
Firefox Premium Coming This Fall - dschuetz
https://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/12838-firefox-premium-coming-this-fall.html
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weinzierl
I'd be happy to pay for Firefox, but I have a few points that are important to
me. They are probably not very realistic but here they are anyway:

1\. _I want my money to go into Firefox development and nowhere else._

I certainly don't want my money spent on their content business, even if it is
used as a leverage to generate more money for Firefox development. I'm torn
about Rust development because I certainly would love to see Rust flourish,
but if we allow the money go into personally preferred projects it becomes
hard to draw the line.

2\. _I want a Firefox with absolutely no strings attached._

\- No Pocket, not even a trace of it

\- No experiments, labs or whatever they call it (see Mr. Robot for an
example)

\- No network connections to third party hosts as long I haven't explicitly
opted in.

\- Safe search off by default

\- No predefined search engines

\- No predefined start page

3\. _I want Mozilla (as a whole and not only the Firefox branch) to be more
carefully with the selection of their businesses partners._

I'm am not aiming at their co-operations with Google, Yandex and the like,
which are OK for me. At least as long as my points from above are respected.
Specifically I'm OK if the free version of Firefox continues to be sponsored
mainly by Google. I'm not OK with business deals of the kind they had with
Cliqz for example.

~~~
wodenokoto
You want a pro version that doesn’t use Mozilla services and money is not
spend on infrastructure or dependent software or application research because
that is not “Firefox development”.

I think anyone would be just fine not having you as a customer.

~~~
weinzierl
Paying for development infrastructure and research to bring Firefox forward
_is_ Firefox development. I'm not interested in their services, all I care for
is the browser. As a customer I think it is well in my right to just pay for
what I use. At the very least it is not impolite to ask for that.

~~~
Xylakant
It’s well within Mozilla’s right to offer a packaged deal that you can either
take or leave. If that includes parts you don’t use, you’re stuck with buying
or not buying. It’s well within your right to not buy the bundle, but there is
no right to get it unbundled.

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hardwaresofton
Found this tidbit interesting:

> We have repeatedly commented on Mozilla's precarious funding situation.
> According to Beard's answer in the interview 90% of the organization's
> income comes from search - i.e the royalties received from companies like
> Google and Yandex for including their search engines in Firefox. From our
> report on its 2017 balance sheet, the latest year for which it has published
> its accounts, Royalties amounted to $539,168,000 of total revenue of
> $562,279,000, which is around 96%.

Anything to lessen that reality is probably a step in the right direction.

In agreement with others, can't wait to vote for FF with my wallet (even
though I might not use any of the features).

~~~
akdor1154
Half a billion US dollars of revenue per year!?

I would have hoped you could just bank that and pay for Firefox development
with the interest. What is Mozilla spending that amount of money on?

~~~
hardwaresofton
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (I sure hope I am), and maybe it's just the
lingering disappointment from the failure of FirefoxOS, but AFAIK Mozilla is
also known for epic C-level mismanagement.

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OJFord
TFA doesn't seem to expand on the opening claim that it's 'potentially
disturbing'.

I think it could be great - better funded by 'power users' than by tracking
and ads.

~~~
lmorchard
Reads like FUD. From everything I've seen, "Firefox Premium" is not a thing as
such. I can't read German, so maybe Chris Beard revealed something different
in the interview from what he's been saying in other public meetings - but I
doubt it.

There are plans to launch paid subscription services & products in a Firefox
brand family. Some of services may even be independent from the browser and be
separate standalone apps & products. Some of the services may even - gasp -
work in a non-Firefox browser.

Think of things like Firefox Send, Firefox Monitor, Firefox Lockbox, a system-
wide VPN, an in-browser secure proxy. Specific plans are still in progress,
but I don't think any of them are literally "you pay for browser now"

~~~
OJFord
Fwiw, I wasn't assuming that 'pay for browser' (optionally) meant any more
than, if I'm signed in, I get Lock~box~wise et al. - or 'unlocked' access
beyond 100 passwords or something.

I just think if you don't make payment look like it's about a specific
product, that people will be more willing and likely to pseudo-donate by
subscribing before they hit whatever such limits.

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derin
When you consider the costs associated with running, say, a proper VPN or
cloud storage solution it doesn't seem unreasonable to offer a paid plan.

Supporting Firefox and getting some perks normally associated with other paid
services sounds like a win-win to me.

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Lazare
This seems like a pretty good idea; hopefully the execution will be up to
scratch.

I'm not adverse to paying for a performant, privacy respecting browser.

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davidhyde
I’d be ok with paying for a Firefox licence but I would not be ok with having
to be logged in to a Firefox account to achieve that goal. Being logged into
anything makes it too easy to be tracked online and although I trust Mozilla
more than any other company it gives me piece of mind to browse without the
potential to be tracked through this medium.

Unfortunately, purchasing an unlock key is not much better either. It ties
your browser to personally identifiable information you submit when you pay.

~~~
Jonnax
Well if you want to pay just to support them, you can subscribe/buy.

And then not sign into the browser that you use to browse the internet.

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karmakaze
Call me a cynic. This is how it starts. Either your using premium or you are
the product--a second class citizen. It won't happen right away but by each
small decision that splits users will set trends. Like experiments that would
have been perfect for non-premium, etc.

~~~
panarky
You can pay _and_ be the product.

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jddj
Depending on the price point, I can imagine myself paying some non-zero amount
monthly just for the peace of mind of supporting the existence of a Mozilla
browser.

Although there isn't much information, I can't see myself really wanting/using
any of the premium features personally, though. Unless they can reliably
replace Dropbox or my password manager. Also, I feel they'd likely be making a
mistake by putting any useful future core browser features which emerge behind
a paywall (and that's going to be a constant temptation).

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dvfjsdhgfv
That's great news! Can't wait to vote for FF with my wallet.

~~~
jonah
You can support FF with your wallet now! ;)

[https://donate.mozilla.org/](https://donate.mozilla.org/)

~~~
unilynx
That doesnt actually go to Firefox the browser.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10648693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10648693)

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daxterspeed
I suppose this is slightly off-topic, but what security does a VPN actually
offer when connecting to a https site? Surely browsers should show a NOT
SECURE warning if connecting to a https site while on an unsecured wifi was
actually insecure?

~~~
Xylakant
Currently, the WIFI can still observe what sites you’re visiting (SNI still
happens in plaintext) and, depending on the circumstances attempt a downgrade
attack. Many people first try http and the destination then redirects, a lot
of sites still don’t prevent that. For some folks you might even leverage
something like the Sony rootkit.

Once the connection is established, you’re fairly good, but until then quite a
few things can go off the rails.

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rullopat
Looking at all the shady VPN services that can potentially be worse than
connecting without VPN, I would for sure put my trust much more in a Firefox
VPN than any other.

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user17843
When it comes to dependence on ad-tech money, the writing is on the wall:

> Cost per click on Google properties — which roughly measures the amount
> Alphabet charges advertisers for each ad served on its web sites — dropped
> 29 percent from last year and 9 percent from last quarter, which might be
> alarming investors concerned that Google’s pricing power for ads is eroding.
> [1]

Additionally, Firefox is losing users, around 50,000 - 100,000 per day. [2]

They now want to add all kinds of additional stuff in order to make money. For
a browser this is a death sentence. A browser can not be more than a browser,
and ad tiles are the only practical way of making money next to search engine
deals. While a pro-version of Firefox is certainly an interesting idea which
can be sold to a tech-savvy minority, it neither can diversify their revenue
in a meaningful way, nor is clear yet whether Mozilla is going to offer a paid
Firefox version, or simply tries to upsell a software bundle branded with
their name.

Mozilla paid around 30 million to aquire Pocket (one of their supposed
foundations for making money), but there isn't any data to show whether they
are profitable with it. Given the low number of ads in Pocket, they probably
aren't profitable. In 2017, according to their financial report, they only
made 2,5 million with Pocket ads.

Opera is the only other major browser that has to survive without having a
tech giant behind them. They do everything they can to make money with Opera.
And it has boiled down to ads in the start page and licensing. There’s nothing
more you can do.

Opera is surviving on three kind of deals: [3]

– search (ca 60%)

– ads in start page

– licensing deals on mobile phones

Licensing is off limits to mozilla because they have lost the mobile market.

So all that is left is ads on the start page. Its that simple. There’s also a
lesson to learn for Mozilla from the time Opera abandoned Presto: [4]

> “Because of our switch to the Blink engine, our retention rate on desktop
> users is much better now. This is because most websites work in Opera since
> we’re using the same engine as Google. We think we’ve become more relevant
> after we moved over to the Blink platform, and more companies now start to
> work with us,” Boilesen said.

> “We’ve got twice as many developers on the desktop browser now than we had
> with Presto, because all [our] resources went into maintaining Presto. The
> only error we made with Presto was that we kept it too long. Our change to
> Blink was because we wanted to get on the offensive with regards to
> innovation, we used too many resources to keep Presto competitive."

There are only two ways. You either stay innovative and keep up with the
times, or you downsize and develop for a small niche group. Mozilla is doing
neither.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/alphabet-
earnings-q4-2018.ht...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/alphabet-
earnings-q4-2018.html)

[2] [https://data.firefox.com](https://data.firefox.com)

[3] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/browser-maker-opera-has-
fi...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/browser-maker-opera-has-filed-to-go-
public/)

[4] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/show-me-the-money-how-opera-
st...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/show-me-the-money-how-opera-started-
thinking-about-the-bottom-line-and-what-that-did-to-its-software/)

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brador
How can it cost half a billion a year to maintain a web browser?

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Grue3
Is Firefox Premium going to keep removing features people use, such as tab
groups, and stopped nerfing add-ons by removing API for extensible
functionality (such as proxy by url wildcard)? While a free product might be
excused for doing this (because you get what you pay for), the expectations
for paid product a bit higher.

Now that I think about it, Firefox 56 updated with security patches in
perpetuity and with active add-on ecosystem would be a great product. It was
the most extensible browser ever, so new features can be delegated to add-on
developers. Make the add-ons paid as well, I wouldn't mind.

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gremlinsinc
How is 550 million for a browser company not enough money? I mean seriously,
how much more do they need? If I were a systems or c++ dev I'd start my own
browser, apparently it's very profitable to do so...

Maybe firefox should become more like microsoft and amazon and instead of
monetizing the browser become a bigger competitor to google et al viz vi cloud
services. They also could build products for developers to use for browser
testing across multiple platforms, etc...

I don't see premium firefox taking off, but more competition with AWS, Azure,
GCP is never a bad thing, or maybe they do something like Brave Browser and
merge crypto with browsing though that seems tenuous compared to some other
options.

~~~
gshdg
Sorry, this reminds me of people who go to Upwork to get a Facebook clone
written in a weekend for $600.

Writing a rendering engine for CSS and an interpreter for javascript are not
trivial. Plus you have to make them secure. And deal with all sorts of edge
cases. And that’s before we even get to the HTTP stack, cookie and local
storage handling, etc. Let alone expected browser amenities like bookmarks and
(secure) extensions.

And then make it cross-platform, including supporting older versions of a
bunch of operating systems, and all sorts of hardware configurations, several
dozen languages, RTL input...

~~~
jstewartmobile
$550,000,000 per year is a bit more than $600 on upwork.

