Most of Mozilla’s money of course comes from Google to make them the default search engine on Firefox. And of course its a way for Google to ensure there’s at least one alternative browser engine. Reading about how Texeira was recently fired and how executives have been pushing for AI features for a long time, Mozilla certainly loves chasing trends and then forgetting them, like how Google kills lots of products. It seems like the company can’t stand on its own two feet without Google’s funding and is poorly run.
What happened to Mozilla over the years? How much effort did they put in to trying to be a successful tech company? because it hasn’t been until the past few that I really started following Firefox and Mozilla news.
I wonder if Mozilla could’ve been Proton, years before Proton AG existed, making their own comprehensive suite of privacy-friendly tools, since Mozilla makes privacy their brand. And they were late to the smartphone game with Firefox OS. If they were smart, they would’ve ensured their long term survival with an actual business, to continue funding development of their privacy and FOSS software like Firefox, without large funding sources like Google.
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The only reason Mozilla still exists is because Google needs them to so Chrome can’t be a complete monopoly.
Their priorities have always been… questionnable. Like, we got FirefoxOS all while Firefox was basically unusable on Android and Chrome rapidly eating their lunch, PWA support was abandonned then removed, which was the whole idea behind FirefoxOS… Then they started Servo, the rewrite of the rendering in Rust only to cancel it midway.
But hey they acquired an ad company, as if people don’t use Firefox so uBlock keeps working. And Pocket, and VPNs and a whole bunch of other crapware nobody wants from Mozilla. It’s like they go out of their way to be the second option.
Does anyone else wonder where all this recent FUD about Firefox’s funding is actually coming from? No offense meant, but this really doesn’t seem natural to me.
Firefox’s funding has been this way for well over a decade. Why does it only suddenly matter now, when Google is under a lot of fire politically and making a lot of anti-consumer moves in rapid succession?
Maybe there’s a ton of people who truly weren’t aware of this, but I really have to ask what the motivation is behind the tech news outlets suddenly talking about this all again. It’s not new information. It really doesn’t qualify as news.
Firefox has been more or less doing fine for multiple decades now, regardless of the main source of their finances. While I don’t agree with their continued fad chasing, I have no concerns about the longevity or trustworthyness of their core “product”, the browser. I’m even less concerned when I consider the large, diverse, and healthy community of forks surrounding it.
Edit:
More to the topic: Gecko is why Firefox is important. More specifically, the fact that it uses a unique underlying engine. Doesn’t matter what they call it, just that there is an open source web browser engine that exists at feature parity with commericial and closed source browsers.
More edit:
As far as Mozilla’s decisions making sense in terms as a business, I really could care less. To me, Mozilla’s existence is to ensure continued adequate funding for Firefox development and maintenance.
Any further pursuits in the realm of things that would be good for open source software and privacy are important but secondary to keeping their primary product, the browser, alive.
It’s also vitally important to note that Google has a basic business contract in which they pay Mozilla to make Google the default search engine in Firefox. That is it. They don’t own Mozilla or Firefox, have any direct seat on the board, or have any postion with them involving decision making or influencing. No one knows what happens behind closed doors, but there has never been any quantifiable reason to believe that Google is pulling Firefox’s strings.
The anti-trust cases against google are why this is being brought up again. Google isnt propping up Mozilla out of altruism or a desire to, I dunno, advertise; they’re doing it so that in court they can point at Mozilla and say, “look! Competitors!”. Its the exact same reason Microsoft bailed out Apple in the 00s. Because without Mozilla, Google is unquestionably a monopoly.
Now, they are anyway. But by keeping Mozilla alive they can pretend in court that they have competitors and that they aren’t engaging in monopolistic practices, which they absolutely are.
Honestly your comment is kind of why they pay the money. “Google doesn’t have a seat at Mozilla, what’s the big deal?”. The big deal is that Google smothers competition and is pretending in court that they aren’t.
I wonder if Mozilla could’ve been Proton
I wonder if Proton will someday in the future add a browser to the tools they offer.
If they do, it’s unlikely they’ll build one from scratch. It’s still gonna be either a Chrome or Firefox fork.
Let’s hope it won’t be a chromium browser.
No way in hell would Proton make a Chromium-based browser, the only way that would not be hypocritical is if they fully open sourced it (you could compile it yourself), and maintained their own fork completely devoid of Google tracking and telemetry.
Well, Chromium is fully open source and I think largely devoid of Google tracking, and there is prior art with ungoogled Chromium for the rest of it. So a Proton “fork” would basically just be a rebranding of that project.
That said, if they do make a browser, I hope it’s a Firefox variant instead of a Chromium one (or even better, Servo).
I’m in no way affiliated with zen browser, but if you’re looking for a privacy / Firefox (Gecko) based browser with a nice aesthetic check it out.
Chromium does have some Google things in it. Like what happened with the built-in extension giving Google websites special permission to read the hardware info of your computer.
