It is the only way to build a browser and push adoption.

The problem is not the lack of direct revenues. It is the lack of marketing budget and control of platforms (Chrome dominates on Android for exactly the same reason Safari does on Apple).

Firefox is a perfectly good browser, but has lost its market share because Google has huge marketing advantage.

Mozilla Corporation revenue is about half a billion, most of it coming from Google and only 2% (from what I found) going to the foundation. The foundation gets most of its money from Google as well, but separately, and the foundation's revenue is about 10% of Mozilla Corporation's. So overall over 90% of Mozilla's budget goes to software development and to cost centers that are associated to Mozilla Corporation.

Software development was 220 out of a total 425 M$ of expenses. General and administrative coming in second at 108 M$.

I don't know exactly what comparable software companies invest, but assuming that the 220 is entirely SWE salaries this seems appropriate overhead to my mind.

Edit, all of this is 2022:

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...

With 750 employees for Mozilla Corp, that's unlikely. Even if 80% are developers that would be $350,000 salary on average.

There's lots of hidden costs, licenses, insurances, computers/servers, email hosting, document editing suites; that's before you get to the big stuff like office space and social contributions. -- then there's managers, HR etc;

Anyway, it's a reasonable rule of thumb. YMMV.

Somewhat ironically that metric is often used to cut-costs on the long term budget at an increased expense to hire tempts when a team is understaffed for whatever reason. (I’m not sure if “temp” is the correct word for when a team of nurses is staffed to only function within the law when nobody is on vacation/sick. It’s what Google translate gives me for “vikar”.)

By this you mean "not even as much as a blip"??

Firefox is my "default browser", and I like it.

I have copies of Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Tor but so far have never used Chrome.

If in some sense Chrome hurts my use of the Internet, then, sure, I'll hope that Firefox solves the problem. Since the Chrome source code is available, other people can revise the Chrome code to alleviate the "hurt".

By the way, occasionally I use Bing -- last time I used it it did much better than Google.

Uh, there are billions of Internet users and, from a simple Google search, ~1.1 billion Web sites. Soooo, 1.1 billion talkers and billions of listeners -- could be a "Tower of Babel" except for standards. An open-source Web browser to help create some standards, okay by me.

Actually, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) may still be playing a big role keeping down any "Tower of Babel"?

Maybe HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, TLS (Transport Layer Security), JPG, JavaScript, etc. will soon plateau, i.e., quit changing quickly.

E.g., in the US, consumer electrical power is nearly all just ~120 volt, 60 Hertz AC, at maybe 16 amperes, with standard plugs and sockets. So, there is nearly no Tower of Babel problem! While that electric power is really important, in practice we can just f'get about it, regard it as a standard tool, and move on to what we can DO with it. A Web browser is on the way to being similar, just a standard tool?

I hope not, because then we get no choices regarding privacy and the most likely dominant player right now cares very much to not give you any privacy.

I've installed a recent version of Chrome, but likely your point is some of why I've never let that program even execute.

Firefox seems to do well on privacy. Maybe that's why I use it and some of why it gets funded!! And for privacy I do use the proxy Firefox offers.

Some people want privacy. If they begin to sense that Chrome is a real threat to privacy, people will look for alternatives. Then some people, maybe with venture funding will get one of the recent copies of the Chrome source code, modify it, and offer a browser with good privacy, maybe charge $50 for it. Okay, problem solved?

Then hopefully privacy will be as accepted as 120 volt, 60 Hz AC home electrical power. All the homes want that power because all the appliences use it because all the homes use it.

Google makes their money from people arriving for the Google search service, maps, etc. From Web crawling, or whatever is done now, for their search service, Google is also a HUGE user of the Internet. Then it is very much in Google's interest to have the many millions of Web sites, HTTP, HTTPS, TLS (Transport Layer Security), DNS (Domain Name System), HTML, JavaScript, etc. all very standard: Google has to be able to read those millions of Web sites so wants them all to be standard, i.e., without a Tower of Bable problem.

Or all the Web sites (and programmers) follow the standards because all the Web browsers do (and several billion Web users use those browsers); and all the Web browsers do because many millions of Web sites do.

Maybe some of what Google might do but does not is due to some people noticing that situation and being sure to help Firefox.

Is it because they would be focused on more efficient sources of food like mice instead?

Essentially, in the wild, cats would be forced to hunt based on hunger, so they'd have to pick and choose what to hunt.

Since they're never hungry, they do it based on fun, and they can "out-starve" their prey who may be hiding but have a higher need to eat and thus: leave their safety.

IME cats are hungry as soon as they have finished their food.

Safari came into the world on a similar timeline so this isn't true

> The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun.

Please could you help me understand.

- If they don't _need_ to hunt for food, the frequency of hunting birds should go down (even if they still do it for fun sometimes)

- If they don't need to take risks to get food, why would they then take those same risks now for the purpose of entertainment? (That cancels out any meaning of there no longer being any risk in killing birds, so why mention it at all?)

My understanding is that you are implying that cats not having to kill birds out of necessity leading to them now being able to do it for fun is a bad thing. Is that correct? And if so, I don't follow that logic because of my above two points.

- Instinctively, cats will hunt.

- Lack of care about food source will make cats outlast prey who have to leave safe areas to find food.

- Lack of care about food availability can (and has been proven to) cause cats to hunt more often, not less- as the "cost" of going for a hunt is basically zero; there's no consequences for failure and even success is met with satisfaction but no "cost".

Anyway,there's better info on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife

The Wikipedia article was also a good read.

Ding ding ding. This is a classic monopolist strategy. It poisons the market for any other potential competitors by removing all possibility of profit from the category.

It's kind of eyebrow-raising that more people in this thread don't notice this. And instead just assume of COURSE browsers can't be funded except by a monopolist using it to shore up their surveillance business.