They're not going to be able to make a case to Google that they need $500M annually to only spend on a browser. They're barely in charge of their own company.
Genuinely can someone with knowledge of the business explain why they aren't simply doubling down on making Firefox better? Is there an existential problem facing them that they are trying to solve by adding AI into the browser?
Please enlighten me. How does one make a browser "better" these days?
- They were ahead of the game with extensions. Then everyone copied them.
- They were ahead of the game with tabs. Then everyone copied them.
- They were ahead of the game with containers. Then everyone copied them.
- They are still the best browser to use for an ad free internet experience.
- The only flaw I can think of, is they are not leaders in performance. Chrome loads faster. But that's because Chrome cheats by stealing your memory on startup.
How would you make FireFox better? When you say they should be making FireFox better, what should they be doing? Maybe they should hire you for ideas.
Because to me, they seem to be constantly trying to make FireFox better. It's just hit or miss.
Extensions was a hit. Tabs was a hit. Containers was a hit. They had a shit tonne of misses over the decades. We just don't remember them.
The crypto and ai stuff just happens to be a miss.
I feel the problem they're trying to solve with that is "EB isn't sufficiently pissed off with the gradually deteriorating user experience yet so instead of actually displaying the page we'll have a big modal popup telling him how great the AI tools are and how he should try them!"
I do not want to try your AI tools, Mozilla, yours or anyone else's.
A decent chunk of the users who bothered installing an adblock would also be bothered enough to install a FF fork with adblock, so I doubt the revenue increase would be much.
As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?
Well, is no mistery that today the best versioins of Firefox are the non official versions like waterfox and zen.
NObody trusts mozilla anymore, specially after they turned into an add company and started paying their CEOs exorbitating ammounts, considering what was being invested in their core business (supposedly making a better browser).
Unfortunately Firefox is basically already dead, it has an incredibly small market share and it will never grow again because their leadership is affected by the corporate mind virus.
I know most HN users are on Firefox, but they should get used to an alternative now, not when its inevitable death happens.
This Mozilla fiasco has convinced me that being a nonprofit isn't enough. We need a web browser that is actively hostile towards corporations and surveillance capitalism.
I just noticed last week that Chrome was putting multiple versions of some 4GB AI model [1] on my hard disk that I'd never asked for, so when I upgraded my laptop I took the opportunity to switch to Firefox, and now this.
My image of Mozilla as a bastion for user first software just shattered.
It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
And users would flee not just because they're seeing the ads but because Firefox is obviously the slowest browser again. Stripping the ads is a big performance boost, so right now Firefox feels snappier than Chrome on ad-laden pages.
> Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
Yes but keep in mind that’s not an individual problem that is solved by switching browsers. If a browser engine dies, the walls get closer and the room smaller. With only Chromium and WebKit left, we may soon have a corporate owned browsers pulling in whatever direction Google and Apple wants. I can think of many things that are good for them but bad for us. For instance, ”Web Integrity” and other DRM.
It might be financial beneficial once as an up-front payment,
but long term, as others have mentioned, really not good for the project to remove the only feature that gives firefox a defensible way to fill it's niche in the market.
>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
> I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.
I completely disagree. First of all the original quote is paraphrasing, so we don't know in which tone it was delivered, but calling something "off-mission" doesn't at all sound like "we'd do it for money" to me.
Sincerely, I'm just using Firefox ATM because of Sidebery.
If I could use something similar on Brave, I would go back in an instant.
My main issues with FF are that it is a battery hog on MacOS, doesn't have AV1 playing capabilities (or it has, but I would need to go through some configuring that I don't need to do in other browsers) and sometimes it stalls in certain pages (that's probably not FF fault, but that the web developers don't optimize for it... but still, it's not a problem on Brave, so, I don't really care for apologising for it).
We are missing the context how the statement was said in the interview. The CEO is new and not used to the scrutiny that position brings, especially for Mozillas CEO given their purported ideals. It is quite possible he said this as something absurd -> "If making money was our only goal we would have some other options. We could for example disable all adblockers, to get more money from our advertising sponsor Google, at least 150 million USD. But we can not and won't do that, as it would feel completely off-mission for everyone and harm us long-term. So we always keep our mission in mind." Then the journalists shortens it to the blip in the verge article and the reaction twists it around a bit more, assuming disabling adblockers was on the table as a serious suggestion.
Or it could be it really was on the table since they just entered the advertising business and think AI is the future of Mozilla, a "fuck those freeloaders", heartfelt from the Porsche driving MBAs in Mozilla's management. Who knows. But it's a choice which interpretation one assumes.
> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
LOL the day that Firefox stops me from running what I want is the day I'll get rid of it.
They...already do that? They stopped allowing unsigned addons, even if you allow them in about:config (a power-user feature). Even Chrome allows you to toggle the option to do that -- in a more user-friendly way! -- and actually honors it, so I don't think it's the massive security hole everyone claims.
Part of the "problem" is that people don't care about any of those products, except Firefox.
Mozilla needs to figure out how much they need to maintain Firefox, nothing else. I suspect that's not the entirety of the $200 million they currently spend on "development costs". Everything else they receive in donations and partnership fees should go directly into an investment portfolio which will be used to keep Firefox development active in the future.
If they didn't care about anything else, the Google money could fund Firefox for at least two years per yearly fee.
I dont know how anyone could take mozilla seriously after they integrated google analytics into it about 10 years ago for no reason I can fathom. It immediately made me think somethings off, and I never used it again.
Instead I thought screw it and just went nuts deep into chrome, atleast it was more functional.
ps - ( apparently mozilla took it out sometime later , but to me the damage to its reputation was done)
yes I explained the irony it’s clear you missed if you read my comment again you will understand that I decided to opt for full functionality albeit at the expense of loss of total privacy after being let down my Mozilla.
If you’re still struggling you can use an llm to try and explain my comment to you.
>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
> It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.
Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M USD".
Do you really harbor so much charity towards tech CEOs that you can't see its other meaning as at least equally as likely?
It costs Mozilla literally nothing to reassure its privacy and user-controlled principles. Instead we got a jk...unless... type of response. This is cowardice and like another commenter has said, a negotiation offer disguised as a mission statement.
"feels off mission" exposes how little conviction there is behind this position.
That is a flimsy tissue paper statement about a concept that should be a bedrock principle.
It's irrationally charitable to give it any credit at all. Especially in context where anyone who's awake should understand they need to be delivering an unquestionably clear message about unquestionably clear goals and core values, because this ain't that.
Or rather, it is a clear message, just a different message to a different audience.
It isn't even true that it would bring $150M. This is a calculation accounting on users staying on Firefox.
If they do that, most of the remaining users would flee and goodbye to your millions if you don't have any userbase anymore to justify asking money to anyone.
I mean, that's also exactly what you would say if you had a $150M offer on the table, had received a lot of push back and were now just checking the waters and waiting to consolidate your position.
I have seen these discussions in companies where privacy is the selling point.
These kind of questions usually come from non-engineers, people in product or sales who see privacy as a feature or marketing point, and if the ROI is higher they don't give a fuck and would pitch anything that would make a buck
"Uncharitable interpretation" is putting it mildly. I don't know the context for the quote but imagine being the CEO. You might give one hour interview outlining the tradeoffs you need to do to keep things running, and a random blogger takes a 5 second clip, makes an absurd interpretation and ends up on hackernews.
Can someone explain how banning ad blockers from Firefox would bring in money for Mozilla? I can see how it would bring in money for other actors such as news outlets, YouTube, etc., but Mozilla doesn't have a big website where they are showing ads.
CEOs are well known for turning down money, and always resisting the urge to squeeze every last drop of good will from an acquired property, right?
I think it's an apt warning, I'd have to read the literal interview transcripts to really draw a conclusion one way or the other. But the simple fact that this is on his mind, and felt like mentioning killing ad block was something Mozilla could do, and is considering doing, was a safe thing to say to a journalist... There's not a chance in hell I'd say anything remotely like that to a journalist.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
I'm concerned about the original quote which has a very weak sentiment. "it feels off-mission". Not something strong like "I'm completely against it" or "we'll never do that".
Even better would be similar to the article sentiment: "we could get 150 million now but degrade one of our few features that distinguishes us from other browsers + break a lot user trust, which would bring greater losses in the long term".
I wish the CEO of Mozilla could have stated the commitment a little more strongly than “it feels off-mission”. Privacy, user control, and security of the web browsing experience are (or should be) the CORE of Mozilla's mission. This isn’t a decision to take lightly on vibes. Allowing ad-blockers (or any content manipulation plugins users want) should be a deep commitment.
It costs the CEO of Mozilla nothing to make hard, convicted statements that all their users agree with. If it was me, the quote would be something like "but then they'd need to find a new CEO, because I'd be in prison for what I'd do to anyone who even suggested it".
Literally the only people who talk about Mozilla, or read things about what Mozilla is up to, are unusually motivated power users who really, really care about ad blocking and privacy. They may still have other users, but those people are coasting on momentum from when their grandkid installed Firefox on their computer years ago. They're not reading interviews with the new CEO. Yet Mozilla seems to consistently fail utterly at messaging to their only engaged users.
It's not even that they're doing evil shit, they're just absolutely terrible at proclaiming that they are committed to not doing evil shit.
"It feels off-mission" is incredibly weak opposition to something that would go against core values. It just means this guy's price is higher than 150 million dollars.
Everybody has their price. I'm ideologically opposed to advertising but if someone put 150 million dollars on my table and told me to stop making an issue out of it I think I'd take the money. Being set for life trumps being called a hypocrite.
I only use Firefox over Chrome because it has adblock. So where does the $150 million comes from if people won't use it without adblock? Seems comrade didn't think this through...
The original quote was apparently said without an understanding of the customer base as if ad blockers were not a core piece of their value proposition.
This person doesn't understand their customer if they think it's going to bring in more money to cut ad blockers... It would bring in far less money because they would lose most of their customer base. It's not off mission: it's off Target.
Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, I guess I can see the temptation to try to regain it by reaching out to others, but doing that at the expense of your core is a terrible business strategy. It's not like those users are all that sticky, they're leaving as Mozilla pisses them off, and likely Mozilla are going to be left with what they stand for - which these days is nothing.
It's sad, I'm sure there was a better path Mozilla could have taken, but they've had a decade or more of terrible management. I wonder if the non-profit / corp structure hasn't helped, or if it's just a later-stage company with a management layer who are disconnected from the original company's mission and strategy.
> Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience.
Who is Mozilla's core audience? From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon.
> They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak,
To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would still have lost big since their peak. The market for alternative Browsers isn't as big any more as it used to be.
> Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience.
I’ve seen this across several industries now.
The “core audience” is too small and too particular. There is another audience, much easier to please, much much larger, much more money can be made off them. Why stick to your niche “core audience”?
Conspiracy theory: Mozilla leadership is bad on purpose as a form of sabotage. Erode the fan base until it just wears away and dies on its own. Then there will be no one to challenge the Microsoft Google Apple hegemony.
189 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread- They were ahead of the game with extensions. Then everyone copied them.
- They were ahead of the game with tabs. Then everyone copied them.
- They were ahead of the game with containers. Then everyone copied them.
- They are still the best browser to use for an ad free internet experience.
- The only flaw I can think of, is they are not leaders in performance. Chrome loads faster. But that's because Chrome cheats by stealing your memory on startup.
How would you make FireFox better? When you say they should be making FireFox better, what should they be doing? Maybe they should hire you for ideas.
Because to me, they seem to be constantly trying to make FireFox better. It's just hit or miss.
Extensions was a hit. Tabs was a hit. Containers was a hit. They had a shit tonne of misses over the decades. We just don't remember them.
The crypto and ai stuff just happens to be a miss.
- Enable Color Management and HDR display on non-MacOS platforms
- Play HDR video
- Support common and rising media codecs and container formats (HEVC, MKV, JXL)
- Support WebXR properly on desktop
I do not want to try your AI tools, Mozilla, yours or anyone else's.
The Mozilla Foundation has received around USD ~26 million in 2023 in donation from the Mozilla Corporation (~70%) and other sources (~30%).
As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?
NObody trusts mozilla anymore, specially after they turned into an add company and started paying their CEOs exorbitating ammounts, considering what was being invested in their core business (supposedly making a better browser).
I know most HN users are on Firefox, but they should get used to an alternative now, not when its inevitable death happens.
Firefox is a unique browser that is, in many ways, positioned to be the best browser. It's fast, fairly privacy preserving, and not built on chromium.
My image of Mozilla as a bastion for user first software just shattered.
[1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/get-started
Alternatives like maybe a fork of Firefox with the adblocker-blocker removed?
Yes but keep in mind that’s not an individual problem that is solved by switching browsers. If a browser engine dies, the walls get closer and the room smaller. With only Chromium and WebKit left, we may soon have a corporate owned browsers pulling in whatever direction Google and Apple wants. I can think of many things that are good for them but bad for us. For instance, ”Web Integrity” and other DRM.
Firefox is only good for getting forked into better browser like Mullvad Browser, LibreWolf and Tor Browser.
> I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.
I completely disagree. First of all the original quote is paraphrasing, so we don't know in which tone it was delivered, but calling something "off-mission" doesn't at all sound like "we'd do it for money" to me.
If I could use something similar on Brave, I would go back in an instant.
My main issues with FF are that it is a battery hog on MacOS, doesn't have AV1 playing capabilities (or it has, but I would need to go through some configuring that I don't need to do in other browsers) and sometimes it stalls in certain pages (that's probably not FF fault, but that the web developers don't optimize for it... but still, it's not a problem on Brave, so, I don't really care for apologising for it).
Or it could be it really was on the table since they just entered the advertising business and think AI is the future of Mozilla, a "fuck those freeloaders", heartfelt from the Porsche driving MBAs in Mozilla's management. Who knows. But it's a choice which interpretation one assumes.
> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
LOL the day that Firefox stops me from running what I want is the day I'll get rid of it.
Edit: My Hitler parody of when Firefox introduced this (almost 10 years ago now!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taGARf8K5J8
Though, on this line:
"The whole point of Firefox is that I can customize it all I want".
You realize that with more customization comes more fingerprinting? :-)
Firefox
Mozilla VPN
Mozilla Monitor
Firefox Relay
MDN Plus
Thunderbird
-
Some of these products are just repackaged partnerships.
-
Firefox - Funded by Google with the search partnership bringing in $500M in revenue. (free)
Mozilla VPN - Repackaged Mullvad VPN and using Mullvad servers.
Mozilla Monitor - Repackaged HaveIBeenPwned. (free)
Firefox Relay - No different to Simplelogin and not open source. (free)
MDN Plus - Be honest, you wouldn't pay for this since this was offered for a long time for free, MDN is already free.
Thunderbird - Most likely funded by Google (free) (using Firefox Search Revenue)
-
Be honest, would you pay for any of Mozilla's products when most of these can be found for free or close to free?
That is the problem.
Mozilla needs to figure out how much they need to maintain Firefox, nothing else. I suspect that's not the entirety of the $200 million they currently spend on "development costs". Everything else they receive in donations and partnership fees should go directly into an investment portfolio which will be used to keep Firefox development active in the future.
If they didn't care about anything else, the Google money could fund Firefox for at least two years per yearly fee.
I would pay for Firefox if it was focused on privacy and customizabilty, not telemetry and LLMs.
Instead I thought screw it and just went nuts deep into chrome, atleast it was more functional.
ps - ( apparently mozilla took it out sometime later , but to me the damage to its reputation was done)
If you’re still struggling you can use an llm to try and explain my comment to you.
All the best buddy
> It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.
Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M USD".
It costs Mozilla literally nothing to reassure its privacy and user-controlled principles. Instead we got a jk...unless... type of response. This is cowardice and like another commenter has said, a negotiation offer disguised as a mission statement.
That is a flimsy tissue paper statement about a concept that should be a bedrock principle.
It's irrationally charitable to give it any credit at all. Especially in context where anyone who's awake should understand they need to be delivering an unquestionably clear message about unquestionably clear goals and core values, because this ain't that.
Or rather, it is a clear message, just a different message to a different audience.
If they do that, most of the remaining users would flee and goodbye to your millions if you don't have any userbase anymore to justify asking money to anyone.
These kind of questions usually come from non-engineers, people in product or sales who see privacy as a feature or marketing point, and if the ROI is higher they don't give a fuck and would pitch anything that would make a buck
Interpreting the Mozilla CEO the same way may not be charitable, but it is certainly familiar.
[0]: https://futurism.com/future-society/sam-altman-adult-ai-reve...
I think it's an apt warning, I'd have to read the literal interview transcripts to really draw a conclusion one way or the other. But the simple fact that this is on his mind, and felt like mentioning killing ad block was something Mozilla could do, and is considering doing, was a safe thing to say to a journalist... There's not a chance in hell I'd say anything remotely like that to a journalist.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
Even better would be similar to the article sentiment: "we could get 150 million now but degrade one of our few features that distinguishes us from other browsers + break a lot user trust, which would bring greater losses in the long term".
Literally the only people who talk about Mozilla, or read things about what Mozilla is up to, are unusually motivated power users who really, really care about ad blocking and privacy. They may still have other users, but those people are coasting on momentum from when their grandkid installed Firefox on their computer years ago. They're not reading interviews with the new CEO. Yet Mozilla seems to consistently fail utterly at messaging to their only engaged users.
It's not even that they're doing evil shit, they're just absolutely terrible at proclaiming that they are committed to not doing evil shit.
Everybody has their price. I'm ideologically opposed to advertising but if someone put 150 million dollars on my table and told me to stop making an issue out of it I think I'd take the money. Being set for life trumps being called a hypocrite.
The original quote was apparently said without an understanding of the customer base as if ad blockers were not a core piece of their value proposition.
This person doesn't understand their customer if they think it's going to bring in more money to cut ad blockers... It would bring in far less money because they would lose most of their customer base. It's not off mission: it's off Target.
It's sad, I'm sure there was a better path Mozilla could have taken, but they've had a decade or more of terrible management. I wonder if the non-profit / corp structure hasn't helped, or if it's just a later-stage company with a management layer who are disconnected from the original company's mission and strategy.
Who is Mozilla's core audience? From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon.
> They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak,
To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would still have lost big since their peak. The market for alternative Browsers isn't as big any more as it used to be.
I’ve seen this across several industries now.
The “core audience” is too small and too particular. There is another audience, much easier to please, much much larger, much more money can be made off them. Why stick to your niche “core audience”?