this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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The Google antitrust ruling could be an existential threat to the future of Firefox | Financials show 86% of Mozilla's revenue came from the agreement keeping Google as Firefox's default search engine (www.techspot.com)
submitted 3 months ago by ForgottenFlux to c/technology
174 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Mozilla has a close relationship with Google, as most of Firefox's revenue comes from the agreement keeping Google as the browser's default search engine. However, the search giant is now officially a monopoly, and a future court decision could have an unprecedented impact on Mozilla's ability to keep things "business as usual."

United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the leading search provider for computing platforms and web browsers on PC and mobile devices.

Most of the $21 billion spent went to Apple in exchange for setting Google as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. The judge will now need to decide on a penalty for the company's actions, including the potential of forcing Google to stop payments to its search "partners completely," which could have dire consequences for smaller companies like Mozilla.

Its most recent financials show Mozilla gets $510 million out of its $593 million in total revenue from its Google partnership. This precarious financial position is a side effect of its deal with Alphabet, which made Google the search engine default for newer Firefox installations.

The open-source web browser has experienced a steady market share decline over the past few years. Meanwhile, Mozilla management was paid millions to develop a new "vision" of a theoretical future with AI chatbots. Mozilla Corporation, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation managing Firefox development, could find itself in a severe struggle for revenue if Google's money suddenly dried up.

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[–] [email protected] 179 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Based on their 2022 report, only half of their expenses were on software development costs - around $220m, and it’s not clear what portion of that was on Firefox vs other projects.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf

In terms of revenue: around $100m was from sources other than Google.

Therefore, it seems plausible to me that Firefox development could still be funded with $100m of annual revenue. At a smaller level no doubt, but still in existence nonetheless.

[–] dojan 92 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Given that they are focusing on initiatives like intrusive adverts and machine learning BS, I'm okay with them cutting that kind of nonsense off; Firefox still doesn't have a native vertical tab bar.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Firefox still doesn't have a native vertical tab bar.

At least the extension APIs are powerful enough to have an extension that does a decent job (or even a great job, in the case of extensions like Sidebery), plus there's a way to hide the regular top tabs. That's not the case with Chrome - all the Chrome vertical tab extensions feel kinda janky and the regular top tabs are still visible.

You could also use a Firefox fork like Floorp that has native support for tree-style tabs.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Firefox still doesn't have a native vertical tab bar.

That is only mostly true now. There is an about:config setting you can turn on in FF 129 (released this week) which will let you have native vertical tabs. The implementation is only about half done, but it's good enough for me to use alongside Sidebery Tabs.

You can track progress on vertical tabs in Bugzilla. They are also working on tab groups, but that work is at an earlier stage.

All in all, I think we'll see vertical tabs in the next 6 months or so? As a devout Firefox user and resister of the Chromium monopoly, I am really excited.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Why have I never considered vertical tabs before? The screen is way too wide for normal pages, you can fit a bunch more information sideways per tab, and way more tabs vertically than horizontally. You could even double-stack them with all the space available.

This is such an obvious change to make.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And their bookmark manager on android is absolute crap.

[–] vanontom 4 points 3 months ago

Agreed. A real PITA to organize, some unintuitive and hidden options, but very basic. I've used sync and organized on desktop. (But now I do NOT sync desktop bookmarks at all, it has messed them up too many times.)

Not a huge problem, but annoying. Like some newer non-removable toolbar buttons on desktop. Lack of JXL support. I'm a huge Firefox and Mozilla fan, used non-stop for years, but it has annoyances. The team also used to quickly cater to user feedback, but that seems to have slowed.

[–] kokofruits_1 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The translation tool is pretty good though

[–] mke 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Local translations, heck yeah! I know it's not the case for everyone, but I'll even take worse translations in the short-term if it means being able to ditch google and friends.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

And profiles work like shit, at least they announced they were gonna get to it...

[–] uranibaba 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Firefox still doesn’t have a native vertical tab bar.

What's up with everyone obsessing this? I tried Floorp and vertical worse.

[–] dojan 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have an ultrawide. Vertical works a lot better on ultrawide than on more narrow screen ratios. Though ultimately it's just a matter of preference. I personally dislike dark mode.

[–] uranibaba 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I only use a laptop, having vertical took too much screen real estate.

[–] dojan 0 points 3 months ago

Yeah I can see that. My work computer is a laptop, with an ultra wide external monitor. I never use the browser on the laptop screen because with vertical tabs it just takes up too much space. Otherwise vertical tabs give you an easy overview of what you have open if you like me tend to leave a tonne of tabs up.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

This is the way. Mozilla is bloated to fuck as a company. They need to be forced to get back on their main goal: Building a fucking Browser.

No ad deals, no stupid cloud features, just actual browser and privacy features.

There is no fucking way all that money is actually being spent on maintaining core firefox functionality.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Mozilla is bloated to fuck as a company

On one hand, I think people underestimate how difficult it is to build a cross-platform browser in 2024. Just think about all the things that you now do through a web browser that used to require their own separate programs. A browser has to act as the UI for a word processor, a spreadsheet, online games, banking apps, etc. And, it has to work on multiple operating systems with different screen sizes etc. And, this is with constantly evolving web standards. Those web standards are things that Mozilla / Firefox has to participate in too, otherwise Google (the only other browser manufacturer) is going to steer them however it wants and do things like make ad-blocking impossible.

On the other hand, I completely agree that every sign points to Mozilla being ridiculously bloated. Being gifted half a billion dollars per year no matter what you do (as long as it doesn't displease Google) is going to lead to massive inefficiencies. The CEO's salary is an obvious red flag. But, it's a lot more than that. Why did Mozilla buy an advertising company? Why did they buy Pocket? Why are they getting into AI? Why do they sell VPN subscriptions?

Also, what's up with this weird structure where a non-profit (Mozilla Foundation) owns a for-profit (Mozilla Corporation). How can that not be a conflict of interest? I understand that there are some things that non-profits can't do. But, why don't they have two separate companies and have the for-profit one pledge to donate X% of profits or revenues to the non-profit?

It would be a bad thing if the result of the money spigot being turned off is that it was no longer possible to pay people to work on Firefox, resulting in Chrome being the one and only browser. On the other hand, it really does seem like Mozilla needs to be slimmed down and focused on a core mission of making an open source web browser (and hopefully their email client Thunderbird too).