> "He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission."
The article doesn't give an exact quote from Enzor-DeMeo.
> At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.[0]
Read:
If we were just profit motivated we could block ad blockers, but we're not
The article has a lot about how they're struggling for money. Which is a constant issue for Mozilla. Which a big reason for that is the low browser share. Which a big reason for that is crazy comments like this and people feeling better about using a browser that steals their data...
> The article has a lot about how they're struggling for money.
Not really. The closest it comes is briefly mentioning some 2024 layoffs.
What the article is discussing is revenue diversification.
> Which is a constant issue for Mozilla.
No, Mozilla has had a consistent and growing revenue stream from Google.
> Which a big reason for that is the low browser share.
In what way? Software development costs have been less than half Mozilla's annual revenue for over a decade.
> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
This isn't a direct quote, but voy does the Author of that article not inspire confidence by the way this is worded. "It feels off-mission" should be "It would be antithetical to everything Moxilla standa for". The way this is phrased it feels like Mozilla explored this and decided that the 150 million wasn't worth the reputation hit (yet.)
Edit: I do suspect that the lack of revenue diversity led to product decisions that favored their paying customer's and prevented the types of browser innovation that would have competed more successfully for market share against that paying customer.
Also, should be obvious but the consistent and growing revenue stream is hardly going towards the browser. Most of it is going back to the employees (namely the CEO, etc).
Do you have a link? I can't find any reference to this. The only hits I'm getting are a Mozilla leadership AMA where they are reiterating their support for ad blockers.
In the media business and in politics that's calling "putting out a feeler". You'd benefit from some media literacy study, then you wouldn't say I'm weird, you'd say "well spotted, I see what they're doing".
"no no I'm not going to do this thing that likely nobody wants and nobody is asking about but would be really profitable for my pocket in the short term!" -> observe how much pushback he gets -> "guys guys I said I would NOT do it, god some people are weird".
I don’t need a media literacy class to recognize that he didn’t say the thing that you said he did.
If your first comment wasn’t a lie, and instead talked about how you think that he’s putting out feelers, I wouldn’t have commented. But instead, you made stuff up and that’s weird.
