alt Hacker NewsIs Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
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> Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
I feel like this question has been valid for almost as long as I can remember (e.g. the Mr. Robot extension incident). I find myself struggling to tell if Mozilla is an inherently flawed company or if it's just inherent to trying to survive in such a space.
So what browsers will be left if Firefox kills ad blockers. This seems to be happening to all the major browsers.
Correction : It has already killed itself.
I think the writing for Mozilla was on the wall for a solid decade now. The time to look for alternatives and to switch to other (pretty unknown) niche browsers was at least 5 years ago. I don't even remember the time when I downloaded and used Firefox anymore.
I would stop using Firefox if Enzor-DeMeo would block or cripple ad blockers.
While it is not my main browser (Vivaldi is), I have 5 installs of Firefox Portable for different things, like one for YouTube, one for testing pages against Firefox and so on.
The profit model is being payed (as CEO) to dismantle Firefox into oblivion and no more.
> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
It would be amusing if the only browser left that could run ad-blockers was Safari.
your spelling it wrong its not Mozilla, its MozillAI.
>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
> I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.
I completely disagree. First of all the original quote is paraphrasing, so we don't know in which tone it was delivered, but calling something "off-mission" doesn't at all sound like "we'd do it for money" to me.
Sadly we are way beyond that point, the moment it went below 5% that was it.
You mean, Mozilla, the AI company? Where, "Our mission is to make it easy for people to build with, and collaborate on, open-source, trustworthy AI."?
How is blocking ad blockers going to make them $150m?
You can donate to ladybird on donorbox
They're between a rock and a hard place. Introduce AI and alienate whatever users you have left. Do not introduce AI and alienate whatever investors you have left.
It will bring 150 millions the first year, but the next one?
What are good Firefox alternatives these days that will run a proper uBlock origin (not chrome’s watered down manifest v3 version)?
I will gladly pay for services that help me defeat ads.
Entire base is free s/w - every bit including both phones. Grow a pair - stop felating epstien trump and gang (including RMS).
Be the gang all f'n ready
Every now and then we talk here about Mozilla needing more money to keep Firefox alive, meanwhile they spend money with other priorities in mind.
This is an old article but has some good examples:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...
They are but as with everything else in last 10 years they are insanely incompetent at it so it will take a while
Obviously, we die hard fans and users agree.
Isn't it kind of telling how incredibly complicated modern web browsing is, that a web browser is seen as one of the most difficult general purpose projects a developer could imagine building, aside from an entire desktop environment or a kernel?
You know what would be neat? If the Gemini protocol were slightly expanded for video/image embeds, and then having Firefox/Ladybird support it out of the box.
I think blocking ad blockers (the whole FFing point of using Firefox is freedom to do use those) would be the shortest path for him out of the door as a CEO.
It's so tone deaf that it is likely to probe the community into drastic action if he were to attempt to push that through. Including probably much of the developer community. I'm talking the kind of action that boils down to forking and taking a large part of the user base along. Which is why that would be very inadvisable.
The problem with being a CEO of a for profit corporation, which is what he is, is that his loyalty is to shareholders, not to users. The Mozilla Foundation and the corporation are hopelessly inter dependent at this point. The foundation looks increasingly like a paper tiger given the decision making and apparent disconnect with its user base which it is supposed to serve.
All the bloated budgets, mis-spending on offices, failed projects, fancy offices, juicy executive salaries at a time where revenue from Google continued to be substantial all while downsizing developer teams and actually laying some off isn't a great look. Stuff like this just adds to the impression that they are increasingly self serving hacks that don't care about the core product: Firefox. This new CEO isn't off to a great start here.
Sorry to get on one of my political hobby horses but...
We actually need to consider the possibility that yes, it is. More precisely, that the new CEO is trying to do that.
It doesn't take a grand conspiracy to join an organisation on false premises. It's totally easy. You can, today, go join a political party without agreeing with them at all, with the intent to sabotage them. Or another organization, including a workplace.
And just like some people just lie for amazingly little reason, I'm increasingly convinced some people do this. Maybe for a sense of control, maybe because they think they'll get rewarded. For every person who holds a crazy belief in public, there's probably one who holds the same belief but doesn't feel the need to let others in on it. As the world gets more paranoid, it'll get worse, open fears are the top of the iceberg.
If Enzor-Demeo ends up tanking Mozilla, there are plenty of people who will be happy with that. It's not as if his career will be over, far from it. Ask Nick Clegg or Stephen Elop. We all need to wake up to the idea that maybe the people who are supposed to be on our side aren't actually guaranteed to be unless we have solid mechanisms in place to ensure it.
I use AdGuard DNS. AdBlockers are too CPU and memory intensive anyway.
Yes, and they've been at it for a while. its honestly hard to watch.
Yes. They're paid to do so by Google.
We are missing the context how the statement was said in the interview. The CEO is new and not used to the scrutiny that position brings, especially for Mozillas CEO given their purported ideals. It is quite possible he said this as something absurd -> "If making money was our only goal we would have some other options. We could for example disable all adblockers, to get more money from our advertising sponsor Google, at least 150 million USD. But we can not and won't do that, as it would feel completely off-mission for everyone and harm us long-term. So we always keep our mission in mind." Then the journalists shortens it to the blip in the verge article and the reaction twists it around a bit more, assuming disabling adblockers was on the table as a serious suggestion.
Or it could be it really was on the table since they just entered the advertising business and think AI is the future of Mozilla, a "fuck those freeloaders", heartfelt from the Porsche driving MBAs in Mozilla's management. Who knows. But it's a choice which interpretation one assumes.
> Killing one of its advantages over the Chromium engine, being able to have a fucking adblocker that's actually useful, and that nowadays is a fucking security feature due to malvertising, will be another nail in the coffin, IMHO.
Well, it would be a shot in the head. What would be the point of using Firefox if it can't block ads better than Chrome, and on mobile as well???
Doing so would not "bring in an additional 150 millions, or 50 millions, or 1 million! It would kill the product instantly.
It was already dying and with no chances of making up share, most online usage comes from mobile, nobody cares about installing Firefox there but us nerds.
So they need some kind of pivot.
I would pay for Firefox if it meant it could still block ads and well... survive.
The fact that they even have a CEO is mind boggling to me
I understand where people are coming from with these takes... but look at the details, Mozilla is practically dead already. They are almost solely funded by Google.
Look at browser stats, what they're doing is not working and asking them to continue doing it will kill them. They have to change or they will die.
Their core audience (people on this site) is shrinking constantly. You can not save them.
I feel like this is a case where a bunch of smart people like something so much, or the idea of something, that they've completely blinded themselves to the facts.
The state of Mozilla's current 'products':
Firefox
Mozilla VPN
Mozilla Monitor
Firefox Relay
MDN Plus
Thunderbird
-
Some of these products are just repackaged partnerships.
-
Firefox - Funded by Google with the search partnership bringing in $500M in revenue. (free)
Mozilla VPN - Repackaged Mullvad VPN and using Mullvad servers.
Mozilla Monitor - Repackaged HaveIBeenPwned. (free)
Firefox Relay - No different to Simplelogin and not open source. (free)
MDN Plus - Be honest, you wouldn't pay for this since this was offered for a long time for free, MDN is already free.
Thunderbird - Most likely funded by Google (free) (using Firefox Search Revenue)
-
Be honest, would you pay for any of Mozilla's products when most of these can be found for free or close to free?
That is the problem.
Unfortunately Firefox is basically already dead, it has an incredibly small market share and it will never grow again because their leadership is affected by the corporate mind virus.
I know most HN users are on Firefox, but they should get used to an alternative now, not when its inevitable death happens.
Mozilla FireSlop.
I dont know how anyone could take mozilla seriously after they integrated google analytics into it about 10 years ago for no reason I can fathom. It immediately made me think somethings off, and I never used it again.
Instead I thought screw it and just went nuts deep into chrome, atleast it was more functional.
ps - ( apparently mozilla took it out sometime later , but to me the damage to its reputation was done)
going to die anyway
For fuck sake, for-profit side of Mozilla, get a damn grip!
Update, since this is getting traction on Reddit
I'm not against Mozilla making money. Like a regular citizen needs to make money, companies and even nonprofits need it too.
Don't second guess yourself OP. Firefox is not a product. It's an open-source project countless people have contributed their time and dime to over the years. The Mozilla corporation didn't create Firefox, the open-source community did. Mozilla was entrusted to be the stewards of the project and have repeatedly violated that trust. Mozilla is commoditizing other people's hard work while enriching themselves in the process at the expense of the community and abused the trust we placed in them to get away with it.
"it feels off-mission" is a very chatgpt thing to say
Does anyone have a link to the source of the statement without a paywall in front? I could not see any reference to this 150M$ anywhere.
malvertising - liking the term
It really seems like all large tech corporations are trying their hardest to kill themselves, and failing because the market is so rigged.
Remember when Kodak ignored digital cameras and became irrelevant? That was bad because it decreased shareholder value. That will not be allowed to happen again.
It feels like the only reasonable path forward would be for the EU to buy Mozilla and fund it as a public resource.
Capital extraction is fundamentally opposed to user freedom. If we want an open web, we, the people need to be maintaining it and not rely on MBA types to do it for us.
Time to migrate to a Firefox fork
Every bit of the base is free s/w including both phones. Stop felating trump epstein and gang incoudingbrms.
Grow a pair already. And stop calling normal average "typical"
Just when I re-started using it because of the vertical tabs.
Wait, how could "blocking ad blockers" bring in money at all?
User since Phoenix 0.6, now moved to Brave and haven't seen an ad in years, and it comes with a handy AI response on every search