Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% staff, drops advocacy division

Regardless, don’t use chrome.

We'll go back to gopher if we have to, it's time for burning chrome.
- Let's just separate GOOG from Chrome / Chromium and Google Search completely. So that the direction of the most used browser, most used search engine and the biggest advertiser don't circle jerk each other.
- Also, Ladybird is looking very promising, so in a few years we should have a true fourth browser engine.
- lynx ftw
If Mozilla does become defunct, it does raise the question of whether Chrome would be considered a Google monopoly, and therefore subject to antitrust legislation.
I can't imagine any governments would look kindly upon internet access being guarded behind a single company's product.
- I can’t imagine any governments would look kindly upon internet access being guarded behind a single company’s product.
  laughs in 2001
- Google should be subject to antitrust legislation regardless.
  Their position as a monopoly is what enables this.
- The firefox browser could exist without quite a lot Mozilla does. A large chunk of its cash isn’t spent on the browser.
- There is a new browser based on WebKit (safari), called Orion that looks promising. However, it’s only on macOS and iOS at this point. Hopefully Linux and Android will be a consideration at some point.
- Splitting Chrome from Google wouldn't make Chrome not a monopoly, though, right?
- They could try to employ some kind of Apple defense, like, you wouldn't hit Apple for having monopoly on iOS. As long as it's not the only solution on the market. And for web, most of time, you could access the same resources and get similar experience by downloading... the apps... wait, they have a monopoly on that, too. Well, they are completely screwed in that case.
If this Firefox trend continues, then we won't really have a choice in the matter anymore.
- You’d sacrifice your privacy because of layoffs?
I've moved to Vivaldi recently and it's been refreshingly not-suck.
- That’s good. Are you happy with the built-in privacy, or do you find extensions are needed?
  I’d still argue it’s chromium.
I’ll just use Safari
- With privacy extensions…

Gee, I can't imagine why they chose to drop this bomb today.

It's like they wanted it to be drowned in other news.

It's Mozilla. No one is going to see this anyway.
- I'm seeing it
Why, what else happened today?
I brought it up with my family, my tech friends and coworkers and half the them just blankly stared at like I didn't know what was happening. Both are important, one more than the other though.

Did the CEO take a pay cut?

- Okay I'll learn how to make better coffee
- Depends... will it generate shareholder value?
- Are you going to tell him "no?"
- Only if it wants too

CEO first please. He's not worth it

I suspect their financial position has changed. Perhaps Google's being found as a monopoly has made them decide not to help fund Mozilla's efforts as substantially.

Ashley Boyd lead the advocacy team, here's the kind of stuff they were doing:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-welcomes-ashley-boyd-vp-of-advocacy/

In fall of 2016, Mozilla fought for common-sense copyright reform in the EU, creating public education media that engaged over one million citizens and sending hundreds of rebellious selfies to EU Parliament. Earlier in 2016, Mozilla launched a public education campaign around encryption and emerged as a staunch ally of Apple in the company’s clash with the FBI. Mozilla has also fought for mass surveillance reform, net neutrality and data retention reform.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/05/mozilla-foundation-lays-off-30-staff-drops-advocacy-division/

“The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward,” read the statement shared with TechCrunch.

Reading between the lines, I'd keep an eye on them collecting your data and consider one of the privacy-focused forks.

consider one of the privacy-focused forks
The Foundation is not linked to Firefox.
- If by not linked you mean wholly owned by...
  https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/organizations/
  The Mozilla Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, works with the community to develop software that advances Mozilla’s principles. This includes the Firefox browser, which is well recognized as a market leader in security, privacy and language localization. These features make the Internet safer and more accessible.
Hundreds of selfies? Let's go ahead and strike that vein bullshit from the record.

GODDAMMIT MOZILLA. YOU ARE MAKING ADVOCATING FOR BETTER INTERNET HARD

This is more of a symptom the cause is the monopolization of the internet largely by Google
Unfortunately I don't think there's much Mozilla can do other than cut costs with it seeming like the Google funding will be getting severely hampered.
They can't get money from thin air.

"Give that CEO a raise!"

Another Mozilla

That'll certainly make it easier to pay the CEO.

It’s looking increasingly likely that the US Department of Justice is going to succeed in their antitrust efforts against Google. Currently, Mozilla gets something like 85% of their funding from Google for being the default search engine in Firefox. That may be deemed anticompetitive behavior by a judge, at which point Mozilla will be left with very little funding compared to their current situation.
I’d bet these actions are in anticipation of that happening.
- Yeah, and although it will be painful for Mozilla in the short term - it would be a good outcome. It was always bad that Mozilla's main source of funding was from their most powerful competitor. It's an obvious conflict of interest. And obvious way to skew decision making. ... But that money is just so addictive.
  There will be some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms if the money gets taken away, but everyone will be healthier in the long run... unless the overpaid CEO continues to suck in all the remaining money and leaves nothing for the people actually doing the work. That would be bad. In that case, if the corporate structure chokes the company to death, I suppose we'd be hoping for Ladybird, or something like it to take Firefox's place.

Everytime I see comments regarding Mozilla''s financials,I have the same effing question: How does a company like brave or opera maintain their browser ?? AFAIK both don't have the level of community backing that Mozilla does nor do they have any (again AFAIK) agreement with a company like google for default search engine placement

Brave and Opera are both forks of Chromium that incorporate upstream changes. Firefox is an entire browser.
- Fair enough. Didn't think that maintaining the engine is what Mozilla spends majority of it's Firefox budget on
They use chromium.
Firefox does not.
The grand majority of software engineering effort goes into the browser development that they never have to work on for the most part.
those are just rebranded chrome(ium). all browsers except firefox and safari are rebranded chromium or firefox. edit: there are some other projects but none are mature.
- Apple also maintains their own browser engine, but that's Apple.
Brave just tries to scam their users for money.
Like when they added "donate to the content creator" links on YouTube and such, then didn't actually give the money to the content creators.
BTW, about Opera - the newest events with OpenAI and other stuff and Winamp devs not being prosecuted for GPL violations all lead me to one thought.
Are leaked Presto sources really-really illegal to use?
Alongside what the other guy said, Opera definitely does have search engine deals, idk about brave since they launched their own. But brave has their own private advertising system

God bean counters ruin everything good related to tech

wouldn't it be nice if the profit motive wasn't the only driving force of the economy?

All of my favorite browsers are forks of Firefox. Lately it's been Zen browser. Watching Firefox smoulder and collapse over the years has been truly painful and makes me fear a chromium future in hell.

We are truly living in dark times.
Same. In the late 2000s or so my father knew ot so much about computers so some family friend set it up and he installed Firefox. I ve been using Firefox my whole life since. I tried switching to ungoogled chromeium, Brave and cromite on mobile but just can't. Like Firefox and its forks are in my muscle memory. It's over. I won't be able to use the internet anymore. Bye guys 👋

Their question is: how much would you pay for not using a Chromium based browser?

People switching to the browser and zapping all ads, demanding open source and vitriol for any kind of monetization. How can they survive? They would have to become a subsidized utility, which not even the Internet as a whole has achieved.

I wouldn't mind paying money for a good browser. I paid for Opera back in the day, and browsers are significantly more complex (and cost several orders of magnitude more to develop) now compared to back then.
There was a poll a while back on mastodon and the majority answered they'd be ok with 5$/year to support Firefox.
- The kind of people you find on Mastodon following Firefox news are not the same as the average person. They are a bubble.
  A few thousand people paying $5 per year is not enough to replace hundreds of millions.
I get not wanting to use a google, microsoft or crypto laden browser, but I would be willing to use a well supported browser that used chromium as the page rendering engine. It seems to be extremely difficult to get another engine to be competitive in the marketplace. Maybe the resources would be better spent putting the chromium engine inside a different container. I’m sure there would be drawbacks, but I think there would be compatibility benefits too.
- used chromium as the page rendering engine.
  I believe WebKit is Chromium's rendering engine, as is Gecko for Firefox.
  Opera used to have their own but now they're just rebranded Chromium.

Oh geez the leadership is making more mistakes.

Not necessarily. If they're low on cash then cutting unnecessary costs is not unreasonable. What is Mozilla's core goal? Perhaps the "advocacy" and "global programs" divisions weren't all that relevant to it, and so their funding is better put elsewhere.
- Let's wait and see how this funding won't be talked about ever again and later on the CEO coincidentally gets yet another raise

Wait they still had employees?

WTF. They had $1b banked a few days ago. This is a bit reactionary perhaps?

They're likely preparing for their funding from Google to be cut. Having a lot of money in the bank doesn't matter if your income is lower than expenses, since you'll run out of money eventually.
- Expecting millions to be cut is still extreme when you have a fucking billion in the bank.

Mozilla keeps digging Firefox's grave, and seeing how other opensource projects like Gimp struggle to even keep up with their own release schedule and very slow development rate. I fear we will be left with only chrome to use.

I fear we will be left with only chrome to use.
Will, ungoogled-chromium (Windows version) is an thing. So we got that.

I really wish Mozilla the best but if it were to fail I sure hope Ladybird will be stable by then.

On mobile, search Google for "election" and then try to zoom in on any state.

I guess the best option is to run edge in vm ...

So, run Chromium?
I don't see why you'd choose Edge. And you don't need a VM to run it in Linux - there are Linux packages readily available.

Why the heck did Mozilla need 120 employees for anyway? I hate that Firefox is updated so often because I always get Firefox Update Fatigue. I hope that fewer employees means fewer Firefox updates.

Just turn the updates off. Might want to remove the seatbelts from your car too, so annoying having to put them on and take them off every time you need to drive somewhere.
- Doesn't work. Firefox keeps nagging me to update every freaking time I open the browser. Now if they let me turn the nagging off it wouldn't be so bad.
  I want an update once per quarter, not once per week. Only more often than that if there is a critical security fix.
lol what?
Well this is a unique take. But don't worry, there's a Firefox for you, too. Try the ESR, or Extended Support Release, it
receives major updates on average every 52 weeks with minor updates such as crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates as needed, but at least every four weeks.
- Extended Support Release,
  Hey thanks for the info. I didn't know about this.
This is not even about Firefox, you griefer.