Contradicts their announcement on new product focus https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-chan...

And here is a 2013 post about the "next generation" engine (Servo) https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung...

> So they cut teams that a) weren't directly working on their core browser and b) doesn't make money for spending on their browser.

Exactly, that means they do not see any value in closing the gap with Chrome. Servo was this plan that launched years ago. See this paragraph from the above post from 2013

> Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way. This means addressing the causes of security vulnerabilities while designing a platform that can fully utilize the performance of tomorrow’s massively parallel hardware to enable new and richer experiences on the Web.

Not to mention their threat response team got laid off

https://www.securityweek.com/mozilla-cybersecurity-staff-hit...

Several parts of Servo have been incorporated into Firefox (Stylo, Webrender, Pathfinder and more).

I think Servo was branded as a research project pretty early on. That it would replace Firefox wasn't very realistic.

Yes, however if Servo was stopped early on due to no "ROI" (like it is the case today). Then those very good improvements would have not been made.

As a Mozilla employee, I can say that this is a fairly accurate assessment.

Except for the part about Firefox not making any money. Firefox is making most of the money.

It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine. But what I meant was Firefox has no means to actual generate an income in its own right. Mozilla have tried. The reactions have not been good.

The money from Google is practically a donation at this point. It's not exactly an altruistic one but it's not exactly a pure business transaction either given Firefox's current market share.

Is it even possible to donate money to Firefox development and not to greedy CEOs?

You can't donate to Mozilla Corp full stop. Besides which Firefox users are strongly opposed to "nags" in the browser as Mozilla have found. Even wikipedia, with it's massive reach and yearly nags, "only" makes ~$120 million. Firefox could never hope to reach anything like that from donations alone and it needs many times that number to keep pace with Google Chrome's practically unlimited funds.

Send money to employees

> It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine

Your first bad assumption is that the amount of money is fixed.

What will happen to this donation if the outcome of the anti-trust is against Google ?

Firefox is the reason why Google pours so many millions in Mozilla. Hardly a money sink.