
Mozilla’s revenue increased significantly in 2016 - tiff
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/02/mozillas-revenue-increased-significantly-in-2016/
======
CaptSpify
I tend to voice a lot of upset opinions about Mozilla, but I am still grateful
for the work they do. It's nice to see that they have such a big resource pool
to work with, as they are one of the few groups that I think genuinely cares
for it's users.

It's also nice to be able to show other groups: Yes, you can be a "do good"
company, and make a good living.

~~~
leeoniya
> It's also nice to be able to show other groups: Yes, you can be a "do good"
> company, and make a good living.

...so long as a "don't be evil" mega-corp continues paying for it

~~~
wutbrodo
That's a silly way to look at it. They're paying for a service that Mozilla
provides to them, as a business transaction. Being a "do good" company
obviously doesn't mean requiring that of every one of your customers: There's
not a company in the world that isn't economically connected to something
you'd consider "evil" by a couple degrees of separation at most.

~~~
leeoniya
> They're paying for a service that Mozilla provides to them, as a business
> transaction.

IMO, _this_ is a silly way to look at it.

Mozilla's existence is critically dependent on a single "customer" that
requires the privacy-focused "do good" company to preset a user's default
search choice to an anti-privacy track-you-everywhere company.

don't get me wrong, it's a great [and necessary] compromise for the money and
being easily changeable. i hope firefox can regain user share so that google
continues needing it.

~~~
wutbrodo
That makes a lot more sense. Your initial comment without this context sounded
like economic contact with someone reduced you to their level of "goodness",
which I strongly disbelieve. That isn't to say that you shouldn't draw any
lines about who you'll do business with, but this line in particular didn't
make a lot of sense.

------
nsm
For those who will come in and complain about why Mozilla needs so much money:

[http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/12/maintaining-
independent-...](http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/12/maintaining-independent-
browser-is.html) discussed just a few days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836027)

------
feelin_googley
"Mozilla ditched Yahoo recently however in favor of Google, two years before
the five year contract would be up for renewal. The terms of the new deal with
Google have not been revealed yet, and it remains to be seen whether this new
deal will give Mozilla's revenue another boost in 2017."

Apparently Firefox 57 when it is installed tries to switch the users default
search engine to Google.

Whether it asks for user permission to do so, I am not sure.

Do the terms of the deal actually require them to do this?

~~~
callahad
I'm not privy to the search deal, but my understanding is that this is driven
by our internal user research and metrics, which show that a significant
number of users have a search engine other than what they prefer or expect. In
these cases, users usually choose to directly navigate to their preferred
search engine to search, instead of using Firefox access points. That’s a poor
user experience, so our focus here is on ensuring users have the defaults they
want.

The decision tree is roughly:

1\. If the custom engine is one of our default options, keep it.

2\. If the custom engine was set by an add-on, keep it.

3\. If the custom engine uses HTTPS, prompt the user to actively choose by
opening about:searchreset, and do not prompt again after the user has made a
choice.

4\. If the custom engine uses insecure HTTP, silently reset to the default.

You can open about:searchreset yourself to see what the prompt looks like.

Code at [https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/rev/a928be5dacc3b544...](https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/rev/a928be5dacc3b544e29c0612b3f8cda6447df802/browser/components/nsBrowserGlue.js#2197-2210)

~~~
adsche
Re 3.: I think that's a terrible promtp. The prompt says, my _settings_ might
be outdated and I should switch back to Google as a search engine. What's the
reasoning here? Why is implied that the _settings_ are outdated if I use a
custom search engine? No other _settings_ are checked/affected by this prompt,
so why frame it as a _settings_ issue at all?

Re 4.: Why silently, why not a prompt here?

~~~
NiceGuy_Ty
Using an HTTP based search engine should be explicitly opt-in, imo. Moving it
to https by default seems like the right choice for non-technical users.

------
stocktech
If you want me to take you seriously talking about revenue, don't show me half
a balance sheet.

~~~
mintplant
Links to the audited financial statements are available at the bottom of
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2016/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2016/)

~~~
slededit
I think the point is they should have shown a cash flow statement.

~~~
rahimnathwani
You don't need a cash flow statement to show revenue. And if the cash flow
statement is prepared using the indirect method (start with net profit, and
adjust non-cash items) it may not even show revenue at all.

~~~
slededit
You don't, but it works a hell of a lot better than a subset of a balance
sheet at a single point in time.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Probably, but sometimes both will be equally useless.

------
ec109685
I imagine that if AOl had known the value of a browser back when they spun
Netscape out, they would have made a different decision.

Given Mozilla’s revenue and market share, it means Chrome is a multi billion
dollar product.

~~~
mwilliaams
With the size of Chrome's market share it isn't just money; it's power too.
Google has enormous control in this area, that is to say, the internet.

I would expect a company like Facebook to worry about this near-monopoly and
help out the competition, or possibly add to the competition by making its own
browser. That's a browser I'd never trust.

Facebook does have their apps though, which are independent from Chrome. But
most people use Android, and Google controls that too.

~~~
Vinnl
Yeah, I'm often surprised Facebook hasn't published their own browser yet.
Though then again I guess their other strategy is to move people away from
browsers.

------
GordonS
Wow, those income and expense figures are incredible! Am I the only one that
didn't realise just how _big_ Mozilla is?

~~~
yitchelle
I am surprised as well, especially the point that they must own so much
furniture that it is specifically mentioned in their assets sheet.

------
matchagaucho
Are _Investments_ a tangible, liquid asset?

Or is this line item from subjective valuations, like owning equity in private
unicorns?

That would seem to make a big difference in financial health.

------
paul7986
Firefox, please I need my tabbed browsing back! One click and boom it opens a
new tab after clicking a link, opening a bookmark, rendering a search result
and etc!

Tab Mix Plus made Firefox my default browser yet it’s not supported and or
there’s new substitute :-(

I reverted back to the previous release but then it seemed After a week to
start displaying hacked behavior. Started opening tons of windows with each
click.

~~~
greglindahl
As a TreeyStyleTabs fan, I am 100% happy with Firefox 57.

As you probably know, no other browser (other than ones based on older Firefox
versions) supports anything like Tab Mix Plus. And there's a reason for that.

------
iamgopal
Mozilla should do Ubuntu.

------
mozillanotnice
Yes, and also continued to lose market share!* I wish they would stop changing
the user interface so frequently.

* [https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp](https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp)

~~~
bigbugbag
I beg to differ, I wish they would not remove the previous interface when
introducing a new one and offer the user the freedom to choose the one she
prefers.

This is one major gripe I have with mozilla and firefox: depriving the user of
the freedom to choose and forcing change upon them.

This constant interface change is affecting many of the older people for whom
I provide technical support. They all relied on classic theme restorer
extension to be able to use their browser and dropping support for the
"legacy" extension gave them a hard time and the solution has been to drop
firefox for waterfox or to drop the computer to get one of those tablets.

~~~
forapurpose
> This is one major gripe I have with mozilla and firefox

Looking at this page, you seem to have more than one ...

~~~
nnethercote
Right now there are 81 comments in this thread and bigbugbag has written 18 of
them.

~~~
Sylos
I know that people can be salty about open-source projects, because you sort
of feel like you can get involved and they're supposed to be the good guys and
then you notice that billions of other people just as well want to get
involved, or at least be considered, and that your opinion is in the minority
and they can't make the impossible possible.

But man, how can be you this persistently salty about it? Even just writing
all of these comments must have taken at least half an hour.

------
StillBored
Well, i've been running firefox pretty consistently since I switched from
Netscape all those years ago. I've tried pretty much every browser out there,
and have a fair number of them installed but came back to FF...

But 57, is likely the end. Yah, they fixed it. Its a little faster, but it
still seems to consume RAM/CPU until my whole machine grinds to a halt.
Previously, when it did this I could be assured that it likely wasn't
consuming more than ~2GB and a little more than 100% of a core.

So, unless they fix this decade long RAM/CPU consumption problem they have,
i'm getting rid of it. I don't mind having to kill it every couple days, I
just can't stand having to wait 30+ seconds for the task manager to swap in so
that I can kill it. At least on linux I can constrain its resources, but i'm
not going to run it in a VM (like I do java) just to have some control when it
goes all piggy.

(some of this is likely my own fault, and happens with other browsers too,
since I haven't managed to cure my tabitus habit of failing to close tabs i
still have interest in).

~~~
nine_k
Does Chrome fare any better?

~~~
gmueckl
Chrome has a serious issue with too many tabs open in the same window.
Eventually the tabs cannot become any narrower and will ovwrflownto the right
with no way to scroll. This is a known and unfixed issue since day one. So the
Chrome UI does provide a sort of limit on the number of tabs you can
reasonably have open and comparison becomes difficult. I use Vivaldi which is
also based on blink and has a better UI for many tabs. This browser has way
worse memory consumption than Firefox and I believe the results are similar to
what you would get with Chrome.

------
staunch
The Mozilla Treasurer and Chair are still taking $1M each, right? Why is this
scandal going unreported?

Are there really no experienced managers willing to run this potentially great
organization for $300k/year? Why would we want people who are willing to take
so much money from an open source project?

Why are there 1200 people at Mozilla and so little product to show? Why do
they constantly spend all of their revenue? Why is it continuing to lose
marketshare? Why is there no oversight or improvement after years?

It _appears_ a lot like Mozilla is a corrupt organization taking bribes from
its competitor (Google) to not actually compete. There may even be a need for
government intervention.

Mozilla spends all of its money, so it's in a perpetual state of needing more.
Google probably makes it known that any serious competition would result in
the money faucet being shut off.

A competent and uncorrupt Mozilla could have built a Google Search competitor
by now and even better browser. It's disappointing.

~~~
bigbugbag
This is something I wondered about for quite some time now. How come so many
employees and so much spent money with so little to show for it.

Reading the reason for dropping alsa support or refusing to have better linux
integration it seems mozilla is short on dev time and resources which they
clearly are not.

Do you remember when they got 10 000 people donating money to pay to place an
ad for firefox 1.0 in NY Times while at the same time they had revenue in tens
of millions of dollars ?

Mozilla had a strong stance against a content blocker in firefox for what ? 15
years ? Whatever they said to justify this position it is obvious that the
actual reason is conflict of interest with their main source or revenue.

Isn't it strange that while their user base has been divided by 5 their
revenue has been up by more than a hundred millions ? Even more so when this
revenue is based on number of users being sent to search engine of this
commercial partner.

Has anyone on HN and explanation for this ?

~~~
fabrice_d
Their user base has not been divided by 5. Their market share is way down,
because they are not growing with the pool (not surprising given their lack of
success in Mobile), which is a different metric.

They are paid for the number of eyeballs they send to their search partners,
and it's still a few hundred millions users. Also, it seems that they were
underpaid compared to other companies like Opera and Apple were getting per
user.

