Basically, how do you make another ~$100M/yr in case Google money goes away?
It's 2024, and Google still pays (more like ~$500M/yr from Google now) and Mozilla still exists. But it was hovering over people's heads back then, and still is.
The statement or existence of "monopoly" is not one way direction to being "bad for the economy", the government knows this and speaks out the side of their mouth declaring it always is the case, and does not care, so Google is funding the opposition, as they must.
Chrome has the highest market share of internet browsers ~this side of the great firewall~ worldwide (just checked, still is the case in China today, assumed it changed)! Far worse has been done to companies with less control over their respective markets.
I am being a bit facetious when it comes to features though, fully admit, FF is better in getting a few of those, and don't deny history especially with Firebug.
Wake me up when the government finds the gumption to break up any of the monopolies that are begging for it. Google is but one of dozens that should have been broken up before now.
Technically even Bell didn't lose a case, it broke up "voluntarily" before that happened.
Mozilla used to actually have their offices on Google campus (even though I started after the HQ had moved out, I was still given a Google badge for their cafeteria) and I believe the early Chrome team already had ex-Moz people on it. Goals around standards, etc, were relatively aligned, at least early on.
When Mozilla decided to go rapid release, Google was the one who walked them through how to do it (then Mozilla bungled it by diving into a very accelerated schedule and not considering how it affected add-ons, but that’s another story). It was all pretty friendly.
I’m also pretty sure Bing offered similar incentives for referrals, just without the flat-fee contract Moz had with Google, and they didn’t have the same antitrust issue in that particular space. Referrals and default search provider status have always been part of the financial model between browsers and search engines. Dealing that value back to themselves is one of the reasons search providers publish browsers.
I was pretty surprised when there was such a huge backlash against Apple for that recently since it had been SOP in the business for a long time.
To your point though, given the current market share of Firefox, $500M has to be about more than that if that’s an accurate number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
they are spending serious startup money every year on nothing. it's as if they got the google disease with the google funds. :/
But here we are. And with FireFox fading I'm wondering how they plan on having a real impact with their mission.
That said, since it was MoCo and not MoFo, I think the specific numbers were never divulged. Take the rumor mill and my recollection with a grain of salt.
To me that speaks volumes about the quality of management, and much as I'm sympathetic to your feelings I wonder what FF would have been like today if Mozilla had not been eternally distracted. I suspect that without FF Mozilla funding would dry up overnight and that alone is something they should respect.