G&A = General and Administrative (expenses)

Isn't Mozilla a non-profit though?

Why does mozilla.ai exist?

Didn't we like a trust the product more in 2007 than we do now?

I mean, yay for scale, but haven't we lost something here?

Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit but Mozilla Corporation which develop Firefox is a for-profit entity.

There are other subsidiaries under the foundation umbrella like Mozilla.ai and MZLA/Thunderbird. This isn't something uncommon for large entity and there are many advantages. For example, it gives more freedom in term of decision making and spending to projects that aren't targeting the exact same consumer segment. Think about Thunderbird. Under Mozilla Corporation, it was always in the shadow of Firefox. Now, it's striving as an independent project.

Now if only we had MZLA for Firefox...

> Why does mozilla.ai exist?

AI threatens both browsers and search engines, is why. Apple, Google and Microsoft all have their own efforts.

Mozilla working on local-first AI isn't a bad idea.

I already have this working on firefox. They have an openai integration but I point this to my own server.

This was wild to contemplate and I was about to raise my finger and say "Really?! 'G&A' at that scale?!" but at the same time even if those kinds of roles are over-hired - they have to be responding to need and within a realm they found risk-averse.

Having said that I just have had the same kinds of questions/trouble as OP about Mozilla's wild spending and budget compared to seeing their devs at grungy linux confs in the midwest when I was an undergrad in the 00s.

You did help point out what I really wondered about also and didn't understand, so thanks.

Mozilla is the underdog, though; they're just not acting like it anymore.

I wouldn't call an underdog someone who takes their competitor's money. In sports, that might even be called throwing.

They went form 90%+ market share down to 9%- since taking Google money.

The allegation of throwing is too light. They’re complicit in covering for Google’s obvious monopoly.

Your ratios are correct but your numbers are off. Mozilla peaked at around 35% of market share and is now around 3%.

You’re not wrong, but people get this mixed up because Firefox was a continuation of Netscape which did have a 90+% market share in 95. Mozilla however is a completely independent entity that continued to work on an open sourced browser created by a different entity.

More like a lapdog I'm right

    2023      $653M

That's almost all Google money.

CEO's largest accomplishment since 2007 was to put Mozilla on the brink of shutting down anytime Google's money stops flowing in.

FWIW, in 2022 it was about 86.00% of their revenue while in 2023 it was 75.79%.

That's a massive difference. Their revenue grew by $60m while the amount of money they got from Google decreased (by ~$15m).

Things do seem to be going in the desired direction

EDIT: some more history

  2023: 75.8
  2022: 86.0
  2021: 87.8
  2020: 88.8
  2019: [^a]
  2018: 95.3
  2017: 95.9

[^a]: this was a weird year where their "other" income got a massive one-time boost. I'm not sure what happened. Did they get a $338m grant? If you take that number out the percentage is around 91%

>Did they get a $338m grant?

That was the year their lawsuit with Verizon finished and they got paid their remaining due for the Yahoo search deal. Related, I think most their money from 2017 also came from Yahoo.

Imagine if a competent CEO had been at the wheel. Instead of spending quite literally billions on who knows what (certainly not a significantly better, more competitive Firefox), Mozilla could have instead transitioned to an endowed foundation model and built a sustainable, long-term future that could weather a scenario like today’s DOJ case which was not impossible to foresee (US v. Microsoft was in 2001 after all).

They were competently directing that money into their bank accounts.

> They were competently directing that money into their bank accounts.

And selling user data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43209768

I agree with up that you have to take revenue into account as well. However, as an NPO Mozilla has no mandate to grow at all costs.

What’s the benefit of having Mozilla be this huge? How does it compare to the risk of shutting down if their revenue dries up, which is looking like a possibility?

Again not diminishing Firefox's efforts but it's difficult not to compare with other _leaner_ open-source projects.

As an example the Linux foundation [0] had 270M in expenses in 2023. Of which even we aggregate international operations and corporate operations the expenditure is less than 21M in G&A equivalent activities.

[0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/hubfs/Reports/lf_annualrepor...

The Linux Foundation is neither a project nor open source. It's an industry trade group. I don't think there is any feasible comparison.

Fair point actually, governance wise the industry partners are probably not a huge expense because they want a seat at the table anyway.

The Linux Foundation is a bunch of corporate suits trying to steer Linux into their business interests. It doesn't have anything to do with the development really.