Apple sells hardware, and most of their software offerings, like MacOS, their office suite, and Safari, and given away to convince people to buy that hardware. Also, it's not like they're spending a whole lot of time making Sarafi the best browser around.
Microsoft's web browser was created (and bundled) specifically to prevent the web from disrupting their monopoly on the desktop, and their new browser is just a fork of Chromium.
Google's browser was a way for Google to drive web technologies in service of their advertising platform.
Mozilla's open source efforts are/were a loss leader for ... nothing. Their work was motivated by altruism, not profit, and that turned out to be, well, not profitable. That's why they're pivoting; altruism alone wasn't enough to pay the bills.
He leaves a publicly funded team building a web browser, starts a commercial entity, and for whatever reason they don't feel they can charge for their browser funded by private equity. You could in fact buy it in a box at the local electronics store, but with the pricing I suspect most of that money went to distribution, not NCC. So they try to find other ways to make money, like their web server and overpriced consulting (for their notoriously awful web server).
The entire dotcom era then emulated this pattern. There were certainly other logistical reasons for it (like the state of credit card billing at the time), but I can't help but feel like this was the rock that started the avalanche of adware and commercial cyberstalking.
And so here we are 25 years later, and the last remnant of Netscape is trying to build the free browser and not much to fund it. I'm kinda surprised it lasted this long.
To be fair to them though, and particularly on the topic of this story, if they were going to build a free browser, it always should have been on the community to contribute to the dev tools. It's the part of the browser that we have a vested interest in.
And in fact, it used to be that way. Firefox had no dev tools at the beginning. They copied a very popular add-on, which I now recall made absolutely no sense to me at the time. I felt like their attempt was less effective in several ways, and why are they shouldering out this tool that made them in the first place (as GP asserts, nobody develops first-class support on a browser they can't debug in, or at least not when there is an alternative.)
Being able to use Firebug was such a huge boon to development back in the day, though it probably looks primitive today.
I worked on two teams back to back. Everyone was using Firebug. Management was telling us NOT to support Firefox, but tough shit, you want this work done yesterday and the only way that's going to happen is by engineering on Firefox/Firebug and then going back to black magic for the 10% that didn't work on IE (and soon, Safari).
Except it didn't turn out to be "not profitable". Leaving aside the issue of dependence on companies like Google and the frankly ridiculous exec compensation, all publicly available data shows that Mozilla is very financially healthy and has been for a long time.
The claim of financial issues is implied by the corporatespeak press release, but simply not supported by any evidence that I've seen.
The point I read from GP, at least, was that open source is cheap for these big corps because they get a ton of benefit for it, but non-profit (either orgs or individuals) are bearing the brunt of the cost.
There are consulting firms like Igalia that work on all three engines, and they're funded mostly from big clients like Bloomberg and banks so developers there can use flexbox and CSS grid everywhere.
Google sometimes works on WebKit as well if they want to try to improve compatibility of websites, but the project is mostly Apple employees now.
Clang was certainly an in-house Apple project from the start, and it would be hard to claim that it hasn't been a project that has seen huge uptake outside of Apple.
[1]: https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-July/000000.ht... (announcement)
Do you mean that Clang leverages LLVM on the back end?
Totally agree that Apple not tend to open sourcing software unless needed.
That certainly depends on how big the bills are.
The odds of them being able to build a business that that replaces the several hundred million they get from Google (which is essentially pure profit, not even revenue) are essentially nil. The instant Google decides they're no longer useful, Mozilla is going to go poof.
I'm inclined to agree with others who have said they should be building their own endowment. It's almost malpractice on the part of their leadership not to.
People keep repeating this but couldn't Bing replace Google as the default? The "default search engine" position is actually worth money.
https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-s-insanely-bad-deal-to-pay-mozilla...
So I don't think their position is as fragile as people suggest. The problem is declining market share, not that they are tied to Google per se. (Of course Google is by far the strongest search engine, but it's plausible that Mozilla could survive with Bing.)
In a scenario where Google no longer sees the value in that arrangement, what value would Microsoft be seeing in it?
Consider this: Firefox's remaining userbase is mostly quite technically sophisticated users. Are they going to blindly end up searching on Bing all day because they don't know how to change the search box default? No. They're going to set the default back to Google, and carry on as before, except then Mozilla don't get paid for it.
Google have a few reasons to cut them off. One is, obviously, it won't make much impact on their revenue given Firefox demographics. The second is Mozilla and Apple are dragging down the Chrome team. Chrome tries to introduce new tech, Mozilla vetos it or doesn't implement it. Apple they can't do anything about, Microsoft gave up on Edge and is now in the Chrome camp. If Mozilla dies, only Apple remains on a non-Blink engine. And eventually Tim Cook will wonder why they're funding a poor clone of Blink for legacy reasons, when they could just use it directly and re-allocate the resources to more profitable projects.
Cutting of Mozilla's lifeline is one way to push the web along to standardisation on Blink as a codebase. And when that's done, well the W3C is irrelevant for a long time already, so HTML becomes the API to Blink basically and they add features at whatever speed they want.
By accepting the Google cheque, they directed people towards Google and may have indirectly funded Chrome and monoculture.
If they had directed people towards Bing when they had 30% market share, that may have resulted in a search engine duopoly instead, and a greater chance of Microsoft selecting and funding Gecko/Servo instead of Blink.
But the amount it's worth is probably roughly proportional to the number of Firefox users. With Firefox having less and less market share, the attraction to search engines of supporting it -- particularly those whose operators also make their own browser -- must be diminishing rapidly as well.
Both of Mozilla's likely search revenue partners in the US are also competitors and both use anti-competitive means to push their own browsers.
Building their own search revenue stream isn't going to happen on $400M annually. And I don't think Yandex or Baidu are planning to seriously address the US market.
Also, I could be wrong, but I thought ad spending was way down this year.
And it can easily drop to $0M a year.
Meanwhile, a good consulting can grow to tens of millions, and even be acquired by a company like MS, etc.
* Forbid alternative browser engines on their platform.
* Bundle their browser in a leading operating system.
* Use their massive Web properties to drive downloads of their own browser.
I believe Valve's been a bit on edge (no pun intended), about Microsoft forcing games through their store as well.
Mozilla was helping us out of these walled gardens. There's even the SSB support they've been working for PWAs on desktop. Instead of bundling Electron, you could likely just target ESR Firefox and your app icon just launches this URL (this is what Peppermint OS does). Instead now you have Chrome and all of these Electron apps all competing for who can chew up the most RAM.
Knee-capped? For years Safari had the best PWA support compared to Android.
And at first it even asked developers to make PWAs, and they said "no, we want native apps".
There isn't a defined spec sure, but they idea is to give Web Apps somewhat equal footing with native apps while having potential be more secure being tied to browser sandboxing, extensions, settings, etc. This doesn't appear to be in Apple's goals given those missing features. You can see devs begging for push notifications for years--and it works on desktop Safari.
At work, this is the specific feature we want above everything else in our PWA experience. Apple's been reluctant to say the least to allow repackaged Web Apps in their store, but can you blame developers when features like this are missing but present?
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-chrome-web-st...
things are much more likely to go the iOS route given it's already ARM.
There’s no other shoe. There's no known technical reason why all the major browsers shouldn't be available natively when ARM Macs start shipping in a few months.
Why would Apple allow other browser engines that are slower, less power efficient and don't respect user’s privacy at least as much as Webkit to run natively on iOS?
Apple continues to add features to block ads from tracking users across the web and to lessen the impact of fingerprinting by trackers.
Certainly Google has no interest in adhering to these principles if it were able to run natively on iOS—they're the only major browser on macOS that allows unchecked fingerprinting and ad tracking.
There's your problem. Apple doesn't own the device.. I do.
Apple can "recommend" I use Safari all they want (not unlike MS does with Edge) but if I own the device I should have the right to run any software I want. Full stop.
Practically speaking though, this is all command-line heavy and developer centric. Your typical Chromebook user can't/won't.
I'm actually grappling with this issue right now.. I'm a long time Firefox user and picked up a Lenovo Duet ChromeOS device to serve as a replacement for my cheap Android tablet.
Turns out.. I really like the form factor and am using it a lot (typing on it right now!). But the Firefox Android apps are a pretty terrible experience and since I don't plan on using this for dev, I don't want to jump through all the crostini hoops. So here I am, using Chrome..
If anything, at the moment Apple is doing more for the web diversity than anyone else. They have a non-negligeable market share and can force Google to abandon at least the most outrageous plans for Chrome.
Not that they are angels, of course... It's a pity that Mozilla failed to find a better revenue source that would include keeping Firefox alive.
What’s the alternative here? I can’t imagine opening up a new computer and not having some kind of web browser pre-installed.
They've also continuously lost lots of good will they had in the mid to late 2000s, both from end users and developers. I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to declare good riddance if chromium ever got a decent extensions framework like Firefox used to have.
They might be able to get some grants.
[0] Maybe this would be a good thing, though, get rid of all the people working on stuff (and often more expensively, managing the working on stuff) who aren't in it for the vision. The money-oriented who still want to work on browser tech can be absorbed by Google/Apple/MS/Brave/Opera. But it's risky, as they might find there's no one left.
(Don't get me wrong, I am not underestimating the complexity of their browser -- I work full-time in the Chromium code base, so I have a pretty good idea what a modern browser looks like inside.)
In any case the position wasn't a fit. I didn't get my chance to say no to it because the team I interviewed with didn't think I was a fit either (for imho dubious reasons, but whatever). But from talking to people work there... I dodged a bullet big time.
I wish them the best, but I didn't get the impression from the letter and the composition of the layoffs that the rethinking is really happening.
Heck, the money that they get from google per year is enough to pay for 1000 developers paid at $100k/year each for 5 years.
That will save a LOT more money and have a better impact.
Group A gets $Z in donation with conditions attached so it only gets used by Group A.
Then the organization assigns $X - $Z funding to Group A and assigns $Y + $Z funding to Group B. Group A is happy because it still has $X from the donation and doesn't complain. Group B is happy because it can now spend $2.5 million on the CEO.
1. Limits. The above doesn't apply when $Z > $X, above which the attachment has full effect.
2. Reputation. The sources of recurring $X + $Y have decision making powers with a time lag. They may not be willing to give $X + $Y again if they know it was entirely spent on group B last time.
3. Anticipation. Organization decision makers know 2. Which makes donations with conditions attached into a signal with some effect, rather than something freely fungible with no pressure.
If we were to plot a curve of notional pressure and effect on the organization's budgeting decisions, I would expect a curve increasing with the ratio $Z/($X+$Y). A very shallow curve perhaps. But not a flat zero in the range 0..$X as you are suggesting.
How sure are you? Would you be sure enough to bet your child's health care on it?
Not at all, In places with national single insurer system, (medicare for all), like the UK where am based, the way it works is that you do contribute to National Insurance effectively as part of your taxes, (usually less than you'd pay in the U.S.), BUT if you switch employers or even are unemployed, you still have that healthcare available to you.
Also, all the doctors, hospitals etc. are technically always "in network".
The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant sources of revenue. Maybe they should turn into a Rust consultancy of some sort. I don't know.
If the mission statement is about 'privacy' then it doesn't make much sense to continue to bite the hand that feeds them as its up to Google if they want to re-new their contract with Mozilla; which unsuprisingly they had to.