Mozilla has many flaws, lack of transparency is not one of them.

I don't even know where to start with your comment. You're linking the Mozilla Corp wikipedia page, insinuating they're "not terribly open" (and putting Google in that basket), on a subject you give almost no hints about, but hey Opera is a thing? And somehow this comment means that Mozilla is not independent?

I agree, and this is not to mention that a lot of the companies funding Mozilla that may love not to pay them, but they have to because there is a viable independent company that provides a browser.

I am glad that Mozilla exists, and I was glad that they existed even when I used Chrome (pre Firefox Quantum).

Read again.

I doubted Mozilla Corp's "independence" in the first sentence. "not terribly open" in the last paragraph was in reference to the WHAT-WG group, which is "[m]ostly Google and Mozilla guys". From the posts in that group, those guys seem more like co-workers than competitors.

For anyone who believes money to be some kind of motivating thing, it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy.

edit: And apparently I have to have "hits" to my name to state that getting 85% of your revenue from Google puts your independence into question???

Would you rather have people in standards groups to act more like competitors instead of coworkers? Cause that seems like a really bad idea.

As for:

> For anyone who believes money to be some kind of motivating thing, it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy > edit: And apparently I have to have "hits" to my name to state that getting 85% of your revenue from Google puts your independence into question???

You aren't bring its independence into question, you are stating its an easy conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy.

The 85% was from 2011. As of 2015 Mozilla stop receiving cash from Google inpart to them changing there default searches (why google paid Mozilla). That may have changed recently with Firefox 57 as they change the default search back, but even then google announced a while back they were cutting how much they were going to pay, so I doubt it will be the same 85%.

Citations for "cutting how much they were going to pay"?

Mozilla revenue is up, they're making a LOT of profit, and the Yahoo deal was supposed to be 5 years so they're not likely to be losing money by switching to Google: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-revenue-jump-fuels-its-fir...

Well in all fairness the deal with Yahoo kind of went side wise. But yeah I would agree its probably around equal.

As for the source, I can't seem to find a source for this. I may have been mistaken, but it was something I heard several years ago on a google related podcast.

If they paired up with a search provider other than Google, does that make them any more independent? If they only get 70%, or 50%, of their income from a search engine, does that make them independent?

A non-profit that has a taxable subsidiary and receives the bulk of its funding from the search industry does not strike me as being particularly independent.

What are you claiming now?

Are you claiming Mozilla was the tool of Google, switched to being the tool of Microsoft or Yahoo, and then back to being the tool of Google?

Or are you claiming that Mozilla is the tool of the "search industry" which is some amorphous group containing all of the above?

Google (and other companies in some countries) pay Mozilla to be the default search in Firefox. It's a business transaction and adequately explains why Mozilla gets paid. Conspiracy-theorizing claims that secret terms bind Mozilla to some hidden agenda should not be believed in the absence of evidence, and I haven't seen any. (And I'm a former Mozilla Distinguished Engineer.)

It is super, super simple. When 80%+ of your revenue depends on a search engine, and you still have payroll to make, you are by definition dependent upon it, regardless of which one it happens to be at the time. The article title is "Maintaining an Independent Browser is Expensive". I'm just calling it out.

From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for a comment, Upton Sinclair is screaming from the grave:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

edit: And granted, they can currently play Google against Bing, although that isn't a terribly impressive degree of freedom.

edit edit: And where did the word "secret" enter into the conversation? It's like you depend on a search engine (or a batch of them during your break from Google) for most of your revenue, and I'm the one who has to prove that you're not influenced by that???

> From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for a comment, Upton Sinclair is screaming from the grave

Good lord, get a hold of yourself. I work in the gaming industry (easy mistake to make, right?) and you seem to have read "hints" as "hits" and made up a whole scenario from that... I didn't Google you (nor would I care to), I just called out a completely bullshit comment when I saw one.

The foundation of your entire argument is loose accusations, outdated information cobbled together in a web of random words and quotes you found appropriate. You have incorrectly profiled everyone who replied to you. It is hard for anyone here to have an argument with you, or even take you seriously.

You butchered my original comment to a point where I could only assume malice. As for "hints", my bad.

In 2017 they're going back to the 800lb gorilla of search and browsers for the bulk of their operating revenue, and I'm supposed to just accept that as "independence" and back off? There is a disconnect here that I'm obviously not going to bridge, so fine, they're independent! Go write their non-profit-for-profit chimera a check and "take back the web".

The bulk of Mozilla's revenue through 2019 is most likely going to come from Verizon.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-dea...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/verizon-i...

I'm not aware of a renewal of the Google financial partnership. Feel free to correct me if you find information that goes beyond 2011. There certainly could be a new deal with Google there but Mozilla is not in the negociating position it once was, so there just as well could not; and seeing as I'm finding zero info about it, I'm leaning towards "there isn't".

But hey, I guess if they don't make a billion dollars a year through donations and take in zero outside revenue, they're not independent.

Unlike Edge, Chrome, Opera, or Safari, which are obviously corporate assets, Mozilla is also part non-profit, and going by their PR, a defender of privacy and the open web.

When money from search, which whittles away at privacy to deliver the right ads, or money from Verizon, who isn't a friend of privacy or the open web, is what keeps the lights on, don't you think that is just a little misleading to Joe Internet who is thinking about donating his time or money to their cause?

Did you read the links? It's not like Verizon wants to pay that money. I think you're confused about how incentives work...

Already read the first article. Didn't read the bloomberg article about the buyout provision, so my fault. Retracting the Verizon complaint.

Also you didn't answer my questions.

Please spell out exactly who you think is influencing Mozilla, and to do what (that Mozilla wouldn't normally do for the sake of their mission). And please support your claims with evidence.

("X pays $Y to Mozilla" is already adequately explained by the fact that Firefox-generated search traffic is valuable to X.)

I left Mozilla nearly two years ago so you can lay off the baseless speculations about my salary, thanks.

Incidentally I explicitly defined "independent" in my blog post: "I mean a browser with its own implementation of HTML, CSS, JS, etc". Choosing an alternative definition and then ranting about it is irrelevant to what I wrote.

I'm sorry. That's not how this works.

    dependent *adj*
    1. free from outside control; not depending on another's authority.
    2. not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence.

It is not disputed that they have made their contribution to the implementation babel of web "standards". It is disputed, right here, that they are more of a spoke in the wheels of online advertising than a heroic champion of the open web.

I know first hand that Mozilla is a highly competent organization, but it not an organization capable of keeping a nefarious secret :)

Leadership at Mozilla have already shown themselves willing to break with Google. And I doubt it's any secret that they've been looking for alternative revenue sources.

If you want to question Mozillas independence please bring something more substantive than baseless speculation.

It is no secret that for at least the past decade, the majority of Mozilla's revenue has been from search partnerships.

In what bizzaro world can you derive the majority of your revenue from a thing while simultaneously declaring independence from it?

Apparently, this one, as they were doing it. What helps think about it is that the 'dependence' was a business transaction: Google paid Mozilla, and got something in return. Much like a startup being dependent on a single large customer yet still wanting to diversify.

Until they have actually diversified, they are by definition dependent on whichever search engine they are currently contracted to.

Yes, but you implied they couldn't strive for independence while doing so.

Furthermore, it's good to note that they have actually diversified: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/new-search-strategy-f...

That is from 2014. They are back on the smack[0].

As long as search is the revenue center, there isn't much room[1] for diversification. If they need annual revenue of ~$400M to operate, it's either Google or Google.

edit: On that last point, I could be wrong. Most of the biggies could throw half a billion at them indefinitely if it served the right purpose.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-dea...

[1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...

That only says they made Google the default search engine, not that they received money from them. And even if they did, that would be in addition to what they are still getting from Yahoo - the contract lasts until 2019. Mozilla simply had the option of changing the default in case of a Yahoo! acquisition by a company not in line with their values (i.e. Verizon).

Afaik, Google is nolonger the default in all markets.