Mozilla 2023 annual report: CEO pay skyrockets, Firefox market share nosedives

Mitchell Baker needs to go. I hold her responsible for much of Firefox's slide in use over the years. She keeps pulling in a larger and larger salary for doing less and less.

According to the article,"Transitioning Mozilla away from Firefox." is the current organisation goal. She have done her job great.

why was it a goal, I have bo idea

They likely view the idea off competing with Chrome - a key chess piece of the company keeping Mozilla around merely as a pet to ward of regulators - as impossible if not counterproductive to their mid-term survival at this point.

Which is to say, at some point they might become annoying enough for Google to not want to pay them anymore, and then Mozilla would cease to exist shortly thereafter.

So with that in mind, Firefox as a dedicated separate browser with its own engine is an albatross around their neck. A source of significant ongoing investment and cost for comparatively little return. For the Mozilla "mission" and the CEO's personal goals and purpose, a simple rebadged chromium fork skinned up with open-web platitudes is a far better idea in the long term.

No absolutely not...

That would be the worst thing for the web. Blink is objectively bad in the first place, and we need more than just chromiumum skins in the market.

I wish they would finish and move to Servo.

I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based.

Everyone consolidating down to Blink and Chromium is about the worst thing that could happen to anyone that desires an open Web

I wish Brave or some of the other Chromium Skins would become Firefox based.

This hurts because Firefox should have been that embedded framework powering browsers like Brave and electron apps. But that would have required them to invest in R&D to match performance but also to make their rendering engine easily embeddable (with a corresponding investment in documentation and outreach).

I believe that was a goal of servo, however it was starved for resources (just like the documentation project) in favor of foolish endeavors like Pocket, VPN Services, FireFox OS, and of course there many missteps in the world of Political Social Activism.

FirefoxOS was Brendan's project. Also, why don't you consider preventing gay people from marrying to be "Political Social Activism?" Why do you want to force Mozilla to have a leader who is a religious fundamentalist culture warrior?

Brendan's personal political donations were his own business unless he made it some organizational goal or priority for Mozilla, which he never did.

Brendan's personal political donations were his own business

Eh, a CEO is a quasi-public figure. Those weren't his personal business entirely. (Consider a gay employee at Mozilla or partner.) That said, the solution was chastisement and a public apology. Not termination.

There was no evidence that Brendan discriminated against gay employees at Mozilla.

Conduct outside of work is considered for many jobs. And even Eich acknowledged he hurt people.

Brendan refused to apologize for the donation or even to acknowledge that it was wrong. Instead, he doubled down on it, saying in comments posted to this very forum that the gays kept asking for more and more rights, and he wasn't OK with that. It wasn't part of the previous bargain. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15966490

Given that he refused to apologize, and that the pesky freedom of association exists, which can lead to problems for Mozilla like the Montgomery Bus Boycott did for the public transit system in Montgomery, it was overall positive for Mozilla that Eich resigned. That doesn't mean that Mitchell is a good CEO. It just means that things would have been worse.

There was nothing for him to apologize for and his donation was not wrong.

the solution was chastisement and a public apology

Not all gays are in favor of gay marriage. The solution was to let him have his political opinions, and simply agree to disagree, like adults.

This hurts because Firefox should have been that embedded framework powering browsers like Brave and electron apps.

Years ago, Gecko had at least some support for being embedded within native applications.

This was apparently discontinued around 2011, though:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110403052816/http://www.h-onli...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210723183100/https://groups.go...

At that time, there were a number of browsers with native UIs that used Gecko, and software to help embed Gecko in other apps, such as:

Camino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser)

K-Meleon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Meleon

Galeon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeon

gtkmozembed: https://web.archive.org/web/20110505053545/http://www.mozill...

JavaXPCOM: https://web.archive.org/web/20100626110814/https://developer...

There was also XULRunner, too:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161201115812/https://developer...

Mozilla and Gecko had a staggering amount of potential back then, but it was squandered away, unfortunately.

There's always money in ~~the banana stand~~. Er, webkit.

Blink is objectively bad in the first place

Do you mind explaining this statement?

Right. What would be lost if they used Chromium as well? Sure, there would be a lack of competition but at this point the browser is the fuel of the internet. We don't have multiple different type of gasoline, or home heating oil. The browser - sans Google Chrome's "spyware" - is a commodity. I'd rather see Mozilla focus on privacy, etc.

My dream is for them to add a privacy-centric email product, a robust enough office suit (e.g., Google Docs) and then a bundle with those and Relay and their VPN.

We don't have multiple different type of gasoline

We have diesel and gasoline at least.

However the key difference ethere is somewhat different: We have independent supply lines, starting at different oil fields, going through different refineries, into different distribution networks, which ensures that there is some competition (even oligopolic is better than plain monopoly) and supply chain attacks on one vendor don't havoc the complete supply chain.

For a practical example: Countries were able to massively reduce the dependance on Russian gas and oil recently.

If Google however decides to havoc chromium development all dependants have trouble.

Perhaps, but Firefox is an independent and it has trouble. Now. Right?

We don't have multiple different type of gasoline, or home heating oil

We do?

Actually, this is a great analogy. We have grades of gasoline because there is a trade-off between anti-knocking and cost. Monoculturing the grade approximates the diversity of requirements worse than honing in on a few points on the curve. As with browser engines, there is a limit to this diversity since each additional grade imposes novel fixed costs in production, distribution and combustion. But I’d be surprised if something as varied as browser engines optimally solves for a single solution.

We have grades of gasoline because there is a trade-off between anti-knocking and cost.

Similarly Chromium can be configured in many different way, see chrome://flags. It's open source and has a modular design so even further customization is possible.

Different configurations can make different trade offs to appeal more to certain user's needs.

There would still be competition among high level features for the browsers which I feel is more important for users. Reduced competiton on things like performance I don't think will be so bad as either someone will optimized it benefiting everyone, or things that are not hyper optimized will become insignificant as computers get more powerful.

She's always struck me as a 'style over substance' kind of person, so in this light I guess she's doing a fabulous job, as others in this thread have said.

The only reason Google funds them is so they can use Firefox to counter antitrust accusations.

The goal is obvious and not new. Firefox as a product is only useful to them as a handout from google to use as an antitrust defense.

The problem is that Mozilla hasn’t been able to find any product that generates any meaningful revenue.

It makes perfect sense for them to try to be an entity that can exist without their biggest competitor tossing them scraps.

How they should achieve that is certainly up for debate but it’s also clear that their attempts to add monetizable aspects to Firefox isn’t moving the needle much either.

I think the situation is simple. They are rendering one service that their users value, and it is making Firefox.

They should ask (not require) payment for that service. Yes, what they should do is basically to run a Patreon subscription, clearly marked "For the continued development of Firefox".

At a very accessible level of $3 / mo on average, and merely 5M subscribers over the world, they'd have $15M monthly, or $180M a year.

See how Wikimedia Foundation is basically flush with cash, without getting handouts from its competition (haha), zero ads, and asking users to spare $2.75 here and there.

They should ask (not require) payment for that service.

Sure - let them squeeze out the last drop of their one and only cash cow before it becomes utterly irrelevant - instead of investing in it and making it a core pillar of their strategy.

See how Wikimedia Foundation is basically flush with cash,

Mozilla was (is?) flush with cash. Browser market share and corresponding user eyeballs are immensely valuable. That money isn't going back into Firefox development. This is why it is borderline criminal that they choose to focus on everything except Firefox.

Alternatively, what are they without Firefox?

With Mitchel Baker at helm, all the initiatives that would make Firefox more embeddable were cancelled to cut cost.

Now Firefox can't be used to make webapps effectively, the only alternative is to use Electron and fortify Chromium's monopoly.

I'm not a Baker fan at all, but no such initiative was cut under her leadership, because none existed.

Electron won not because chromium was more embeddable, it won because it made it easy to pull hundred of MB of nodejs dependencies. Everything else you could do already before with XulRunner...

it made it easy to pull hundred of MB of nodejs dependencies

That's exactly what "more embeddable" is. It made itself easier to turn into Node.js, Electron, etc. I don't think it was a pure coincidence.

XulRunner existed before Electron. Node.js used v8, but could have use SpiderMonkey instead (this is what Gnome did). These were choices, not situations where using Mozilla tech was impossible. In the end that cemented Google stronghold on the web.

With Mitchel Baker at helm, all the initiatives that would make Firefox more embeddable were cancelled to cut cost.

Will you name them? Mozilla cut embedding when Gary Kovacs was CEO. XULRunner, Graphene, and Positron were cut when Chris Beard was CEO. GeckoView was not cut.

instead of investing in it and making it a core pillar of their strategy.

What are they investing in now?

Mozilla was (is?) flush with cash.

It's not neutral cash, it's Google's cash. The point is to get off the needle of Google's handouts and become independent. Maybe then there'd be less incentive to slowly drive Firefox towards irrelevance.

what are they without Firefox?

With a small bit of conspiracy theory, that would be "mission accomplished" :-|

They have a donate button. Which is all about subscriptions. Which is why I went away without even doing a one time donation, as my original intention was.

I deeply resent being pushed into subscriptions and you should too.

One-time donations must always be an option.

But it's a recurring revenue what allows you e.g. to hire developers. Sad but true.

Firefox makes half a billion a year in revenue. It's not a handout like you claim, but a revenue share deal negotiated between the two companies.

If Google didn't pay for being the default search engine, or tried lowballing, someone else would make a deal instead.

The idea that it's some kind of a proactive antitrust defense is one of the more bizarre ideas that gets repeated on HN.

More than one thing can be true at the same time. Deals are usually made because interests are aligned. There is a direct benefit to an overwhelmingly dominant player to be able to point to any competitor. There is also a direct benefit to having people use your product. There is even a tertiary benefit of the money theoretically going to development for Firefox that could feed back into their own product.

If you look at the situation in the reverse, what sense does it make? Why would you pay a direct competitor to exist when the amount of money you put in to them is an incredibly large majority of their revenue? Firefox continues to become more irrelevant, and the amount of their revenue they get from Google doesn't really reflect that trend.

I'm not saying the only reason Firefox exists is for Google to point at it. That doesn't mean it isn't a major one. It also is pretty clear to Mozilla because they sure keep trying (and failing) to find other revenue sources

Why would you pay a direct competitor to exist when the amount of money you put in to them is an incredibly large majority of their revenue?

One plausible reason is that Google is not a monolith: the entity paying the money is the Search division, which does not compete with Firefox. Chrome does, but Chrome is not a party to the deal. Search is interested in maximizing their own profit, not in maximizing Chrome's usage share.

Firefox continues to become more irrelevant, and the amount of their revenue they get from Google doesn't really reflect that trend.

It is a revenue share deal. Firefox gets some specific (agreed) percentage of the search revenue from searches done via the Firefox search bar. If the revenue Firefox gets is stable despite reduced relevance, it is because the revenue is stable.

Relevance doesn't translate to revenue. What matters is the number of users and revenue per user.

If Google didn't pay for being the default search engine, or tried lowballing, someone else would make a deal instead

This already happened with Yahoo. Mozilla got a ton more money, too.

It was utterly disastrous for them. It turned out that Firefox needs Google as the default more than Google needs them - well, for the stated purposes of the deal, of course.

Not affiliated with Mozilla in any way, but their mission isn't to create a browser. It's to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." (1)

Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use.

(1) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

their mission isn't to create a browser

Aaaand that's why I don't use Firefox.

As long as you use something better, that isnt chrome.

Chrome blatant spyware that scans your whole pc ever since google had the bright idea of sneaking an "antivirus" into chrome and enabling it by default. Firefox is better that chrome, but there's lots better than firefox.

What would be an example of something better that isn’t chromium based?

Chromium based browsers and firefox forks are the two big pillars. The comment i replied to doesnt like firefox, so i would probably suggest ungoogled chromium or brave.

For non chromium based, librewolf is a clear winner for me. Waterfox is also good. Hardened firefox is also okayish but not ideal.

As long as you use something better, that isnt chrome.

This is why it is critical to have a meaningful alternative. Developers and end-users are pragmatic - all things being equal they will choose privacy and openness, but not at the expense of performance and capabilities.

This is why it is so perplexing seeing Mozilla just focus on everything except for the one thing that gives them relevance and is actually important.

That makes you part of the problem.

No. It makes Mozilla part of the problem. People getting tired of Mozilla's incompetence and stopping supporting them is just a consequence of that.

I use Firefox. I want to use Firefox. That Mozilla insists on pretending it's not the one single worthwhile thing they do doesn't make it easy.

Not affiliated with Mozilla in any way, but their mission isn't to create a browser. It's to "ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." (1)

Yes .. and that is the core problem. Their relevance (and income) only comes from Firefox and its market share. But for some reason, they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this. The income they generated from Firefox, should have been re-invested in Firefox. They should have been organized as an engineering company at the forefront of web technologies.

Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use.

That is their strategy. Right now, Firefox is still the only thing that gives them any sort of relevance.

I read that mission as definitely including a browser.

What could possibly be more important at "ensur[ing] the internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all" than keeping competition and choice in browsers, which forces web technology openness and standards?

We've already seen Google's web integrity moves coming, and we can no doubt expect more of that as they continue to dominate. A world with only Chromium-based browsers is one where Google can implement anything they fancy. To me the importance of that overshadows anything else Mozilla can do (that I can think of at least).

Given that Firefox has kinda lost the browser war it seems obvious that they should be focusing efforts on other things that further that mission besides dumping money into a browser a tiny slice of people want to use.

Like what? Selling you "premium" subscription to glorified bookmarks service? Or reselling Mullvad with Mozilla logo slapped on top of it?

In what capacity have they delivered on that mission outside Firefox?

It is her goal. She will spend a lot of time explaining to you why it is a good idea. At the end, you will still have bo idea.

why was it a goal, I have bo idea

Because an ongoing antitrust suit against Google search could mean the revenue they get from Firefox is no longer an option.

I don't strictly disagree with that as a concept, as diversifying themselves from being Firefox and Firefox alone is a sound business strategy. Unfortunately, while they have come up with some neat ideas (I was a fan of Firefox Send) they still haven't found a business strategy and have let Firefox's market share slide in the meanwhile, and many of those neat concepts have withered away as well.

I've been critical of Mozilla for a long time, and Mitchell has not been a good leader for the last ~10 years or so.

Having said that, Mitchell was instrumental to several very important things, not all of them in the distant past. She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing. (I do think that $7 million per year is pretty gross, though, especially given the current "state of Mozilla".)

Having said that, $7 million for a CEO who isn't earning it really isn't Mozilla's biggest problem, and it's not even its biggest financial problem. If you really want to be critical of its spending, consider this:

The annual budget for marketing and branding every year falls between $30 and $60 million. Per year. This is Mozilla. Empirically, it may as well not even have a marketing department.

When Chrome really started eating into Firefox marketshare 10+ years ago, one of the things that Mozilla folks used to complain about (a lot) is that Chrome's effective* marketing budget was higher* than Mozilla's total budget—browser development and other software eng. included. The perverse thing is that the same is true of Mozilla: you could take its annual marketing budget, pour it into a different org that works on a different browser, and what you could get out of it is an independent browser development company. What's more is that you could without too much difficulty get that company not only to profitable status in pretty short order (given that kind of budget), but get it to usage share that matches Firefox's own (given how low that is). This would take something like 3, 4, 5 years max, provided you have competent leadership.

That's the sort of profligate spending and a lot of other poor decisionmaking at Mozilla that really needs to be addressed if Mozilla is going to turn around. (I have given up hope that this is ever going to happen. I expect it not to.) People hardly talk about this aspect of the business, however—instead focusing on how much Mitchell is getting paid, which, to reiterate, is not in any sense the biggest problem that Mozilla is facing.

-- former Mozillian

She also went years taking annual salary lower than she probably should have been taking. It frankly wouldn't be unreasonable to grant her lifetime emeritus status that comes with a no-strings-attached $1–2 million annual salary to sit on her hands and do nothing.

Sorry, what? She was underpaid for a few years, so should get a couple mil forever now? Can you at least list out the "several important things?"

It is closer to 20 years. She was a founding member of Mozilla. Look back at the early financial statements, in a vacuum a few 100k to several 100k sounds like a lot. When you compare it to other executives in the Bay Area or the US she was significantly under paid compared to peers. Especially when considering stock options. What would it cost Mozilla to hire someone else?

Before someone here says that they would be the CEO for less money than Mitchell. Can you get an appointment with the vice president of search at Google and Microsoft? Could you call their bosses and get though?

Before someone here says that they would be the CEO for less money than Michael. Can you get an appointment with the vice president of search at Google and Microsoft? Could you call their bosses and get though?

I'm sorry? My entire life I've been told that CEOs make 1000x as much money as me for golfing and writing a couple emails a week because they're genius Ubermenschen whose illuminating strategic insights add orders of magnitude more value than my measly toil, but you're telling me it's actually because other executives are willing to take cold calls from them? That's why?

IMO it’s mostly because it’s a miserable job that few would be willing to do. I at least wouldn’t, no matter how many millions they throw at me - even disregarding all the career ladder climbing that is needed to be considered for such a role in the first place.

If they were the CEO of Mozilla they would because that’s the whole point of talking to them.

One difference is that Google is a for-profit, publicly-traded company. Mozilla is a sort of hybrid in the sense that the Corporation is wholly owned by a non-profit Foundation. Most people don't go into the non-profit sector to get rich. Their utility comes from something else (e.g., goodwill or a sense of noblesse oblige).

Either I or Adam Sandler could get an appointment with the VP of search at any company in the world if we were CEO of literally Mozilla

May I ask what you did at Mozilla? i.e. were you an engineer on Firefox?

mozillian usually means mamagers. unless they are really old timers.

What's more is that you could without too much difficulty get that company not only to profitable status in pretty short order (given that kind of budget), but get it to usage share that matches Firefox's own (given how low that is). This would take something like 3, 4, 5 years max, provided you have competent leadership.

Is your claim that this other browser company would ship an open source browser that is a) gpu-accelerated, b) cross-platform, and c) render Youtube, Tiktok, Reddit, bank websites et al. correctly, and be used by millions of people?

In a previous thread (these "Mozilla is dead" threads appear perennially) someone pointed out that Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistinguishable from their deployment of privacy-improving features, including stubbing out Google Analytics when "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled.

I'm a Firefox user, so I have a vested interest in Mozilla's long term health and financial viability. But "marketshare nosedives" appears to be primarily an editorialization to fit the post's larger narrative.

I posted some stats from our website a few weeks ago [0], GA was heavily undercounting FF compared to our server-side stats based on UAs.

One other thing to remember, is to check the falling of desktop usage, because a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533109

a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small.

I'm a Chrome user. Both on desktop and mobile because of the built in syncing.

If I were able to switch to Firefox mobile (Android), I would. But the rendering is often broken or awkwardly different on Firefox mobile. I thought this is a thing of the past...

Which specific websites?

I hit a few in the past. But, I'm failing to find any of them at the moment... Maybe I should give Firefox mobile another try.

It could be that my baseline was the Chrome rendering, so any discrepancy was classified as "it's broken".

Honestly, in this day and age, any discrepancy from Chromium/WebKit is probably broken. But if we're talking about a few pixels' difference here and there, plenty of sites are more broken than that on every browser.

I have encountered a couple of (financial, natch) sites that insist on a Chromium-based browser in order to do vital operations like download statements. Switching browsers for those few exceptions is annoying, but not a deal-breaker (for me).

Have you tried a user-agent switcher? I think you can even set them up to always have a specific agent depending on the domain. Chances are, they don’t need chromium, they are just written by (even more than you’d think) incompetent people.

Adblock on a mobile browser is a gamechanger. I wouldn't go back even if a quarter of sites were broken on FF mobile (and they aren't, I've been using it for 2 full years desktop and mobile, and only found a single compatibility issue - a restaurant's take-out ordering page)

Found one! Google.com ... Try googling "vti stock" (or any similar rich ui query) on chrome mobile and Firefox mobile.

Are you using uBlock Origin in Firefox on Android? If not, then try it.

You'd have to prise it from my cold dead hands. By far the best mobile browsing experience.

Not entirely perfect, there's a bug where I'll occasionally get a grey screen on a tab. Hasn't happened enough for me to do anything about tho.

But still orders of magnitude better than my experience with Chrome on Android.

FYI, I've been using ublock origin with Firefox on android for years and never encountered the bug you're talking about, so it might be rooted in something else. I'm using a pixel 6 ( and a pixel 3 before that), in case that's relevant

I get the occasional hung Firefox browser (browser UI works but none of the tabs render any content, or render a single tab that doesn't work). I'm not sure what's causing it, but based on the behaviour I observed, I don't think it's an addon related bug.

I wish I could reproduce it to file a bug report. These stability bugs are the reason I'm hesitant to recommend Firefox to non-technophiles, especially since the web is unusable without at least an ad blocker. While I still use Firefox, Brave seems to be doing a much better job at blocking ads without slowing down.

Firefox on android also has syncing, you can open up the 'share' and send pages directly to your various firefox browsers. It will sync passwords etc. I haven't had any rendering issues and have been using FFM-Nightly for years now.

They're not saying "I use Chrome because only Chrome has syncing". They're saying "I use the same browser on mobile and desktop because of syncing, and I can't use Firefox on mobile because it has these bugs, so I end up using Chrome on both mobile and desktop."

I'm a Chrome user

As they say, acceptance is the first step to recovery.

Hm weird I have the inverse experience with Chrome…

Is it? I use Firefox on android (and desktop) and I have to drop to chrome about once a year for rendering issues.

ffx also has syncing.

The person you quoted seems to have just generated this hypothesis out of nothingness, so it isn’t as if they are on super solid ground in the first place. However, I think it is worth pointing out that we’re all vanishingly small percentages of the population; your existence doesn’t tell us much or contradict them, I guess.

I exclusively use FF, with Chrome on Android and Desktop only being there for cross browser testing, I never have rendering issues, only issues brought by extensions (mainly uBlock Origin), or FF’s tracking protection, both of which can be disabled.

Is GA counting Firefox on iOS as Firefox or Safari?

That’d be interesting to know, but I don’t use anything apple.

The reason I ask is that it would explain the "undercount."

There is definitely a downward usage trend from Mozilla own stats.

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

Right; nobody is claiming that Firefox is doing well. But that downward trend is not proportionate with the claimed global downward trend; it's much smaller.

Firefox has lost over 20 million users in 2 years.

Jan 3 2021 210,085,100

Jan 1 2023 193,199,300

Dec 17 2023 185,599,100

I can read. The point is that the number doesn't translate: 7.5 million lost users over 2023 doesn't correspond to a 0.75% decline in global browser presence. 7.5 million is a tiny fraction of that.

7.5M out of 193M is 0.39%, so it's off by about a half. Hardly a "tiny fraction". Presumably the growth in internet users in the period would increase the relative decline in market share, too.

3.9%

You're comparing apples to oranges. The 0.75% decline from the OP is of market share across all browsers. The figure here is a 3.9% (not 0.39%) decline in Firefox users only. This would translate to 3.9% of 3.79% = about 0.14% of market share. It's not about half but more than 5x less.

It does if the global number of active browsers increased. The more people get connected to the internet, and the more of them use Chrome or Edge, the smaller Firefox' market share will be if their user numbers stay about equal.

Worth pointing out Firefox had 310 Million user in 2017. That is a lost of 100 Million user in from 2017 to 2021.

There are also more and more internet users. Marketshare and active users don't necessarily go at the same dimensions.

I'm not sure if we have reliable data on desktop computer usage stats, but I think a large part of the decline is also correlated with that - along with never having been able to significantly gain market share on mobile, which is responsible for an increasing share of people's time online.

I would assume that Firefox revenue is proportional to usage and revenue is only down a few percent. This implies that Firefox usage is declining much slower than people say.

I don’t understand how to read their “assets” table; but it looks like most of their revenue comes from “royalties,” which I’m sure has some specific meaning for these kinds of reports, but I’m not sure if it scales with numbers of users or not. If that’s the money they get from Google (huge guess alert, I’m probably wrong!), then I’m not sure if it would scale in the short there with the number of users; I guess they must re-negotiate their contract every couple years, right?

Mozilla Corp pays royalties to Mozilla Foundation to use Mozilla Foundation's trademarks. Mozilla Corp makes money by selling the default search engine position to Google, spends some of that money on Firefox development, and sends a lot of the rest to Mozilla Foundation in the form of those royalties.

So if we’re reading this and concerned about the level of support for Firefox, then we should be somewhat consoled by the fact that the Mozilla Corp uses the money for Firefox development before it even hits the Foundation?

Not if you account for the increase in ad revenue from the company paying them.

Wouldn't that be easy to verify by just looking at the relative market shares of different browsers and checking if there is an 'unknown' browser whose market share is increasing proportionately to Firefox's decrease?

Not if the metrics come solely from analytics like GA. It would appear as an absolute decline in browser numbers instead (which would probably be indistinguishable from noise in most samples).

All I'm saying is you just need a table like this:

    | Year | Firefox | Chrome | Other |
    | 2020 |     20% |    75% |    5% |
    | 2021 |     19% |    75% |    6% |
    | 2022 |     18% |    75% |    7% |

This would make it pretty obvious, no?

No, because there are multiple independent variables there: OEM mobile browsers, for example, and the fact that the overall number and distribution of observed browsers is not static.

Firefox has all sorts of telemetry reporting so they know exactly how much usage the browser is getting.

It's not clear to me that these numbers come from Firefox's own telemetry. I couldn't find the graphs in either of the reports on their own page.

A lot of those can be turned off. Some are turned off by Linux distributions.

Indeed, and the data is mostly public: see https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity to check monthly active user evolution.

It's going slowly down - something that is unlikely to improve unless Firefox gets better distribution channels, especially on mobile. Giving up on FirefoxOS cut them from having the "default" browser anywhere.

They are working on a gecko-based iOS browser since the UE is likely to mandate browser diversity, so maybe that will improve things a bit - though this will only make the situation on iOS on par with Android where Firefox is not doing well market share wise.

Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistinguishable from their deployment of privacy-improving features, including stubbing out Google Analytics when "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled.

That's an interesting angle. I suppose we could compare against Mozilla's stats on download numbers and telemetry? Though between users downloading from distro mirrors and disabling telemetry (I suspect Firefox users are far more likely to be privacy conscious and/or Linux users) those will also be fuzzy.

This Mozilla "situation" comes up here from time to time, unfortunately as a long time Firefox user all I have to say is: Mitchell Baker and their clique will only leave when Mozilla is completely dead and even by that time she'll retire and will make a wonderful post about her "legacy" in opensource and the Web.

I will not go further because it will turn into an all-bashing post, but Mozilla ( as you like to think of it ) is dead and has been dead for a long time.

Deal with it.

Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful. Yes, Mozilla is different now, yes the CEO makes too much money but if more people used their browser more they might invest more in it in instead of seeing it as a money sink to satisfy people who can’t be satisfied.

Seriously, Mozilla cant win. A large voice of people constantly scold Mozilla for anything it does. We’ve heard from Firefox devs on how this bash fest affects them and we expect them to crank out awesome software despite the abuse. Instead of picking the lesser of two evils they say oh, Firefox is N milliseconds slower than Chrome so I’ll use the greater of two evils.

Can we stop beating a dead horse? If you don’t like Firefox or Mozilla fine but don’t act like it’s unusable as a browser. It’s fine, it works, I don’t why everyone is so bothered by minor details when their goals and clearly better than their competition.

Sure it may be slow for YOU (whatever your use case is) or maybe your extensions broke but average users who rely power users to recommend a browser don’t care. If they can open Facebook and Netflix it’s fine. So use Chrome yourself and recommend Firefox to the people this crap doesn’t matter to. And maybe, if they see the numbers tick up, they’ll change course.

<< I don’t why everyone is so bothered by minor details when their goals and clearly better than their competition.

I use FF is my daily driver for home stuff; work in chrome/edge. When I see things that are wrong, I point them out. We can champion FF for the good things it does and absolutely we can bash CxO club for slowly running it to the ground.

<< Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful.

Not accurate, this is likely one of the few ways we can exert some minimal level of influence over this. And besides, what did not complaining ever achieve?

what did not complaining ever achieve?

self-satisfaction and just being a better person

Hmm. I am willing to explore it a little further.

Does one become a better person simply by staying quiet?

You could try being supportive instead. But hey, the current strategy has worked out so well thus far, please continue until the market share reaches 0.

Mitchell really seems to care about these comments. Oh wait, she probably doesn’t read HN does she? Oh, but the Firefox devs probably do. Well I’m sure they’re just as moved and powerful enough to affect the kind of change you want to see in the organization.

Oh wait, she probably doesn’t read HN does she? Oh, but the Firefox devs probably do.

All the more reason to insist that Firefox is the important bit then? What does a Firefox dev get from "Ah yes sure we only care about Firefox, but if that's what Mozilla wants to do they have all my support in continuing their path to irrelevancy"

I’m unconvinced that Firefox can compete purely by being the better browser now that Chrome exists and I hear no one complaining about Brave doing more than just a browser (crypto, ads, brave wallet, brave vpn, brave talk, brave search) so even Brendan doesn’t believe that a browser without diversification can compete and likely would have done the same stuff the current CSuite did if he were in charge. You might argue he’d have done a better job of it, picked better products but still would happen.

Brendan choosing to build on Chrome instead of Firefox probably says more about Chrome’s dominance than Firefox’s technical merits. If all Firefox was lacking was better leadership improving it would’ve been easier. If it was a technical issue that’s probably money that needs spent but doesn’t move the needle which is why the current CSuite doesn’t address it either. Or maybe it was just to get away from the stigma around Firefox that doesn’t exist in Chromeland.

I’m unconvinced that Firefox can compete purely by being the better browser now that Chrome exists and I hear no one complaining about Brave doing more than just a browser (crypto, ads, brave wallet, brave vpn, brave talk, brave search) so even Brendan doesn’t believe that a browser without diversification can compete and likely would have done the same stuff the current CSuite did if he were in charge.

Cryptocurrency and ads are common complaints about Brave. But your main point was right. Eich said Firefox OS was the highest priority. And services or partnerships were needed for user sovereignty.[1]

Brendan choosing to build on Chrome instead of Firefox probably says more about Chrome’s dominance than Firefox’s technical merits.

Brave's CTO said filling gaps in the Gecko framework would have cost months.[2]

[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/brendan-eich...

[2] https://brave.com/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/

I am supportive. Without me Mozilla, Mitchell and devs would think it is all sunshine and puppies. If anything, being supportive at any costs leads to scenarios such as the current one.

No offense but how is the CxO club running it into the ground exactly?

By not being on the default browser on their operating system? By not marketing it on their world used search engine?

The community was the biggest factor Mozilla had in its favor and the community jumped to Chrome and here we are. It’s nice that you still use FF but their market share makes it clear that you and I are exceptions.

<< No offense but how is the CxO club running it into the ground exactly?

None taken. I am too old to care too much. From my perspective, what will be, will be.

That said, you answer your own question with the very next sentence:

<< It’s nice that you still use FF but their market share makes it clear that you and I are exceptions.

I think you would agree that even with hyperbole of two people using FF, its management is not doing a great job ( euphemism ).

I think there are forces in play beyond what the Csuite can control. Microsoft and Google have bigger platforms with more reach. If anything, it explains why Mozilla is trying to expand beyond the browser so they have more ways to reach people and try wooing them into using Firefox.

I’m having a hard time thinking how else you’d market Firefox to regular users beyond word of mouth advocacy. I remember Firefox running TV ads once, no idea how effective that was.

Firefox used to be significantly better than IE which drove adoption but since Chrome is heavily invested in I don’t think Firefox can compete purely by being the better browser. The strategy from the “the good old days” doesn’t work here.

Also, I was looking for a specific example. Saying that the C-Suite is bad because market share is down is not an answer without context of how it could have been avoided which is not obvious. How could they have retained or grown the market share they had?

I’m not saying management bears no responsibility but not all companies fail because of bad management alone. They have big, well funded competitors and platforms users can’t ignore. In particular, Windows, Google Search, Gmail, IOS, and Android. So much browsing is done online and default browsers rule there.

Now you could say Firefox should have come to mobile sooner. Firefox OS was an interesting idea that might have had legs but who knows if it would have caught on. That work required them to divert attention away from the browser and they have a smaller warchest to devote on an idea that might not payoff.

if more people used their browser more they might invest more in it

Let me donate to support Firefox. Firefox, only. Hell, she can even skim off the top for her pay.

They don’t do this because it would trash the gravy train. So Firefox is held hostage to support a litany of nonsense that lets them travel to conferences to speak about AI.

Okay, so what is complaining achieving here since you already acknowledge they won’t let you donate to Firefox directly?

I’m not crazy about it either but I don’t lose sleep over it. It’s a browser and management could be better. I know it’s a touchy subject and people may not like to hear it but until I’m downvoted into oblivion I’m going to say this discussion is not worth rehashing time and time again.

The donation suggestion is years old at this point. There is nothing new in this thread.

what is complaining achieving here since you already acknowledge they won’t let you donate to Firefox directly?

That usage isn’t what’s constraining Firefox’s resources. Management is. Use Firefox if you like it. (I do, in part.) But don’t argue that if more people use it Mozilla will give a shit; it’s already a material fraction of their revenues and they’re ignoring it.

I will. If usage increased enough they would. The more users they have the more important their search becomes, gives them greater leverage and an audience to market products at. Unlike Google/Microsoft/Apple, they do not have a strong platform to reach users with and need something to coalesce a consumer-centric Mozilla ecosystem around.

At the moment, it is unclear how much extra money, devoted to improving what, would increase Firefox’s market share significantly and am not surprised to see them explore other options. Brave, Vivaldi, etc, don’t seem to have figured it out either.

I choose not to be cynical, nor will I allow myself to be upset about it one way or another and wish others would do the same.

Being negative is more likely to scare off new users/contributors than change Mozilla.

Or split it off like they did with thunderbird.

I dont like Mozilla, I like firefox... I am using it right now.

One of the reasons firefox is dying is because they are chasing market share and not listening to the users at all.

They look at Edge, Chrome, etc and try to duplicate them hoping to peel off users.

They look everything under the sun but what the actual users of their actual product want... Us users they just ignore us.

I must be seriously out of touch because I have no idea what is missing from Firefox that you can find in other browsers. Can you at least list off some stuff so I can understand why people are so upset?

I know dropping XUL, plugins, performance have been issues for people. I see the changes they made as necessary to keep the codebase maintainable and improve performance. What else am I missing?

ut if more people used their browser more they might invest more in it in instead of seeing it as a money sink

Did you say that Firefox is a 'money sink' for Mozilla? The thing that brings them half a billion dollars a year and corresponds to the vast majority of their revenue ... and is the only thing that gives them relevance .. to you, this is a 'money sink'?

There is more nuance here than your comment assumes. If Firefox makes X dollars by investing Y dollars but Y+N dollars doesn’t return more money, they will spend the minimum amount on Firefox and allocate the remaining funds elsewhere because otherwise they’d be throwing money away, or so the C-Suite assumes.

You think Pocket and Mozilla VPN sprung up because creating new products was easier than investing more into the golden goose? If Firefox was the end all be all that would be the obvious, safest business decision. Clearly they don’t think it is and that they can get more money through diversification.

A number of people here believe that Firefox is only supported by Google so they can avoid anti trust. If that were the case they’d pay Mozilla regardless of how good/bad Firefox was wouldn’t they?

Two things can be true at once: Firefox is a great browser that needs greater market share, and the CEO pay is out-of-whack. The solution is to use the browser but a) not give money to the foundation, and b) complain and expect change.

I said the CEO makes too much money so I don’t know what the point of your post is.

I think it’s pretty clear all the complaining hasn’t done anything as this conversation has been going on for years but I don’t expect that to stop anyone from getting easy HN karma.

Some of us scold Mozilla because they have lost track of their original purpose which is to develop a Web browser, instead they have started to become a political advocacy organization. One that is against freedom of speech and in favor of censorship.

The article states that Mozilla is far from dying and that it’s diversifying itself away from Firefox.

that it’s diversifying itself away from Firefox

And Firefox is their only worthwhile product, so moving away from Firefox means they're dying.

I don't know what I'd do if Firefox died. Maybe it's time Firefox starts diversifying itself away from Mozilla.

And with which business model? That's the elephant in the room here. If it's only about unpaid developers, Firefox already has these currently in addition to the Mozilla employees, but if it wants to stay relevant it needs paid developers working on it full-time.

Mozilla has been diversifying itself away from Firefox for 15 years. They're still pouring money into SeaMonkey and Thunderbird, on top of a range of more recent projects that have no realistic chance of ever generating serious revenue, such as Mozilla VPN.

I think there are two realistic paths for the company. One is to make the browser amazing and edgy in ways that Google and Microsoft can't match (out of the fear of cannibalizing revenue or running into regulatory trouble). Mozilla has a shot at it, but it's unlikely to happen if they have a defeatist attitude about it internally, and are focusing on non-browser pivots.

The other path is to basically turn into some completely different company, throwing money at unrelated pursuits such as AI and hoping that you get lucky. But what gives Mozilla any edge with that?

SeaMonkey is an independent project allowed to use Mozilla infrastructure. Thunderbird is funded with user donations.

What is serious revenue?

Google and Microsoft are betting AI will be very relevant to web use. And what amazing and edgy features would Google and Microsoft be unable to match?

Too bad every product that’s actually useful gets deprecated. Lockwise was great and it got deprecated.

it's only not dead yet because google is paying them to try to "avoid" being anti-competitive themselves. they're the single biggest investor by far.

Away from Firefox? They don't have anything useful other than Firefox. Trash everything else and devote all resources to Firefox.

I’ve lead those threads in the past with hopes that someone would give a glimmer of hope

Honestly, this news/post made me lose the final shred of hope I had.

The best thing we can do for the web at this point is talk to our politicians about the incredible power that Google and Apple wield. They either need to be split up, or their platforms entirely opened up to competition via standardization [1], first class third-party support [2], no more preferential dogfooding [3], and no more ad sales protection rackets [4].

[1] Google no longer unilaterally pulls on web standards. Google and Apple adopt a shared, first-class standard for native app development. Web gets "as native" APIs.

[2] No requirement of app store for distribution. Web installs and web as native. No scare walls or hidden-in-the-settings feature flags. The browser runtimes have full extension support with no removal of hooks necessary for eg. adblocking.

[3] First party apps are not defaults, not preinstalled, and more importantly, cannot re-assert themselves as defaults.

[4] If someone searches for your company or product by name, or a 1 edit distance variation, competitor ads can't show up before your website or app.

I mean between them, MSFT they have totally captured congress

Unless people start running for office that won’t just do what corporations want then it’s futile.

Firefox might be dead soon but Mozilla will probably live on as a VPN company. Opera is also like that. The original browser is dead, replaced by a Chromium reskin, and they're making money from microlending in Africa instead.

Agree. I’ve git submoduled Firefox and other projects and have local AI help edit and build them.

Have made zero changes to FF itself, but overall have found local AI a huge help in managing it all.

"The focus for the future of Mozilla -- according to Mozilla -- is primarily based around Artificial Intelligence services."

I sense a great disturbance in the Force...

Last year it was IoT

Before that it was a mobile OS that failed to gain traction.

at least boot2gecko made 1000x more sense than a painfully vague "focus on AI"

I love FF and T-bird hard, but I have this mental image of a huddle full of brilliant, 20-year-plus systems engineers sitting in a room staring at a whiteboard with 'AI?' in the middle of it.

"Ok, everybody popcorn up some ideas. Don't be shy."

[one of them opens a laptop and begins fiddling with a flame graph]

So Bighead and Gavin Belson?

https://youtu.be/CFsRif1wVGs?si=5939fsuM2AigbB_9

At least that was plausibly related to browser development, vis-à-vis ChromeOS. With "AI services" they're totally dropping the pretext of caring about Firefox.

FirefoxOS may have died, but its fork KaiOS did quite well, shipping on tens of millions of cheap phones in developing countries.

I think these countries are moving to Android/iOS as they get wealthier, but the legacy of FirefoxOS was quite successful. It's just that Mozilla never got much out of it.

Is that true, or just a joke?

It's honestly hard to tell.

I swear 2019 was last year https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/04/introducing-mozilla-webthi...

Or blockchain, Or metaverse, Or something else utterly useless that no one wants or asked for

And hilariously, Mozilla screamed blue-bloody-murder when people asked for Webserial (which they define as a standard themselves!) in Firefox which would make flashing devices much easier, for developers and users.

One asshole Mozilla employee responded with "no, the danger is too great" and spouted a crazy theoretical involving someone's pacemaker getting connected to Firefox and malware blah blah blah.

People pointed out that Firefox access people's cameras and microphones, and Chrome offers Web Serial support and users have to allow the permission and pick a device to connect to, a site can't just connect to any serial device.

Cue handwaving about "we have higher standards than that smelly privacy-violating evil browser."

What a bunch of fucking clowns.

We laugh about it but at least it is not something cultural or political. I mean the bar is so low this focus is actually a plus in my book.

It is. Their interest in AI isn't about how to make it cheaper or more effective, it's how to make it "healthier" and "safer" by which they mean more ideologically controlled.

Damn. Welp, that’s corruption

Can you please elaborate on why you consider it corruption?

it's how to make it "healthier" and "safer" by which they mean more ideologically controlled.

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't read the actual details. I guess I still have too much good faith on these people.

Sigh.

I saw the same line and LOLed so hard.

LMAO the tech industry is such a joke.

What you sense is a tech CEO weaving the hot trend of the day into her resume to try and remain relevant and jump ship to another job.

Honest question: I use (and like) Firefox and rely on many of its features including password vault. However, should I be looking elsewhere? Any suggestions? (I avoid Google Chrome.)

Safari is fine (if you have a Mac), it’s great on battery life and I actually use it for web dev.

If you’re happy with Firefox I’d say just keep using it.

It's not. No uBlock Origin.

Yes that’s true, I do miss it but I’ve found 1Blocker and adguard home to be sufficient

Hmm I've taken a quick look at these two but I have questions:

- are their blocking lists public so they can be verified?

- adguard home seems to be a dns based solution that you install in your home... which means it won't help when you're on someone else's wifi

- also adguard is "protecting your children". I just want tracking protection not censorship.

No, it is still your only option. And using it is the best way of signalling that it is still an important browser.

I was getting uncomfortable with how I was tied into google chrome so I started storing my passwords in keepass.

No, why would you?

However, should I be looking elsewhere?

Why should you be looking else where if it is working well for you? Unless you feel so wrong about CEO's pay I dont see how it is relevant until the product quality declined.

Unfortunately, nothing non-Chromium based.

As for the password vault, I suggest you switch to Bitwarden. But for browsers? There isn't really much of a choice, it's either Firefox or Chromium-based.

Firefox will continue to survive for a long time, at least Mozilla has the money to do so for many many years. I would not panic, also because there is no other viable alternative to Chrome or Chrome/Webkit based browsers other than Firefox that I know of.

And Firefox is actually a very good browser and better than Chrome in some aspects.

Worrying about Mozilla CEO compensation when

1. Mitchell Baker is also chairwoman of the board of the Mozilla Foundation and is a founding member of Mozilla, and receives no stock compensation because there is none to give,

2. Google can definitionally outspend Mozilla on browser development and has used that to cement their market position for over a decade now, and

3. as long as Google is the primary source of Mozilla funding, they can (effectively) kill Firefox at any time, and diversifying revenue / building up a war chest of funds is the only defense against that,

just seems silly to me.

As a former Mozillian I don't like the choices Mitchell Baker has made (AI and services are poor plays IMO) but the obsession with CEO compensation at Mozilla has always smelled less like a genuine concern for alternatives to Chrome and more like holding a smaller player to an unreasonable standard.

A more interesting comparison would compare these numbers to the head of Chrome's compensation, and more specifically Chrome's spending and revenue vs Firefox's.

I think the general critique is: the performance of a CEO should be tied somehow to the performance of the company, yet year after year, the company performs worse while CEO compensation goes up.

An additional critique is that surely one of the many true-believers in old-school Internet ideals of freedom and openneess could lead for 1/10th the compensation

Then put the money saved towards allocating tens more top, full-time, aligned engineers to projects.

When I see leaders of a non-profit personally drawing more than is necessary to lead a comfortable life, I see a conflict between the mission and personal enrichment.

(There's the argument that non-profits need money, and supposedly you can't get good people to generate money except by hiring people who are personally money-motivated. But the evidence I see is that it looks like money and power potential attracts self-interested careerists, and you get people building fiefdoms, and incestuous relationships among them. Get an honest, smart, true-believer board, and anyone who tried to draw millions of dollars in compensation, or assemble an org chart of careerist execs, would get a regretful, "Sorry, this isn't that kind of 'non-profit' vehicle for wealthy executive lifestyles and careerists, and we don't seem to have alignment", as they gently dropkick the misaligned people out the door.)

An additional critique is that surely one of the many true-believers in old-school Internet ideals of freedom and openneess could lead for 1/10th the compensation

That doesn't translate. A believer in freedom and openness should be compensated more than a counterpart in the private sector so they can work even harder for the causes. They may not be in it for the money, but they shouldn't be punished financially because of their belief, as surely there are no lack of lucrative opportunities in for-profit organizations for them.

I disagree. $500K (and some degree less) is a perfectly comfortable living in even an expensive US city.

Not paying them millions is only "punished financially" if being rich well beyond comfortable is more important to them than the mission of the non-profit.

This "doesn't translate" only to people who have zero business leading non-profits. (Incidentally, capping compensation is an awesome cut filter, to eliminate people who are poorly aligned with the mission.)

Sure, there are classes of people who see something like non-profit CEO as their angle for wealth and status to which they feel entitled, when they can't get the for-profit CEO job they'd prefer. Not only are they innately misaligned with the mission, but they are also completely out of touch with the vast bulk of the people who non-profits typically are supposed serve. Keep them away from non-profits.

The director of Saint Jude's Children Research Hospital makes less than two million a year. How do you figure Baker is worth more than 3x that?

The list of major charities with much larger and more complex interests that Mozilla, yet lower executive pay, is quite long. Here is a sample: https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages...

She's massively overpaid, not only when you consider her performance but particularly so.

Right, but part of my point with #2 and #3 there is that "browser share" is a really poor choice for the performance metric in question to tie compensation to.

Browsers just duking it out on features and ease of use is not how the browser market works—Google can and does leverage their dominance in non-browser markets to boost their browser, and Mozilla is not going to raise their browser share against tactics like that if they simply focus really hard on making a better browser.

Tying it to a more functional goal like successful diversification of revenue makes much more sense (even if you disagree with how they did it in this particular case).

I think you've more or less hit the nail on the head. Computer/FOSS nerds (like myself) want to see Mozilla do good engineering and also gain browser market share; that's "good performance" to us. Investors want more revenue and better and more diversified revenue streams; that's "good performance" to them.

To be clear, Mozilla has no investors, the corporation is wholly-owned by the non-profit foundation. The value of a diversified revenue stream here is the ability to sustain the Foundation/Corporation and all of its projects, including Firefox, for the foreseeable future without the risk of Google just deciding to not renew their search deal and cripple the corporation any time it wants.

I am going to guess, and I may be wrong, it would be hard to find a single corporation that pays 1% of their revenue to its CEO as total compensation.

Governments have been creating web/native/mobile apps for some time, which is a trend that continues to accelerate. Firefox continues to limp along but seemingly can't even retain its most ardent fans, and there's no sign of this changing.

What if the EU were to fork Firefox (Openfox?) and fund its evolution of a privacy-first alternative? Among other benefits, this would:

• Help ensure that key digital infrastructure is not solely dependent on non-European entities.

• Balance the US's outsized role as a gatekeeper for web innovation.

• Support the EU's user privacy and data protection values and comply-by-default with EU regulations.

• Help bolster Europe's economic and tech independence.

What else?

In concrete terms, what would this fork change compared to current Firefox? Just shouting "privacy-first alternative" is pretty vague. Also, good luck getting enough sustainable funding for that kind of project from the EU.

Most of EU funding for OSS project is spread out to lots of projects, with relatively small amounts - Gnome got $1M recently and celebrated as a "big" milestone. I'm not saying that this is bad, but that's not how you can fund a core browser team.

for one: not giving in to every google whim.

recent examples: address bar becomes search bar. referrer header always sent cross domain with full url. webextensions3. hundreds of apis that only benefit ad "viewability" detectors. removal of websocket permission (like you have for notification etc). etc

soon: adding Floc

for one: not giving in to every google whim.

Yes, particularly they could enable an adblocker by default. Defaults matter and telling people that simply switching to [forked] Firefox to avoid ads would make for a compelling reason for normies to switch. And maybe they'd even stop hemorrhaging users to Brave, which already has this.

Pretty sure that their Google deal prevents them from shipping an ad-blocker enabled by default.

Taking up ownership of a large codebase is incredibly challenging. You can't just throw a lot of people at it and hope it works out. It takes time to develop expertise. If the organization orchestrating a fork of Firefox ended up paying many of the existing Firefox developers to work on its fork then it might have a chance

That's a pretty neat idea. I don't know if the people in power would get all of that, but I think you could sell them on balancing the US's influence.

- Keep Firefox alive as an alternative to Chrome. It doesn't feel like Mozilla is achieving that.

This has been on my mind for a long time. It would be good for everyone to have a real alternative to Chrome and it would be good for Europe to be less dependent on the US, as you mentioned.

In time, it might be possible to fund this off donations, but a bit of EU funding would go a long way to getting this off the ground. Unfortunately, the workings of EU funding programmes are a mystery to me.

The EU (or any government) has a slightly schizophrenic approach to privacy.

"Privacy? Awesome! Wait! Wait! Not from us! Ban it! Ban it!"

I'd focus on the "balance of power" aspect. But that can be achieved by marketing Firefox, you don't have to fork it.

State-based, forked software? Good grief!

No fork please. But do pay more contributors to work on the upstream codebase towards benefiting Firefox's downstream.

PS: don't forget eidas 2.0 has a loophole regarding SSL snooping, check EFF's article on eidas 2.0's article 45.

Wow, nearly 7 million. That’s incredible for a nonprofit CEO. Much, much large orgs have CEOs that get paid 10-15x less. This should be criminal. The taxpayers are being stolen from.

Which taxpayers exactly are you referring to?

Whoever is funding them can claim charitable donations as part of a write-off - I guess that's opportunity cost to the treasury?

Mozilla is a tar pit designed to prevent alternative browsers forming. Firefox deserves better.

nearly 7 million. That’s incredible for a nonprofit CEO. Much, much large orgs have CEOs that get paid 10-15x less

Correct.

For instance, the CEO of UNICEF USA makes 620k a year. https://www.unicefusa.org/about-unicef-usa/finances/financia...

Nonprofit does not necessarily mean taxpayer subsidized.

Mozilla Corporation is not a non-profit. It engages in many business relationships and brings in about half a billion dollars a year. How much should the founder-CEO of a 25 year old company with half a billion a year in revenue be making?

The CEO is paying income tax on that, presumably.

(×_×) We need a modular, open source browser engine desperately; one not beholden to Google or any other for profit entity. The Servo people are trying, but the task is enormous. I don't know what can be done (｡•́︿•̀｡)

The open source solution to Windows is not a os that runs windows applications. It's an OS which has it's own user space and application ecosystem. Sometimes I wonder why folks don't take the same tact with other platforms like the web. Alternatively, if you look at mobile, no one is seriously pursuing alternatives to Android. They just make Android based distros and no one seems to complain. What makes the web different?

Wait… does SerenityOS have special win32 support ala ReactOS?

Last I heard it only borrows Windows 95's aesthetics and nothing more.

The SerenityOS/Ladybird project has been making very steady progress towards that goal

https://ladybird.dev/

Ladybird is developing at an impressive pace, but it's nowhere close to being as usable as Servo, and it'll probably take a while before it can be. Even with the experienced and skilled developers Ladybird has attracted, it'll take a few years before it can compete with a project that had whole teams working on it full-time.

On the other hand, it could well become the de-facto standard browser for embedded applications, though. The browser frame can be ported to different UI frameworks quite easily and the code has practically no dependencies outside the project itself.

Could you elaborate on modularity?

Also Chromium is there, it's open enough to be a base for Chrome, Brave, Edge, and probably a few more, and it's open source, forkable at any moment Google adds something unpatchably bad. (of course independent implementations are welcome, but the ultimate goal is a healthier web through user freedom, and that doesn't necessitate Firefox directly, a ChromiumFox would be just as perfect)

Firefox will make a massive comeback if chromes kicks out Adblocker next year.

I would love to believe that..

Same as next year will be the year of mass adoption of Linux by consumers.

Yet history and trends point in the other direction

The recent Unity-Godot debacle would seem to indicate to me that titans aren't invincible. They can do a lot of harm to themselves when they overestimate how much people want or need their product.

Switching from Chrome to Firefox isn't even nearly as difficult as switching from Unity to Godot (or say, from Windows to Linux). For the average user, Chrome and Firefox are functionally identical. If Chrome kicks off Adblocker, Firefox will be obviously better for a lot of people.

Agreed it’s not a fair comparison. And I would love if Firefox gets more adoption (again)!

I have converted a lot of people in my bubble - also in general FF seems a lot more popular in EU than in the US, not sure why…

I think you mean Edge, Safari, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and those fancy new browsers. Firefox has become the Linux of web browsers.

Firefox, Brave, and other browsers will benefit for sure.

I feel like this question is a decade too late, but FF is open source right? Why hasn't Mozilla been jettisoned years ago?

Because despite what everybody seems to think, Mozilla spends several hundred millions of dollars every year developing Firefox, and that's not the kind of thing the community can just fork and replace.

WHAT? That seems like a gross misuse of funds because they're definitely not spending hundreds of millions fixing bugs. They must be spending it on useless changes like the 300th UI refresh no one asked for. Firefox still sucks in every way imaginable and it's not measurably getting better. That number is shockingly unbelievable. Their crapware is not worth that budget.

For comparison, look at what the OpenBSD team has accomplished (and continues to accomplish) with a small core team and they surely do not have hundreds of millions.

Feel free to build your own browser engine that stays up to date with the current web, supports nearly a hundred languages, and runs on basically every computer with a shoestring budget. It must be easy, that's why there are so many hobby projects that manage it.

I see. I asked the question because I legitimately didn't know, and haven't heard any conversation about it. Maybe that's because continuing Firefox outside of Mozilla seems like an insurmountable task, but doing nothing seems like a guaranteed dead end. I've been waiting a very long time for the ship to right, and it ain't happening.

I guess if what's Firefox needs is a reliable source of funding, at least recognizing that is a necessary first step. Who knows, maybe it could happen somehow.

Because a living community of developers able to work on a codebase is far more valuable than the codebase itself.

To the casual observer, it appears the CEO is being paid/rewarded to shed Firefox users.

Who would want them to do that?

Well, nearly all of Mozilla's revenue (I see numbers around 80-90%) comes from Google. And Google presumably doesn't mind if Firefox users switch to Chrome. I'm not sure if anyone involved actively considers this the goal, but it's possible that this creates some perverse incentives.

I just don't see how having their biggest revenue coming from their #1 competitor wrt browser adoption, can't create a plain and simple conflict of interests.

I'll bet $7 million of Google money could make any conflict look less interesting.

Marissa Mayer was paid more to accomplish even less. Maybe that's just what she's worth.

Does no mechanism exist to fire Mitchell Baker or, at least, addressing her leadership at Mozilla?

She answers to the board. I guess they're happy with her.

There’s an implicit public interest. You don’t get to do whatever you feel like just because you decide not to pay taxes.

Yes, the board is supposed to represent the public interest.

She's also the board chair so answers to herself, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Board

I guess the question - why can't Mozilla (or at least Firefox) - be like the Linux kernel or the Debian group? They are healthy open source projects, some funding from industry, sure, but they're staying current in the latest tech/comp-sci tech while not beholden to anyone in particular (I hope)

Organizational baggage?

Last time I checked the Linux Foundation had a similar problem, spending 2% on the Kernel development and the rest on the latest tech trends, AI, blockchain, metaverse etc.

Do you have any source for this? This would be quite shocking for me, if true.

I read it on the same site, didn’t check the actual report to confirm:

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5049241/linux-foundation-now...

Edit: checked it, figures are on page 158. they still spend 7,8 M$ on Linux kernel but it’s 2% of the total spend - to be fair a lot of the total is going to the community and related topics. Still a bit concerning. (I still think both the Linux Foundation and Mozilla are great organisations that should get more support to be clear)

I don't know about "Debian group", but absolute majority of kernel developers are full time employees of tech companies. Not sure what would be the incentive for those companies to pay bunch of people to develop privacy-focused browser full-time.

People complain all the time and nothing changes. She doesn't care and in a month everybody forget that Firefox is in dire straits.

Google's Chromium project push new standards every month or so, and web developers are fast to adopt these standards and don't care about testing it on Firefox anymore. The Chromium monopoly is already a reality.

You have reminded me about this. I failed an interview the other day because the site couldn't work with Firefox. I hate it. I have been forced to install Google chrome for just interviews and other things where Firefox fails. It seems like devs no longer do Firefox tests

The Chromium monopoly is already a reality.

Yes. They got it fair and square --- they paid Mozilla for it --- and they still are.

I've been using Firefox for years and rarely run into websites where something works on Chrome but not Firefox. The only one I can think of is my apartment's payment portal, and that website is just generally awful.

I believe the fault lies at the board. They are the ones who approve compensation for the CEO. The problem is it’s unclear to me how competent/independent the members of the board are. I don’t see any face I recognize, but that obviously means nothing. Do people know if there are any good people on the board?

The best option would be for someone to fork Firefox and perhaps get it sponsored by Apache foundation. Then we can write it off.

Firefox is my daily browser across multiple platforms, and I worry for its future.

Who is on the board?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/#boards

If they're trying to get rid of Firefox, then can I support whatever spin-off organization is just Firefox?

They did with Thunderbird, and Thunderbird is becoming better.

Thunderbird rejoined Mozilla - from Wikipedia

“ On January 28, 2020, the Mozilla Foundation announced that the project would henceforth be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corporation, in order to explore offering products and services that were not previously possible and to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations.[69][70]”

CEOs need to be stopped.

Yes, we must violently defend the business owners and cororate boards who hire them and sign their checks, while specifically attacking the CEOs themselves.

Forget scapegoating one group or another as "the" problem. A lasting solution to the diffuse solidarity, fair pay, and job security problems with the tech industry is worker-owned co-ops and nonprofits. Without the people doing the work that make the profits having equal participation in policy and ownership in the profits, there will always be a layer who does little to nothing yet demands more money. The problem is too many tech people presume they're making what they're worth when they're making wildly varying amounts with little or no security. Highly-productive shops with good morale and fairness will retain good people for longer than shitty places subject to the whims of golden parachute types, publicly-traded stock investors, and board of directors who are also majority owners.

Now may be a good time to support new browsers like Arc.

It's built on WebKit and this does not bring any diversity to the browser market, it's no different from Chromium-based browsers

WebKit isn't Blink anymore. The only thing keeping WebKit alive is apple's tight grip on the iOS browser engine, and that will likely be a thing of the past soon. Once that's gone, it's all going to be reskined chromium.

Since I think apple should open up iOS more, I hope WebKit develops a healthy marketshare outside of that ecosystem.

Mozilla intends to focus on A.I. -- so we can expect more A.I. investment, and possible A.I. services, in the year ahead.

back in March Moziila announced $30m for A.I. services [0]

what's weird is that wound business strategy is usually "what are our core strengths?" instead we get

A little over two years ago, Mozilla started an ambitious project: deciding where we should focus our efforts to grow the movement of people committed to building a healthier digital world. We landed on the idea of trustworthy AI. [1]

OK, despite my skeptisism what's the plan

Mozilla.ai’s initial focus? Tools that make generative AI safer and more transparent. And, people-centric recommendation systems that don’t misinform or undermine our well-being. We’ll share more on these — and what we’re building — in the coming months. [0]

While that's all very nice, who on earth are the customers? Is there a eshop somewhere lamenting "our recommendation system is not people centric" ?

[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-ai-i...

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozillas-vision-for-trus...

Is there a eshop somewhere lamenting "our recommendation system is not people centric" ?

I think they mean content recommendation systems used by social media. Mozilla Foundation likes to larp as a social media startup or something. Their big angle is that existing social media doesn't shut out 'bad people' e.g. people with opinions to the right of wherever the American west coast zeitgeist is this year. They want recommendation engines that only serve 'good people', or which engineer people's opinions to be more 'good'.

But of course they don't actually have a social media platform worth a damn for them to impose their own agenda onto, so it'll end up tacked onto a mastadon instance nobody uses, or incorporated into the 'New Page' of Firefox, or maybe turned into a browser extension that tries to block or inject stories on other social media websites. All a huge waste of time and money.

Sounds like they have this huge pile of cash and can't think of a way to improve Firefox with it in any way that seems gee whizz enough.

They tried hopping on Blockchain train and ended up jumping back off after getting roasted by JWZ [0] "we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals. ... [although] decentralized web technology continues to be an important area for us to explore."

I guess AI is gee whizz enough to escape the Planet Burning argument for now.

A piece of software - with climate goals.

They had a stab at VR with Mozilla Hubs [1] - and copied off Meta by also not including legs in the avatars! Your personal Hub for only $10 a month. Judging by the code commits it is, er, stable [2]. No-one explained how a GPU driven chatroom meets the climate goals!

Imagine if they put all that effort into innovating the browser.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/6/22870787/mozilla-pauses-cr...

[1] https://hubs.mozilla.com/

[2] https://github.com/mozilla/hubs/tree/master/src

I hope Mozilla leadership realises that Firefox is the only thing lending their company any credibility with their subscription products. Without Firefox, Mozilla VPN and any of their supposed "AI" products are just another also-ran in a saturated commodity market. That "subscription and advertising" line item on their balance sheet relies on Firefox, it doesn't replace it.

Firefox's nosediving market share should represent a catastrophic, company-endangering situation. It's depressing that they don't seem to understand that.

Revenue from Google is not falling fast enough for Baker to care any time soon. She'll be retired before it's a problem.

Maybe, at some point the Mozilla Foundation will acknowledge Firefox as the fundamental pillar of their relevance and existence ... instead of seeing it as this vestigial organ that they can't 'cut loose'[1] ... one can hope.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mark-surman-mozilla-25-y...

The word 'cut' and 'loose' don't appear in that linked blog post. Nor does the general idea you are suggesting.

What's the over/under on Firefox still existing in 2030? Man that's a depressing thing to have to say but that feels like that's where things are heading?

Play money, but https://manifold.markets/quther/will-mozilla-still-maintain-... has "Will Mozilla still maintain Firefox in 2030?" at 71%

How does this even happen?

Who's going to stop it? She's also Chairwoman of the Board.

tl;dr: we need an open source browser & infra, and there are candidates.

How c[u]ome, with all the power of open source we still do not have an open browser with an open sync infra?.

emotions aside, this is dumb (some words cannot be used). Why can't we, as a group, stop complaining, and actually devote real time hours into developing the serenity browser to work as chrome / brave / firefox?

Why can't we, use the knowledge we have gained from IPFS and actually work on a distributed no server sync platform?

Why can't I, simply stop using the mentioned above software and devote myself into something more hopefully reliable?

I think it is hard to lose your daddy and leave home, but it's something we all have to do in order to actually grow.

I don’t know if we need a new one. Firefox is still a good (the best?) browser IMO. Developing a new one is really difficult and many more intelligent people than me have failed doing it.

But if you feel like you have to act, do so and do a show HN; I’m always willing to give a new browser a try :-)

I think the narrative provided in the article is actually reasonable. Firefox is practically dead, but even worse with Firefox almost all of Mozilla's income stream is literally just a Google handout.

The article states that revenue from services is up from 50 to 70 million. Still only about 10% of what they make from Firefox, but at least that's independent revenue, going up, directly from consumers.

Can someone please provide a rational argument, not a kneejerk emotional response why focusing on the source of revenue that is Google independent and growing is not the better way to fulfill their stated mission, that is creating a privacy respecting and open web? People are acting like Ahab and the whale when it comes to Firefox, there's no point in dumping more resources into the thing if's going down anyway and makes you subservient to a tech monopolist.

If Firefox is dead then we're left with only two options: Google browser or Apple browser. I'm comfortable with none of them. Google has become a de facto monopoly with Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Chromium et al pretending it hasn't, and the rest of the market is Apple browser, and I'm not an Apple user and never will be. We should keep Firefox at all costs as a true alternative respecting user choices, such as not mandating manifest v3 and allowing users to control web browsing entirely.

This might be the first article I've read that has more charts than data points.

Owncloud was forked to become Nextcloud and seems to have gotten better for it.

Openoffice was forked to become Libreoffice and seems to have gotten beter for it.

Time to fork Firefox [1] and take over where Baker dropped the ball because she thought the rules of the game could be changed to make it no longer necessary to play to win.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533785

It's almost as if a competing browser co is paying majority of their salaries and lobbying the CEO to kill the only remaining competition by slowly stopping all development.

Wikimedia compensation is far better than what Mozilla is doing, nobody there receives > 1million$ in compensation: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

while in Mozilla a single person is receiving close to 7million dollars!

discussed a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37015592

Moz seems like a controlled opposition at this point.

As long time Mozzilla user since the Navigator days, it is sad to see Firefox going down, while the CEO gets money for nothing.

When Firefox is no more, the legacy will be Thunderbird and Rust, not the Web browser, and despite how they won over PNaCL, it is Chrome that drives WebAssembly.

Most companies die from slow starvation instead of murder.

IMO Mozilla is default dead and so is Firefox. With 500M of revenue, ~$7M going to CEO is >1% of revenue being sucked by CEO (not even net profit).

From a distant observer, Mitchell is a parasite.

The Chromium Hegemony is winning and Safari is barely alive.

Direct link to the reports:

https://stateof.mozilla.org/

2022 Audited Financial Statement: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...

2022 Form 990: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990...

Reposting what I wrote in 2021 [1], still holds true.

And here is another unpopular opinion. I dont care if her salary is 3 million or even 30 million. If she had managed to bring Firefox to 60% marketshare and bring down Chrome on Desktop, would you have still complained if she was paid 30 million?

The problem is Mozilla is in such a bad shape and she is under performing as a CEO.

Unfortunately people dont learn much from history. And history dictate the only way to solve this problem is that Mozilla think of it as a problem. Otherwise its current status at 10% marketshare is enough to sustain the operation. Nothing bad enough is happening, no interest or incentive for changes. Inertia. Let's keep thing this way.

So yes, it is counter intuitive. The only way to save Mozilla ( or change Mozill's direction, I guess the word "save" is a hyperbole, at least from Mozilla's perspective. ) isn't trying to get more user to use it. It is actually push people to abandon it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28961544

Here is a dopey idea, What if Wikimedia Foundation were to acquire Mozilla ?

Not saying the complaint isn't valid, but I see things trending in the right direction. Firefox is fast, support for add-ons is coming (back) to mobile, and Firefox is as free and open and modifiable as always. If we're talking things that are in managers hands, like features and usability, as opposed to user numbers, then the last year was good.

This isn't new [1].

There's a real opportunity here. People are increasingly distrustful of, say, Google. I use it because it's still performant, cross-platform and has sync. But , like many, are increasingly leerly abou tGoogle using Chrome's position to, say, attack ad blockers.

The ultimate question is how does and should Mozilla fund itself? Well, if the CEO can't lay out a vision and deliver on that then why are they still there? Why is their compensation still increasing despite not performing?

Instead we get platitudes about "add on services". Previously it was "VPN services" and now it's "AI services"? It's almost like the future revenue plan is always "<current buzzword> services".

[1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

While I don't feel as if I have enough knowledge to make a comment specifically about how the Mozilla Foundation is run, I do feel as if Firefox's uncertain future resulting from poor adoption is something that should be given priority given that the web browser market is roughly Firefox vs everything else.

I use both Ungoogled Chromium and Firefox on my main workstation, which runs Fedora Asahi Linux exclusively on Apple Silicon (I never boot into macOS), and should add that on aarch64, my overall experience with every Firefox build has been stellar. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about Ungoogled Chromium.

Google is just funding mozilla to avoid the legal headache (browser monopoly), right?

For all those being annoyed by the decreasing usage of FF in favor of Chrome: If Mozilla & FF died, couldn't this create better scenarios?

Idea: Google might get into legal trouble, maybe even having to lose chrome, opening the market or Chrome / Chromium base for a fresh start?

Mozilla should be renamed to Rust foundation and deprecate the Gecko browser engine.

1) Sigh 2) Firefox still works great though, I'm a very happy user!

If they are prioritizing projects other than Firefox, what are people’s favorite non-Firefox, non-Chrome/Chromium (for obvious reasons) browsers?

Firefox makes a lot of noise about their anti-tracking and pro-privacy features. I liked Suckless surf, but missed the granular JavaScript setting of noscript. And, I have no idea, but Privacy Badger must be doing something I guess?

Source: https://stateof.mozilla.org/

Is it normal for Non-Profits to not the include Income Statement in their financials? Because Mozilla doesn’t.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...

Looks like they’re entering the classic looting of the company by the executive team phase of the corporate lifecycle.

The best thing to do at this point is use one of the privacy-enhanced forks, Firefox is desperate for more cash and will sell you, the user, out for a song.

This just saying, "Bob's rent skyrockets, while his grocery purchasing plummets." No sht Bob is having a hard time buying groceries.

CEOs are important -- not intrinsically, but to survival. Their actions are important. Their decisions are important. Their attention is important. And there's a lot of competition for good ones. If you get a bad one, it's an existential crisis, and the good ones can always go elsewhere for more money.

Want to help nonprofits and small corps? Support the passage of laws limiting CEO pay.