
Is There a Google-Free Future for Firefox? - kiyanwang
https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/09/03/is-there-a-google-free-future-for-firefox/
======
eitland
The saddest thing I see in these comments are always people hating on some
minor thing like Pocket or something and who has decided to go with Chrome
instead :-/

I mean I get the frustration but this is "cutting off the nose to spite the
face"-level logic IMO.

BTW: There was always something. Back in the day I think people hated on
awesombar and used that as an excuse to stay with IE6 ;-)

~~~
chrisseaton
> The saddest thing I see in these comments are always people hating on some
> minor thing like Pocket or something and who has decided to go with Chrome
> instead :-/

What should people do? Quietly put up with Firefox being hostile to them
simply because it's Firefox?

Firefox has to pay its own way by being good. It can't just assume user blind
loyalty because they think they're the good guys.

~~~
hamlsandwich
I think I’ve missed something here: how is Pocket user-hostile?

~~~
hipsterstal1n
Hostile is way too strong a word. Maybe user unfriendly since it is is built-
in to the browser instead of an extension?

But again, if you don't like it, don't use it. You don't have to go to Chrome
where you have much worse user-hostile crap hidden under the hood.

------
Y_Y
> “Subscriptions are – I sometimes joke – like trading money for services, an
> idea whose time has come, rather than getting spied on and hoping everything
> works out.”

I laughed in a sad way.

I would actually pay for Firefox now, but I think charging for it isn't going
to work out. (See also: Opera)

~~~
afterburner
But then how long until I'm paying subscriptions _and_ being spied on?

It's kinda like how cable TV started with no commercials as a contrast to
over-the-air TV, and then quickly introduced them...

~~~
srtjstjsj
"no ads" was never a selling point of cable. it's always been a balance of
fees and ads.

~~~
pessimizer
This is not true.

[https://youtu.be/ZcDUttzlKLU?t=110](https://youtu.be/ZcDUttzlKLU?t=110)

[http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/talking-pay-
tv.ht...](http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/talking-pay-tv.html)

------
flerchin
Firefox is great. I use it as my primary browser on both my android and linux
workstations. I do have to drop to Chrome occasionally for some aspects of web
development, not because the tools are better, but expose things differently.
I... should probably send Mozilla some money.

~~~
surround
Money donated to the Mozilla Foundation doesn’t actually go towards browser
development, does it?

~~~
bzb5
The time has come for Mozilla to offer a way of donating that guarantees that
100% of the cash goes to Firefox.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Mozilla has 20 years of evidence showing that people "who would donate but
only on my terms" aren't a serious revenue source.

~~~
luckylion
Have they? My impression was that you were never able to donate to Firefox
directly. You could only buy the whole package, that is: Firefox + some stuff
you don't care about and some stuff you might disagree with.

~~~
eitland
Actually it seems to be worse:

\- Donations goes to the foundation

\- Profits from the corporation (after engineers are paid for) goes to the
foundation

Net money never goes from the foundation to the browser it seems.

(Please anyone correct me if I'm wrong. Also, I'm not necessarily saying their
projects are bad, only that when they go at the expense of Firefox something
is seriously wrong.)

~~~
fsflover
Was there ever net money to give to Firefox?

------
butz
There should be a "Firefoxium" version of Firefox with all base functionality,
but without any commercial additions, like Pocket or upcoming VPN. Would there
be a way to sponsor such Firefox development directly with monthly
subscription like OpenCollective or Patreon? Would EU be interested to sponsor
development of free browser to keep browser market competitive?

~~~
worldmerge
I like Firefox but the forced bloatware of Pocket, and the inability to remove
it turns me off of Firefox. I don't see why Pocket isn't installed as a
standard extension that could be easily removed.

~~~
Rogach
Just in case: you can turn it off by setting "extensions.pocket.enabled" to
"false" in about:config.

------
sn
I think I would like to see mozilla do is act as a micropayments service
provider to websites based on aggregated browsing history, and take a small
service fee for it.

I already use firefox. There's no other company right now I would trust more
with some knowledge of my browsing history. I believe I would pay for a
subscription service to support both mozilla and the news websites I visit.

And they're already working on something like that it seems:
[https://www.fastcompany.com/90403645/mozilla-and-creative-
co...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90403645/mozilla-and-creative-commons-want-
to-reimagine-the-internet-without-ads-and-they-have-100m-to-do-it)

There's a question of "what extra do you get for that payment" \- maybe an NPR
or PBS style pledge drive gift is a possible answer, not sure.

~~~
carlosdp
This is exactly what Brave [1] does already, founded by one of the original
cofounders of Mozilla.

[1] [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

~~~
sn
Brave appears to be currently ad based, so no not the same.

I guess the micropayment model failed, maybe because it used bitcoin?

[https://brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/](https://brave.com/introducing-
brave-payments/)

------
3gg
The TOR browser is based on Firefox, so this also affects them, right? A
chrome-based TOR browser would be the biggest joke in the history of online
rights. I have the impression that Mozilla, and all of us, are at a crossroads
here. I really hope they find a way to continue the development of Firefox and
their other products without having to resort to prostituting people's
identities.

~~~
dvlat
Out of curiosity, what problems do you see with potential Chromium (not
Chrome)-based TOR browser?

~~~
3gg
Exactly what ffpip said. The TOR browser does much more than just run your
traffic through TOR to counter website fingerpriting, and Google being an
advertising company, I see a conflict of interest to provide you with the
anonymity that the Firefox-based TOR browser currently provides.

------
sorenjan
I tried to buy a subscription to Firefox VPN to support Firefox, but it's not
available in my country even though their partner, Mullvad VPN, had no issue
doing business with me.

I also just now noticed that Firefox VPN has changed name to Mozilla VPN, and
I'm not really interested in funding all of Mozilla since I don't agree with
how they spend their money.

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

[https://mullvad.net/](https://mullvad.net/)

------
aleppe7766
Even non users should donate to Firefox: the presence of a independent browser
in a market dominated by browsers following the agenda of this le that huge
tech company benefits the whole market. Of course using it (or any other
independent browser, but only FF has a chance to stay in the double digits)
and contributing to its market share would be even more beneficial. Apple’s
Safari will never effectively stop Facebook’s sneaky spyops as Facebook is a
core partner for Apple’s richest platform. And Chrome, well...

~~~
martin_a
As far as I know I can not donate to or for Firefox development but only to
Mozilla. And we all have seen and heard and read what they will use the money
for (hint: massive paychecks for the C-level) and how their priorities are
set.

So: While I love the product, I very much dislike the company. And that's why
they won't get any money from me.

~~~
passthejoe
Mozilla is definitely NOT equal to your average open-source project like
Debian or LibreOffice. The development on those projects is done entirely by
volunteers. Maybe some of those "volunteers" are paid by companies to be
contributors, which is the case with the Linux kernel.

But Mozilla is a large company. It may be a nonprofit, but there are HUNDREDS
of millions in Google money funding the company and paying salaries for the
1,000 (??) or so employees, including, as mentioned above, a very well-
compensated C-suite.

Firefox and whatever else Mozilla produces is funded with this very, very
large pot of money. Could they run the Mozilla operation on $10 million (or
$20 million) a year and invest the rest ($90 million to $390 million) a year
in an endowment that could ensure Mozilla's independence in perpetuity? They
could do that, but like many nonprofits, the "profit" goes to a large number
of well-paid people. I can't think of another open-source project with such
enormous funding that isn't part of a for-profit company.

Red Hat isn't asking individuals for money to fund Fedora or RHEL development.

I don't know what crazy universe a company -- even one hiding behind the
framework of a "foundation" \-- gets $100 million to $400 million a YEAR from
Google -- and still has the chutzpah to ask individual users to make a
contribution.

I love Firefox, and I absolutely agree that browser diversity is important. I
use Firefox daily. But Mozilla is a huge outlier -- a "nonprofit" dragging in
hundreds of millions and spending it. Do you think Debian collected more than
$1 million last year? I'm not sure it did. It sure didn't get $100M or $400M.
Mozilla is a huge company. It just doesn't have shareholders.

~~~
kovac
C-suites and layers and layers of managers are a cancer in this industry. All
they do is talk, virtue signal and "strategise". Firefox needs to part from
Mozilla. You put 6-10 engineers and a good technical lead together, they'll
fix this madness in 6-12 months.

Like mentioned in "bullshit jobs", most of these managers (not all), are there
to create bullshit and deal with bullshit created by those like themselves.
It's the tech leads, engineers, DBAs, sys admins (and teachers, nurses,
doctors, garbage collectors, etc) who should be driving Rolls Royces.

I used to use Firefox. After I learnt about Mozilla and their corporate
structure, I changed to Brave. Now I use Brave and Vivaldi mostly.

------
surround
How do other companies that develop free/open source software make money?
(Other than the professional support/training model that Canonical and Redhat
use - it probably doesn’t apply to Firefox)

~~~
Vinnl
Interestingly Igalia seems to be making money off of contributing to browsers,
among which Firefox. On quite a smaller scale than Mozilla though, I imagine.

~~~
gsnedders
Igalia's model almost certainly couldn't cover maintenance of the entire
browser engine and the desktop/mobile browsers, yet alone any ongoing
improvement. It gets specific platform ports supported on an ongoing basis
(typically for embedded platforms) and new features of interest to their
paying customers supported (which are, inevitably, mostly major corporations),
but that's largely it.

As far as I'm aware, Firefox is the browser engine they contribute least to:
they have many more clients who have much more interest in WebKit or Chromium
based browsers and that's where the majority of work goes.

------
cadence-
With more than 30% of employees laid off this year, it is going to be
extremely difficult for Mozilla to get back market share from other browsers.
If they were not able to do it before, how can they do it now with fewer
people? And without market share, there will not be enough alternative revenue
streams to have a google-free future. Firefox will continue to slowly lose
users, at around the current 10% a year, until it becomes too small for google
to even pay them anything anymore. Sad but that’s the reality. Trying to
compete in extremely competitive areas like VPN services is not going to work.

~~~
bad_user
They did not fire employees working on Firefox. The questionable layoffs were
the Servo devs, which were arguably working on next-gen stuff. But the Gecko
team remained intact.

It’s actually not bad for orgs to trim expenses. Given Mozilla still has solid
revenue, we could view these layoffs as refocusing on stuff that matters
(Firefox, plus revenue diversification via services), while ensuring they stay
in business for years to come.

Everyone knows that they are too reliant on Google’s revenue stream. Now that
they are taking steps to diversify and to be leaner, everyone jumps on them.

Well I for one am optimistic about Mozilla and Firefox’s future.

~~~
DocTomoe
They also laid off the Rust guys, and the mozdev folks. Both of which were
pretty essential for the mission.

I now consider Firefox to be a failed, and quickly sinking project. It's time
to give up on them.

~~~
kungato
They strayed too far from the core product and had to be cut. I consider it a
sensible decision from a budget perspective? How much does it make sense for a
nonprofit to fund a growing language? Now corps can spend their money on Rush
instead directly

~~~
wyclif
Wait, Mozilla gives money to Rush? I thought they retired the band after the
death of Neil Peart.

------
zodzedzi
Is it possible to fork and develop Firefox with organization similar to how
the Linux kernel is developed?

~~~
johannes1234321
In theory: Yes. In practical terms: Hardly.

Getting a large enough group of contributors is hard. For Linux this works
since it was built over decades and contributors come from variety of
backgrounds (students who want to learn, hardware companies who want to have
support of their hardware, users who want it to be fast, companies which want
to make it sort of a product (distributors etc.))

For "end user" software like firefox this is harder. In the kernel a
contributor can start by providing a self contained device driver. Such a
concept doesn't exist in a browser in similar form. From such a driver the
kernel contributor can grow into neighboring subsystems.

Google decided to go with Chrome. Microsoft jump on their ship and is unlikely
to switch, again.

Who else could push this? Facebook (would we like that!?), Twitter, Amazon?

~~~
martin_a
I'm most probably somewhat naive here, but if you could fork the latest
release, remove all Pocket, VPN, whatnot stuff and just give me that as a
build, I would be totally fine with it.

I love the core product, I really don't need any of the fluff around it.

~~~
jasode
_> , but if you could fork the latest release, remove all Pocket, VPN, whatnot
stuff and just give me that as a build, I would be totally fine with it._

You've overlooked the main idea of the parent post. Let me try to restate it
another way...

You can't just fork a web browser's source code _and be done with it_. A web
browser needs _constant ongoing new programming coding_ to keep up with the
_ongoing changes_ in the web ecosystem.

Already, we've seen the complexity of new web standards make Opera give up on
their Presto web rendering engine and Microsoft abandon their Trident engine
for Internet Explorer. Both companies switched to Chromium source as a base to
save money and resources.

So no, you eventually would _" not be totally fine with it"_ \-- because your
forked browser would eventually be useless without a big team of programmers
to maintain it.

As examples of web browsers quickly becoming obsolete, I tried Opera 12.18
(last old 2016 version with Presto engine) and here are many problems I
encountered:

\- Google Maps -- Zooming in and out makes everything blurry. Street View
hangs the browser. Opera is missing WebGL acceleration that today's browsers
have

\- godbolt.org -- compiler explorer online C++ website is broken with a blank
screen and doesn't show any code panels

\- chase.com -- that bank doesn't allow sign in with old Opera browser

\- reuters.com -- images on news stories are blurry and don't load correctly

\- various websites with newer TLS encryption protocols break because they
don't exist in Opera

Nobody wants to take a fork of the Presto engine and expend 1000 man-hours to
fix all those problems. Same would happen with a hypothetical fork of Mozilla
Firefox. You still need an _active programming community_ to keep up with
evolving web technologies. Again, if Opera and Microsoft (with its billions)
gave up, it should give an idea of how daunting it is.

~~~
martin_a
You're right. I was thinking that "add-ons" like Pocket might be modularized
enough so that removing those parts would be easy with every release, maybe
even (semi-)automated. Like a "Firefox Light" version.

Maybe this could even be maintained by Mozilla, I would not care in that case.
Just the bare core browser. You can always choose to install "the normal"
Firefox if you want the "full experience", but for me a browser is just
another tool, I don't need pocket and alike.

~~~
neurostimulant
Is pocket integration really that obstructive? On my laptop, it just a
persistent icon on the address bar that I can right click and remove.

~~~
martin_a
Yeah, maybe it's a little piece and nothing to worry about. But what will they
come up with next? Maybe at one point they`ll integrate the "Mozilla VPN"
functionality directly into Firefox. Or any other fancy thing they thought the
world would need... So I guess it's more about software simplicity, but I find
that helpful. I think it also helps developers if they have a clear goal
("build a great browser!") and don't need to take care about integrating side-
projects and stuff.

------
swatson741
The unfortunate reality is that there probably isn't a google-free future for
Mozilla. I don't see any way they can generate the same amount of capital that
they get by partnering with Google, etc. But, that doesn't have to be a bad
thing. As far as I know, Google doesn't pull Mozilla's strings and, the 2
companies can exist as competitors and partners.

~~~
hu3
For Mozilla there's probably no Google-free future.

But for an independent Firefox foundation? Perhaps. We were never allowed to
directly donate to Firefox to know the answer.

------
ve55
I'm not sure there is a Google-free future for any major part of the Internet,
so likely no

~~~
yepthatsreality
As long as devs keep drinking the Chrome kool-aid it won’t. Developers
actually have a lot of pull but do not exercise it. As the job market shifts
to more blue collar workers. There is less expertise required and those
workers are responsible for running tools they don’t understand rather than
coding and making ideas. Google’s best interest is to keep development behind
closed doors until they’re ready for the public to use their tech, rather than
having new tech developed by other companies or via open source.

~~~
oscargrouch
I think this is a case where "It's the economy, stupid" gets right.

We need to build a economy for open-source projects or else the tech titans
will eat the world.

People need to wake up that its not the nineties anymore, and without a better
ecosystem for independent projects to thrive, we are doomed to depend on the
scraps of what the titans left to us (mostly their open-source collaterals)

Some independent project might pop here and there, but keep them going without
structure will lead them to a slow burn to death.

------
0xdky
I wouldn’t mind buying a bundle subscription for VPN, curated news, email and
chat from Mozilla.

Those are are most important for me and I do not want any tracking and false
biased news.

Keep it clean and play fair, I will be happy to pay.

------
wolftune
If we didn't have our own issues with zero-funding and all-volunteer efforts,
we'd have gotten Snowdrift.coop launched by now (we're still working on it,
hope to show some real public updates soon). Our focus on 'crowdmatching' is
aiming specifically to address this type of dilemma, and we'd be thrilled to
see it work for Firefox. We just need to get the whole thing functioning (and
proven with more likely first adopter projects, tweaking and solidifying the
platform) before Firefox dies.

The basic point: we all (the users and general public) do need to be donating.
But I do _not_ donate myself to Firefox. After all, I'm underemployed, low-
income, and volunteering thousands of hours for related software-freedom and
anti-ad etc. efforts. For me to donate won't change the overall situation. We
need a _critical mass_ of donors, hundreds of thousands, millions of donors.
We cannot get there by just asking each person to unilaterally sacrifice. I
want to pledge to the world that I'm willing to be part of that critical mass.
I'll donate more of what I can for each of you others who join me in such a
pledge.

This is about the best we can do short of funding these sorts of public goods
with taxes. As long as it's open to the public and not paywalled (and that's
fundamentally important), we're stuck with the freerider dilemmas and need to
resolve the challenges of collective-action and coordination.

------
Hnrobert42
I read (probably on HN) that Google keeps paying FF, so Google can point to FF
as a viable competitor during anti-trust investigations. Since it seems those
investigations are able to launch in the US, it will be interesting to see
what happens to the relationship afterwards.

~~~
boomboomsubban
These conspiracy theories ignore how from ~2013-2018 Yahoo was the main source
of income for Firefox. How is Google convincing their competitor to help them
in an antitrust case?

~~~
Hnrobert42
It may be a rumor or speculation, but it is not a conspiracy theory. That is,
it is not a group secretly conspiring to do something.

~~~
boomboomsubban
You were suggesting that Mozilla's deal with Google was secretly for the
purpose of protecting itself from antitrust regulations. Two groups, secretly
planning something.

------
modzu
just came here to say brave rewards. its the only idea ive seen that seems
viable, and ironically where firefox might be without the eich fiasco :/

------
throwarayoiu5
Firefox is hardly at the forefront of 'thwarting advertisers'. Apple & Safari
have been far more aggressive at this; Firefox is merely mimicking the
policies that Apple applied ~3 years past.

We really need to have a way to talk about things without making it into yet
another Good vs Evil fight.

~~~
claudeganon
Whoever it is that allows UBlock Origin/UMatrix on their platform, without
making moves against them, is at the forefront of thwarting advertisers. Apple
doesn’t allow it on iOS, so I’d still put Firefox ahead of them.

------
ffpip
There is no Google-free future for anyone. They are more powerful than all
governments.

------
dehrmann
Mozilla would be smart to build up and endowment while Firefox still has a
user base and is still paid for searches by Google.

I'd be really hesitant to subscribe to Firefox because looking at other things
the company has done (Pocket, for one, and I feel mixed about dropping
Thunderbird) and how Firefox was left to languish as Chrome gained a user
base, I'm not sure this is something I want to directly support.

------
syshum
Given the Mozilla is turning on the developer network, discontinuing RD in to
the browser space, and focusing on "other products" like VPN, Pocket, and
other services I am left to wonder if there is a future for Firefox at all

Dev Tools is dead, Servo is Dead, MDN is dead, what is left.

The current administration of Mozilla seems to want to turn it into a
"consumer services" company focused instead of a browser developer. I am
wonder how much longer before they drop the pretense, shut down the
foundation, and change their mission statement

hell I would not be surprised that with in 5 years they do not fall in line
with what Microsoft called for [1] a little over a year ago and just make
Firefox another Chromium based browser...

[1] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-
should-g...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-guy-mozilla-should-give-
up-on-firefox-and-go-with-chromium-too/)

~~~
giancarlostoro
I wonder if the alternative is for the Rust foundation to one day buy out
Firefox and pull it out of the claws of Mozilla if they are just going to have
a nonprofit receiving donations not even going towards Firefox. Has anyone
figured out what jacked up reason this is? My best guess is that if Mozilla is
seen as selling adspace services (default browser search engine in this case)
it is somehow seen as a for profit venture and would not allow them to have a
non profit status, but at that point why not just have Firefox be like
Chromium vs Google Chrome? Firefox Libre and Mozilla Firefox.

I fail to understand why we cant directly donate to Firefox and only Firefox.
Most people really dont care for anything else Mozilla is doing outside of
Rust and Thunderbird and tbe latter two seem to have a solid future as far as
I can tell.

~~~
syshum
The complex legal structure of Mozilla has always been some what sketchy to me
anyway, The Foundation at this point I believe hardly has anything anyway,
most of the employees I believe work for the Mozilla Corporation, which is
owned by the foundation, but the Mozilla Corporation is for-profit, and is
where most of the assets (IP, Pocket, etc) for Mozilla is owned.

At this point I see the Foundation has simply being a Marketing ploy for the
corporation as they abandoned the core mission of the foundation long ago, it
is just another for profit company at this point

~~~
giancarlostoro
Which is a damn shame. I'm okay with them building real products to subsidize
the cost of developing Firefox, but they acquired Pocket which isn't really
going to rake in much money from what I can tell anyway.

