Firefox usage down 85%, exec pay raise 400%

Mozilla recently announced that they would be dismissing 250 people. That's a quarter of their workforce so there are some deep cuts to their work too. The victims include: the MDN docs (those are the web standards docs everyone likes better than w3schools), the Rust compiler and even some cuts to Firefox development. Like most people I want to see Mozilla do well but those three projects comprise pretty much what I think of as the whole point of Mozilla, so this news is a a big let down. [...]

One of the most popular and most intuitive ways to evaluate an NGO is to judge how much of their spending is on their programme of works (or "mission") and how much is on other things, like administration and fundraising. [...] Mozilla looks bad when considered in this light. Fully 30% of all expenditure goes on administration. Charity Navigator, an organisation that measures NGO effectiveness, would give them zero out of ten on the relevant metric. [...]

Mozilla now thinks of itself less as a custodian of the old Netscape suite and more as a 'privacy NGO'. One slogan inside Mozilla is: "Beyond the Browser".

Regardless of how they view themselves, most of their income comes from helping to direct traffic to Google by making that search engine the default in Firefox. Google make money off that traffic via a big targeted advertising system that tracks people across the web and largely without their consent. Indeed, one of the reasons this income is falling is because as Firefox's usage falls less traffic is being directed Google's way and so Google will pay less.

There is, as yet, no outbreak of agreement among the moral philosophers as to a universal code of ethics. However I think most people would recognise hypocrisy in Mozilla's relationship with Google. Beyond the ethical problems, the relationship certainly seems to create conflicts of interest. Anyone would think that a privacy NGO would build anti-tracking countermeasures into their browser right from the start. In fact, this was only added relatively recently (in 2019), after both Apple (in 2017) and Brave (since release) paved the way. It certainly seems like Mozilla's status as a Google vassal has played a role in the absence of anti-tracking features in Firefox for so long.

From:
http://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

One of the co-founders of Netscape brought this up the other day.

Also, when Mozilla ejected Brendan Eich, despite the distraction and noise, it was really about giving in and letting the W3C pound DRM into the WWW's standards. At that point, problems became very serious.

Brave was the result of that ejection but it is not a separate browser, it is just a slightly modified version of Chromium. Same with M$ Edge, which is also a slightly modified version of Chromium. With the imminent demise of Firefox, it is likely that Alphabet's Google will be left in defacto control over the web. The W3C has been rendered irrelevant and the web is now about what Facebook and Google decide it is. With Google in charge of the remaining browser and the relative impossibility of anyone getting a new one off the ground, at any price, that means Google has soon captured the Web. It won't take much more effort to capture e-mail, too, while they are at it. Mozilla seems to be letting this happen.

Mozilla's current CEO has no real explanation of why the executive compensation is so unreasonably high, especially for a non-profit. Her attempt at dodging an explanation was basically a lot of mumbling about how all CEOs are doing it, in other words a fallacy. Nor does she explain why Mozilla is failing to address the Web as a standard.

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist Mozilla seems to be letting this happen.

Mozilla get their google money and they can develop their browser and pontificate about privacy and the web all they want. They are a "competitor" to google - the only viable competitor - which google ultimately controls. If google pull out their deal, the money is gone and the CEO is gone... you only have to follow the money there.

almost every other "modern" browser such as those you mention and Opera and Vivaldi and some more are based on the chromium project and as such dependent on google's codebase and the work of google software engineers for their end product.

This is much worse than the MSIE situation of the 1990s - but apparently totally acceptable.

It's "Open Source (TM)" in action.

The biggest problem that Firefox has, it that it really fails to create a use case for itself anymore.

There was a time when security was a concern with IE having more holes than a sieve, but then Google paid sizeable bounties for fruitful pen-testing of Chrome which is of course also a sandbox - so was a sound choice for security.

Over the years, Google at least built an ecosystem for themselves across search - Chrome - Gmail - SSO - password management - Android - YouTube - etc. These things hold real value but while 'free' to end users they are not 'free' for Google to provision.

As with all things, the provision of these services are therefore a transaction where Google need to receive something in return to be viable, and the reality is that (as with Facebook) the prevalent currency in that transaction is YOU and the marketing reach and insight for YOU that can be sold on to third parties.

Personally I don't care if Google want to show me ads as I move across the web. I make use of their services daily, from password management to SSO to search to inbound web traffic we generate from their users. I do wish they'd push less ads into my kids' eyeballs on YouTube though.

With the new Edge not just being Chromium-based but also offering Google-style data-sync across Microsoft 365 users with sufficient licensing (in the commercial space) and of course being one less thing to keep updated separately - Firefox is now bottom-tier for business users too.

Firefox is still a decent 'browser'. But what does that even mean anymore? As people have become more engaged with the web, including the proliferation of 'smart' mobile devices, people now don't just want a browser they want a window to an ecosystem. Whether it is Safari (iOS/Mac) Chrome (Android) or Edge (Windows).

Firefox is not an ecosystem. It's now an outsider.

Just my 2 cents of course.

Now that I find a way to install Chromium without Snaps, I gave up on Firefox.

Was confused why this wasn't in my New Subscribed Threads list - the answer is because it's a duplicate - here's the more active thread:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/firefox-usage-down-85-exec-pay-up-400-a-4175682627

Originally Posted by forevergroup The biggest problem that Firefox has, it that it really fails to create a use case for itself anymore. There was a time when security was a concern with IE having more holes than a sieve, but then Google paid sizeable bounties for fruitful pen-testing of Chrome which is of course also a sandbox - so was a sound choice for security. Over the years, Google at least built an ecosystem for themselves across search - Chrome - Gmail - SSO - password management - Android - YouTube - etc. These things hold real value but while 'free' to end users they are not 'free' for Google to provision. As with all things, the provision of these services are therefore a transaction where Google need to receive something in return to be viable, and the reality is that (as with Facebook) the prevalent currency in that transaction is YOU and the marketing reach and insight for YOU that can be sold on to third parties. Personally I don't care if Google want to show me ads as I move across the web. I make use of their services daily, from password management to SSO to search to inbound web traffic we generate from their users. I do wish they'd push less ads into my kids' eyeballs on YouTube though. With the new Edge not just being Chromium-based but also offering Google-style data-sync across Microsoft 365 users with sufficient licensing (in the commercial space) and of course being one less thing to keep updated separately - Firefox is now bottom-tier for business users too. Firefox is still a decent 'browser'. But what does that even mean anymore? As people have become more engaged with the web, including the proliferation of 'smart' mobile devices, people now don't just want a browser they want a window to an ecosystem. Whether it is Safari (iOS/Mac) Chrome (Android) or Edge (Windows). Firefox is not an ecosystem. It's now an outsider. Just my 2 cents of course.

This is very interesting... I believe in the near future there will be no browsers anymore and your device,browser,antivirus will be one. Obviously google and apple are the forerunners of this, some might say this has already happened and in a way they're right.

Sorry I was going to add your device,browser,antivirus,social media account, messenger will be as one system. Some might say Apple already doing this, in a way microsoft too. This was bound to happen, all browsers will be no longer in use soon and the systems will become more consolidated.

Mozilla used to be better...

FTP is to be removed. Probably great for those who don't use it, as is always the case. The reasoning is security, bugs, maintaining it, etc.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021...in-firefox-90/

Originally Posted by forevergroup I do wish they'd push less ads into my kids' eyeballs on YouTube though.

A couple of Firefox addons and your kids will never see ads anymore. My own default set are: https everywhere, noscript, ublock origin, privacy badger - I see no adds on youtube.

Originally Posted by cored Mozilla used to be better...

And trustworthy! It was my second browser (after default IE), which my 19y.o. teen-ish mind opted for for simply being something not M$-related, no privacy concerns yet. Now look what Mozilla's rumoured about... It's a shame! Another shameful moment was when Opera (another trustworthy web-browser of the time) was announced to be unreliable in terms of privacy, especially after it was sold to a Chinese company, if I'm not mistaken, and one of its founders left the company after making a similar announcement explaining his reason for departure to build Vivaldi soon after that...

On the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining... That's how we, especially the whole IT community, develop, paying the due price for neglecting our responsibilities and missing the benefits that this evolution brings with it, with privacy being one of the trending aspects of the ongoing process.

Originally Posted by pinqvin Another shameful moment was when Opera (another trustworthy web-browser of the time) was announced to be unreliable in terms of privacy, especially after it was sold to a Chinese company, if I'm not mistaken, and one of its founders left the company after making a similar announcement explaining his reason for departure to build Vivaldi soon after that...

Opera went down the tubes when it abandoned the Presto engine and rebased on chromium/blink. That was long before the Chinese buy out and Opera/Otello split.

Originally Posted by cynwulf Originally Posted by pinqvin Another shameful moment was when Opera (another trustworthy web-browser of the time) was announced to be unreliable in terms of privacy, especially after it was sold to a Chinese company, if I'm not mistaken, and one of its founders left the company after making a similar announcement explaining his reason for departure to build Vivaldi soon after that... Opera went down the tubes when it abandoned the Presto engine and rebased on chromium/blink. That was long before the Chinese buy out and Opera/Otello split.

Indeed, when Opera became yet another Chromium rebrand there stopped being much point to it. Whilst that was long before the buy-out, it was after Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner (one of its founders) left, so it is possible his departure was what sent/allowed Opera to go downhill.

We presumably don't know when the creation of Vivaldi was decided upon, or how long the buy-out was in the works before becoming public, but the timeline appears to be...

2010/01/05 - JSvT stepped down as CEO into advisory role.
2011/06/27 - JSvT left Opera Software.
2013/02/12 - Opera dropped Presto for Webkit.
2013/04/03 - Opera dropped Webkit for Blink.
2013/10/31 - future closure of My Opera community site announced.
2014/01/23 - JSvT launched Vivaldi Technologies and vivaldi.net replacement for My Opera.
2015/01/27 - First preview of Vivaldi browser, based on Chromium (Blink).
2016/02/11 - proposed buy-out of Opera Software by Chinese consortium announced.
2016/11/04 - completed buy-out of Opera Software by Chinese consortium.

Originally Posted by cynwulf FTP is to be removed. Probably great for those who don't use it, as is always the case. The reasoning is security, bugs, maintaining it, etc. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021...in-firefox-90/

May more of them learn to use FTP and various other tasks by using their terminal(s)
:-)