Google fund Mozilla 81% of their revenue 510 million dollar out of 593 million. I don't how they earn 83 million by VPN and donation but their VPN is Jackshit. Google is paying them for so long because they wants to avoid antitrust lawsuits in the US. By keeping Firefox around and “competing” with them, Google can argue that they don’t have a monopoly.
But the problem runs deeper. Mozilla’s leadership—especially the CEO—is raking in absurd amounts (around 6 million as their salary) of money, which seems completely unjustified. They have 7000 employees over the world but all they are fixing bugs over a decade. They give 240 millions to all their department but no one know where rest of money goes that Google gave to them. And you also haven't seen a single AD from firefox over a decade makes you what are they doing. Open-source community can do better than this. Their market share is shrinking which is near 2.5% now , and they’re not making any serious moves to challenge Chrome’s dominance. They never introduce any serious alternative to any Google services like search, mail, anything.
Instead of actually competing, Mozilla just kind of coasts along, keeping up appearances. Meanwhile, their CEO is sitting on a mountain of cash, which raises a big question.
This whole situation stinks of greed and a lack of genuine competition. Mozilla could be doing so much more to push back against Google’s dominance, but as long as they’re funded by Google, it feels like they’re just another cog in the machine, designed to keep Google safe from regulatory scrutiny.
What do you all think?
I do often see blogs of what they're doing, from products to talks to hosting events etc. for, among others, a more free internet.
That said, a company with 600 million USD revenue, with a CEO taking 1% of that revenue by themselves, is pretty standard. Higher percentage in much smaller companies.
But I do agree, if 81% of their revenue comes from Google investments, and Google uses “Well Firefox exists” as an excuse for a lack of competition, then that is shady.
This is called Controlled Opposition.
The Oil Companies do the same thing -- fund the leaders of anti-oil activists in countries where they are not #1 and use them as a proxy to target and harm their competitors.
Profit. Rinse & repeat.
Mafia tactics. The oil companies let government money and investors innovate in the solar industry and pay all the upfront costs. Then did a controlled collapsed and bought the companies IP up in bankruptcy for pennies to the dollar. And now that the oil companies own the Patents & IP it's totally okay for you to morally buy their products.
The bottom line is that The House Always Wins and what matters is who is allowed to collect the money for the grift. Territory of who is allowed to buy & sell on what streets.
We would be better off if Firefox didn't exist and the EU broke up Google for Anti-trust. At least then Manifest v3.0 DRM might not have come to be.
Nothing new. Mozilla could disappear tomorrow and a few dozens of people may notice it, if even. They're basically useless at this point.
The Web Browser is the new TeleVision.
There is too much financial power to corrupt for us to win this fight.
The way out is to ditch HTTPS, HTML & CSS and create a new spec that is purposely limited in its scope suchas Gopher or Gemini (although I might argue Gemini is slightly too narrow as I think it would need Images, Audio & Video and maybe Input Forms depending on scope)
HTTP & HTML must die. It had a good run, it's time for a new Hyper v2 world outside the mainstream downtown doofus hangouts of social media & Advertising impersonating Internet Things like search, social & email.
We need a new web browser without all the legacy garbage & complexities. Without the DRM corruption shoehorned by Amazon, Disney, Netflix & Google.
And it needs to be limited by design to just what is needed so financial interests can't corrupt & screw it up.
