never auto-play at all ever."
I couldn't agree with you more. And you can get that behavior in Firefox with the right settings, but it can be tricky, and it doesn't work perfectly with all sites.
I will not use Brave, if for no other reason, it is Google/Chromium based. And that means it has hard dependencies on Google decisions and furthers Google's control over the web. But I do have respect for what they are doing. I just wish they did it with their own engine/base. We really need at least 3 independent, open-source, standards-based, multiplatform, healthy browsers.
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Firefox shouldn't make you edit a filter rule to get rid of pesky popups, it should rather force you to remove the rule if you don't want it. 99% of potential Firefox users will have no idea how to edit a filter rule.
No, Firefox doesn't successfully block all auto-play videos with the right settings. Been there, done that. It just blocks *most* auto-play videos. There is no reason this shouldn't work "perfectly with all sites" because the video player was written by Mozilla. It shouldn't be possible for a w
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As for not using Brave because it's Chromium-based...
I don't have a religious hatred of Chromium. It's a lot easier for a company like Brave, to create just the customizations they want, than to write the whole browser from scratch. Requiring a good browser company to use only home-grown code, is a tall order, and would limit innovation. I applaud them for what they are doing, and I'll happily support their efforts as a user, despite the "unclean" origins of the code.
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I can appreciate that stance. And, like I said, I do respect what they are doing. But not enough to actually use it. I will say, if Firefox (or its children) somehow disappeared, it might be where I would turn first.
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Indeed. Sad as it is, Mozilla wasted tons of money, focussed on unimportant stuff and left important stuff undone and never looked for more reliable funding. Screwing up this bad comes with consequences.
Bad business models (Score:3)
I concur, though I would say the entire business model is wrong. Mozilla is trying to compete with profit-driven models while mostly eschewing profits. "But that trick never works."
Long time I've been advocating for cost-recovery on a charitable basis. Not up to flogging the dead horse again just now...
(The vacuous AC brain fart missed any real target. As usual. And yet you rewarded the brain fart by propagating the vacuous Subject.)
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Firefox could be put out of business
Wrong. **Mozilla** would be out of business without Google's truckloads of free money. But the source code for Firefox will continue to exist and Firefox can continue just fine. In fact, Firefox might be better if it isn't shackled to Mozilla's bloated and incompetent bureaucracy. See: Palemoon.
....if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users.
LOL. Firefox already is down to single digit market share, thanks to Mozilla's "product engineering".
Mozilla is done, and that's good. (Score:2)
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Mozilla is dead to me after the TOS change.
Can you elaborate?
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They added ToS saying they may use user transmitted content. The problem is that the ToS apply to more than their services, so it can be interpreted that they may at any time start using content you enter in Firefox. They probably won't, but they are now allowed to.
Re:Mozilla is done, and that's good. (Score:5, Informative)
Mozilla rewrites Firefox’s Terms of Use after user backlash [techcrunch.com]
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>"Mozilla is dead to me after the TOS change"
You are over-reacting and operating on outdated information.
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:4, Insightful)
See what? A half alive browser fork based on Firefox 52 which features a MUCH worse compatibility with modern websites?
A fork that still sticks to XUL, has a single window model and thus any tab can bring the entire browser down?
A fork that's barely maintained? Yeah, it has worked out quite nicely for it.
Has resulted in a web browser that is leaps and bounds faster and more stable than it was before. Its biggest issue is that it's not promoted on google.com.
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XUL isn't bad. It needs some work (I didn't follow closely, but I think the UXP is doing some work on it), and then it is one of the best cross platform toolkits.
Just compare how the XUL UI looks like, and how it fits the native look on all platforms, and how the new Firefox UI looks like, which is basically some website in an iframe inside the program.
You don't even have to look at the mess of a settings page, start with about:config and compare how the UI worked before and after. And that's really no comp
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Browsers are like tiny operating systems at this point. Hell, forget the tiny. It's like the old joke about emac, lousy text editor but great operating system.
And do they need constant updates to keep up with all the stuff people want. Not to mention security patches. You need a large team not just patching vulnerabilities but actively looking for them.
And of course if your browser uses more memory and CPUs than the other guy well then it can go fuck right off. I mean I get that on mobile and laptops where battery life is a thing but watching people complain about using an extra gigabyte of RAM on there 128 GB Battle stations is just fucking hilarious but whatever.
Like it or not that's going to be incredibly expensive. And people won't pay for browsers. So the only place that money can come from is with deals for who your search engine is. It's unobtrusive enough that most people won't change it immediately and easy enough to change. Firefox has tried a few other monetization strategies and they just don't work.
And yeah there are pretty much the last major independent browser. Safari exists but it's kind of so-so. A lot of little rendering problems. And edge is just Chrome under the Hood. Say what you want about Firefox but it is perfectly capable of replacing Chrome, it's my daily driver on my desktop and it's the one I use on my phone for when I don't want to be tracked as much.
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:4, Interesting)
I would agree that Firefox is critical because they also allow things like Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey and decent ad blockers. Chrome has all but done away with Ublock Origin, and ad-blockers are right under phishing for blocking critical threats (I wonder if ad companies know about malvertising dollars, and with just hitting IP addresses infrequently, it can be impossible to prove where the infection came from.) There was a period of time where a machine without an adblocker would get compromised in just a few minutes of browsing "legit" sites, while a machine could run without an AV program indefinitely.
This is where governments need to step in. Firefox is in the national security interest of a lot of places, so maybe government tax dollars should be going to this.
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>"And yeah [they] [[Firefox]] are pretty much the last major independent browser. Safari exists but it's kind of so-so. A lot of little rendering problems."
And it is not multiplatform- it is Apple-only.
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Safari exists but it's kind of so-so.
Tell me about it. I'm developing, on a Mac, a website for my company and I've learned not to try to chase down weird rendering issues in Safari until I see how Chrome renders the page. Granted, I am no HTML genius and there are probably hacky ways around them, but at some point It easier to say 'so few people will use Safari and we can recommend they use a different browser anyway then spend hours fixing a minor centering issue that is not that noticeable.'
Re:Google should divest Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to see a breakdown of FF expenditures: salaries, bandwidth, compute, etc.
Maybe there are tech ways to mitigate some of the costs, like using a bittorrent-style technology for bandwidth, encouraging home servers for cloud stuff (password manager, sync, maybe calendaring, etc).
fresh air (Score:3)
How is it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... that we can have a full featured open-source operating system without being dependent upon one huge funding source, but not a browser?
Re:How is it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because an "operating system" sounds big but isn't big. A browser is big, it shouldn't be but it is.
Also, an OS is technically driven, a browser is financially driven. There are a lot more sociopaths in browser chain. An open source operating system is worthless, as an end-user product, without a browser to run on it. An OS is a glorified app launcher from the user's perspective.
Walmart exists because, despite all the complexities of making countless products, there is one thing all products have in common, they get sold. And the selling part is where money changes hands and where the profit is made. Selling is the easiest, the least labor-intensive, the most scalable and imposes the least liability YET it is where all the profit is, by design. The Dells and Walmarts of the world exist to do no work while sucking the blood out of the people, in this case Google is the Walmart, your open source operating system is the thankless task performed for "free" so that Google can take all the money, Linux's job is to pick the produce in the field.
Did Musk, or Jobs, or Andreesson, or Dell, do any of the work to make the products they are known for? Not really, but none of them are "dependent upon one huge funding source" because they've got their hands in a giant cash register. Their goal is to take in all the money and pay none out, that's what makes them billionaires. Don't like it? Stop voting for Republicans. Now you wouldn't do that, would you?
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There is help available ... please seek it.
What's your justification for that remark? Beyond the "stop voting for Republicans" parting shot - except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different - I see the comment you're replying to as a remarkably insightful analysis.
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What's your justification for that remark? Beyond the "stop voting for Republicans" parting shot - except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different - I see the comment you're replying to as a remarkably insightful analysis.
Not sure I need a "justification", lol
But in any case, the guy's first two sentences were reasonable enough ... then he suddenly started spewing political gobbledygook like the kid spewing pea soup in The Exorcist.
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except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different
This is nonsense. The things happening now are the things the reds have been openly attempting to do (and even telling us they wanted to do!) for decades, and they have been gearing up for this all this time. This did not just happen, it is the tip of an iceberg which has only just now become apparent to some people but which other people have been warning them (and you) about all along.
Reds and blues are both corrupt, but that doesn't mean they are the same in all regards, only some of them.
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No, there isn't. Not really. It's not covered by insurance.
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teams of decelopers
I assume that's a portmanteau of decent developers. I like it.
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"Did Musk, or Jobs, or Andreesson, or Dell, do any of the work to make the products they are known for?"
If you think it's easy to gather that many items from that many suppliers and get them to a certain at a certain place at a certain time feel free to open your own business.
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Linux should be called a "very buggy regression prone incomplete software compilation with no implied backward or forward compatibility which requires all software to maintained indefinitely due to an ever changing userspace software landscape"
I dunno - it seems to me that your description of Linux pretty much applies to Windows as well.
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And don't take my word for that, here is Slashdot's take on modern macOS:
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/28/0634230/apple-needs-a-snow-sequoia
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Linux is not an OS per se.
Everyone with something to contribute to this discussion can handle the ambiguity of what different people mean by "Linux" in different situations.
Linux should be called a "very buggy regression prone incomplete software compilation with no implied backward or forward compatibility which requires all software to maintained indefinitely due to an ever changing userspace software landscape".
Windows is a "very buggy regression prone incomplete software compilation with notional backward and forward compatibility which requires all software to maintained indefinitely due to an ever changing userspace software landscape". There is loads of older software which does not work well or at all on modern versions of Windows, for which the only reasonable sol
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Windows 11 64 is compatible with over ~95% of Win32 software ever released.
[citation needed]
Also, how compatible? More compatible than every Wine version available (some of which are better or worse at certain things)?
Also, show me how to run GUI applications (no, plain X11 applications won't do) from the late 90s or early 00s in your current Linux $DISTRO.
I don't have to, because I never ever disputed that was difficult. I know firsthand it is a massive PITA. I only know that it is often difficult to run Windows software on later versions. There has been software written for early Win32 that didn't work even on immediately subsequent versions. I've run into a bunch of it, so much that individual examples aren't even n
Nope (Score:2)
"It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.
He is only afraid of losing that big paycheck, that he only gets because of the truckloads of money Google sends to Mozilla.
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Bingo. Cut off their gravy train, not mine! You said you'd hurt the right people!
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Thats Pam "Payoffs" Bondi just for the historical record.
https://www.citizensforethics.... [citizensforethics.org]
the Trump Foundation had broken the law by giving an illegal $25,000 contribution to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Charitable foundations like the Trump Foundation are not allowed to engage in politics. Even more problematic was the fact that the contribution was given as Bondi’s office was deciding whether to take legal action related to Trump University.
then Muhlheim is part of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
'Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.'
No, Firefox is held by Google, his testimony shows that. Firefox is just as beholden to Google and the Chrome team is. That's the problem.
'Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make "significant cuts across the company," Muhlheim testified...'
Oh no, that would mean the cuts would have their intended effect! Why is a Firefox hog better than an Apple hog? They're both feeding at the trough of corruption.
If Mozilla can't justify its own existence without sucking at Google's teat, they can say goodbye. What we have here is a business executive, Muhlheim, getting rich off Google's monopolistic bribes and complaining that you can't impose a solution because it hurts him.
Re:then Muhlheim is part of the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there really is something to your point. FF never tries to take advantage of the weaknesses of Google and Apple, they always play nice and never step on toes. They didn't make a big deal out of being blocked from iPhone. They didn't pound of Google over manifest v3. They didn't ho for jugular against the bad monopolistic practices. They didn't set up an alt vision against the "App stores" or the "Cloud" etc. It feels like they decided to just try to stay in their own lane and coast. Do not get me wrong: love FF and the developers - they have done some of the best Free Software work we have ever seen. But maybe the org did become "beholden" like you say. Maybe this is an opportunity to shift.
Firefox is just a tool (Score:3)
Google doesn't pay Firefox from the goodness of their heart. They pay Firefox because having more browsers, even if completely insignificant, makes Google look better and less monopolistic. Firefox has become a corporate whitewashing tool.
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exactly
Firefox used to exist before Chrome (Score:3)
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Or maaaybe such technologies should be used in applications and not in the browser. Ever thought about just programming a native tool?
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that stuff should not be in the browser. Google slamming this in so they can scrape my heart rate monitor in order to target me with better ads is ridiculous.
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and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.
It's not going to work with donations. Mozilla make the bet of becoming a big corp: hiring lots, making noise, headquarters in one of the most expensive cities in the world. This only works with big bucks from B2B services. They'd now need millionaires queuing day and night to feed the bottomless pit. Their only product is for consumers, which famously won't give a cent, and their only source of money comes from a "pact with the devil" (a deal with their main competitor).
The hybrid corp/non-profit status is
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If you aren't actively using Firefox and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.
This is an ignorant, victim-blaming take. No amount of personal donations can come anywhere near to having an effect on Mozilla's policies compared to the blizzard of Google money. Also, even before the Google money, Mozilla had a completely deserved reputation for ignoring users, and also allowing known bugs to persist. They tried everything to get the users to make donations except actually listening to them and giving them what they want.
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It was winning the battle against Internet Explorer, and it had almost 30% market share. Firefox needs actual people fighting for it again. If you aren't actively using Firefox and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.
I suspect people who 'aren't actively using Firefox' don't care if it declines. The challenge is how to get the average user to try a browser that is not the default.
Why not? (Score:1)
Why not require Google to give its stock to the top 50 web browser companies? Just literally "split it up" and give the pieces to those poor, poor competitors it has treated so unfairly. That way, no matter how much money Google makes, all of it will go to its competitors.
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Why just browser companies? Google also owns DoubleClick, so should they also distribute their stock to other ad companies? Google also owns YouTube, so should they also distribute their stock to other video streaming companies?
In any case, confiscating ownership stakes in Google and giving it to others would be a massive redistribution of property. If you have a 401(k), your retirement probably includes some portion of Google stock. Your proposal would take that away from YOU and the other millions of pers
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Honestly man.
I do not understand how you people don't recognize VERY OBVIOUS sarcasm when you see it, plain as day.
Blunt instrument fails again (Score:2)
"Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy".
Ironic, yes. Surprising, no. Yet again, government accomplishes exactly the opposite of what it aims to do.
A huge chance for Firefox (Score:2)
Not for Mozilla, but for Firefox.
There will be quite a lot of forks. Most will die soon, but there will be one or two surviving, maybe forked by one of the larger groups like GNU, FSF, Apache Foundation, etc. and it can only get better than what Mozilla does to the browser.
And that Mozilla thinks they can't survive without Google money is the best indication for their mismanagement. Other organizations create larger projects with less money, entirely by donations. Mozilla invests more money into management
Completely bogus on the face of it (Score:2)
Can we get back to the judge's decision that Google Search is somehow a monopoly? He's clearly either corrupt or a complete idiot (porque no los dos?). There are many other search engines. I haven't used Google's in years. He's incompetent and ought to be removed from the bench.
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It doesn't have to have 100% of the "market" to be a monopoly. Think of it as a "near monopoly" because that is what it is. The few competing search engines mostly use Google or Bing as their base. So the only real competition is Microsoft Bing, and that is way far behind, and also a huge, monopolistic entity itself.
The search space is, indeed, not healthy. Neither is the browser space, with Firefox being the ONLY non-Google-based multiplatform browser. And it doesn't help that Mozilla is beholden to G
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Can we get back to the judge's decision that Google Search is somehow a monopoly? He's clearly either corrupt or a complete idiot
"Monopoly [wikipedia.org]" doesn't legally mean literally the only choice any more than "immunity" means you won't contract a virus. And only the legal definition matters, because this is a court case. Your opinion of whether that makes sense is irrelevant.
The governing body is incompetent (Score:3)
Firefox has had enough money at various points in time to have invested it into a trust and to pay out from annuities to support the entire development team for the indefinite future lasting decades at a minimum.
Mozilla foundation has burned money left and right on frivolous adventures having little or nothing to do with Firefox.
Get Rid of Pocket, Data Collection, and AI (Score:2)
Also, for me personally, the loss of the Scrapbook extension was personally devastating to my projects and my studies, and the replacements cannot replace it. With the security changes, something like Scrapbook would have built into the browser.
Good and this is why (Score:3)
Mozilla failed to concentrate their resources on the browser and Thunderbird which is why they're not competitive.
It was not always thus but Google money removed any need to compete for market share.
Firefox used to be the default recommendation for new Windows installs with Internet Explorer used to download Firefox then ignored. It spread thanks to user advocacy but that was a long time ago.
Reality.... (Score:3)
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In 2018, Baker received $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla.[16] In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5.5 million,[17] and again to over $6.9 million in 2022.[18] In August 2020, the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues after laying off roughly 70 employees in January 2020. Baker stated this was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite revenue rising to record highs in 2019, and market share shrinking.
withers away (Score:3)
I don't use firefox any more. I didn't have time to find workarounds for everything that they broke, and learning the changes in UI that happened weekly.
If Google pays Mozilla to use it for search (Score:2)
Why does Mozilla keep switching me from Duckduckgo to Bing?
This isn't news (Score:2)
Lunduke has been reporting this for months.
yeah no shit (Score:1)
Stop wasting money (Score:1)