The DOJ wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google’s own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox — whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense — competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence.
Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla’s revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization’s for-profit arm — which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added.
Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make “significant cuts across the company,” Muhlheim testified, and warned of a “downward spiral” that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could “put Firefox out of business.” That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change.
Reduce exec pay to normal levels.
Funnel most of the funds to the Firefox department.Stop acting like a tech start-up and become a worker owned co-op instead.
Allow people to give to firefox directly, like they do with thunderbird.
Sure, why not
Sue Google for damage from it’s monopoly. There’s your money right there.
I like the way you think!
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This is what I came here to say. This is a sovereignty issue they could solve with a miniscule portion of their defense budgets.
The mozilla foundation needs to be gutted or dissolved. Why do you need so much money? Oh, is it maybe because your fucking execs gobble it all up while the devs scrounge for scraps and the community contributes for free to your projects, you fucking executive pigs?
I hope it crashes and burns. I would bet serious money that the softare projects would not only survive but thrive without them.
If you actually had a look at their actual numbers, they’re a charity you know, they’re public, you’d see that the bulk of money is spent on charity. Mozilla has never been a charity to develop Firefox, Firefox has always been the breadwinner for Mozilla’s charity operations.
I did, i abso-fucking-lutely did look at their numbers.
The 2024 numbers are not fully in, we can take a look at 2023. here is a link for you to follow along - https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-fdn-2023-fs-final-short-1209.pdf
I am skipping the income part, because its clear where they get the vast majority of their money.
[in millions, rounded up] Total revenue: $653
From which expenditures:
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Program staff: $202.4
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Management: $123.4
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Fundraising: $2.4
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Non-salary expenses: $162.2
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Grants and fellowships: $6.4
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Income tax: $14.4
Total expenditure: $511.1
So when you say “the bulk of money is spent on charity”, do you mean salaries? Because from what I can see, that is where the “bulk” is.
The charity part, from the 2023 revenue is 1%.
I was talking about the foundation itself, not foundation+subsidiaries. And yes ever since the writing was on the wall wrt. google funds they’ve been putting more and more money in investments to make sure they can survive, as opposed to grants. Still keeping with the foundation’s mandate, though, e.g. all their VC investments into AI are the polar opposite of what the likes of OpenAI are doing. Kinda sceptical e.g. huggingface will ever turn a profit, much less a significant one, but it’s important to have them.
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Sure. I mean, I’m not going to stop using it, and people will make forks for eternity, but the average joe might switch… However, the average joe supports Nazis these days, so I don’t really give a shit about what the majority are doing.
Mozilla executives are once again carrying water for Google.
If there is any doubt who they work for, watching them testify in defense of Google’s monopoly should be all you need.
Firefox: “But I’m nothing without Google money”
FOSS community: “If you’re nothing without Google money, then you don’t deserve it.”
The day the browser comes back to the Mozilla foundation, you’ll realise you don’t fucking need Google.
We the community, are waiting for the moment we can invest on our (currently) only chance to truly fuck with Google.
I stopped using Google as my default search engine year’s ago in favor of duck
Wouldn’t other search engines be happy to make the same deal? Maybe they wouldn’t pay as much as google but it wouldn’t be as catastrophic as implied.
