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 (12 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 (3 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.

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[–] [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.

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[–] TheJack 95 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (12 children)

I have written this elsewhere many times and I know it's extremely unpopular with FOSS crowd but truth needs to be told in here once again:

Everyday I use Debian, Ubuntu and Windows 10/11/Servers.

I'm an "IT guy" and have installed Firefox on literally hundreds of computers over a decade. I also install and setup extensions like uBlock Origin (with few comprehensive ad & malware blocking lists) , Dark Reader, Auto Delete Cookies, Crypto blocking and many more... but I have given up on Firefox 2016 onwards.

You could give Mozilla 10 billion per year just to develop Firefox but Mozilla can and will decide that they wanna spend only 1 or 10 percent of that money on actual Firefox development.

They will spend most of their money on anything but Firefox.

I mean I love world-peace, and cancer and aids free world too but with the money Mozilla get in a year, none of that gonna happen.

Mozilla couldn't stop Russia attack on Ukraine; neither were able to solve Israel Palestinian conflict nor hunger and migration from African countries to Europe...

Then what are they spending money on?

What they could have done successfully is to spend all the money they made from Firefox towards Firefox development alone. But this is the thing Mozilla do not want to do and are open about it.

Now I don't want Mozilla to stop developing Firefox either but because Firefox needs money from Google, Google must be allowed their monopoly on search... is utterly insane thinking.

If Mozilla cannot survive without Google monopoly, so be it.

I would say some open source/ Linux foundations/ Linux distros needs to fork Firefox and let Mozilla die peacefully.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Servo is working on becoming a standalone browser.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (4 children)

There is already the Ladybird project, which is a fork of the SerenityOS browser. We can say that it is a spiritual successor, although its license is more permissive than the Firefox browser.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

I think Servo, not the Ladybird project would be the rightful successor to Firefox

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[–] SamB 88 points 3 months ago (5 children)

It’s strange how the Internet has been flooded by this news. Like leave Google alone or Firefox gets it. Very strategic use of the media might I say.

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[–] bighi 84 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Mozilla gotta do something.

And based on their actions on recent years, that something is probably going to be: 1) firing more developers, and 2) increasing the compensation of their CEO.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'll add:

Buying some random companies

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Change the UI and mess with plugins.
More bloat in the install package that should be optional plugins.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Offer advertisers user data.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

(for absurdly small amounts of money)

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[–] Bluefruit 80 points 3 months ago (2 children)

While I do want competition in the web space, its a good thing that Google could get told to stop doing stuff like this.

I dont want Mozilla to die of course but companies need to be held responsible for all the shit they pull. I'd imagine if Mozilla wasnt able to maintain firefox anymore it would fall to the open source community like they said in the article and I'd probably still use it.

No one company should own the internet.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Who in the open-source community would pay what it costs to develop Firefox? I hope some organization would, but it's a huge and expensive project to run.

[–] Bluefruit 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Great question that I dont have an answer for. Maybe one of the foundations that supports Linux development? This is just my hope though. No idea what it would really take to maintain Firefox at this point. Maybe if it was scaled down or something it'd be ok in the hands of just the open source community as a whole but I'm not well versed in programming or development so i dont know.

I gotta try and be optimistic about this kinda stuff because i forsee a future where Google just ruins more and more of the internet and i hate the thought of that.

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[–] brucethemoose 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

In before Meta buys Mozilla, lol.

Zuckerberg is on a "spoiling other tech giants with Facebook money" streak.

[–] zkfcfbzr 34 points 3 months ago

Oh hey, you managed to think up the one scenario that would make me abandon Firefox

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I wonder how much of their income actually goes towards development. At a glance, it seems a great deal of unnecessary administrative bloat has been added to Mozilla.

I honestly don't see why a browser company needs to be so large (>700 employees).

Not that I want people to lose their jobs, it just seems unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Well, a browser is a massive piece of software, especially if you include the development of a render engine as Firefox does

Web standards evolve constantly, you need to keep up somehow, together with optimizations, bug fixing, patching of security vulnerabilities, etc

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Mozilla is not a browser producer, it's a general internet charity that earns money by producing a browser. Most of their income goes to charity and reserves of which they have about 1bn -- roughly four times as much as wikipedia just for a sense of scale, wikipedia doesn't do any business deals to get at cash but instead does annoying donation drives.

They could scale down significantly while still keeping firefox development ongoing, they probably wouldn't have much issue finding enough donations to fund development, but the strategy seems to be building reserves and diversify commercial income, things like the revenue share they get from pocket for sending people to ad-ridden pages.

When you're currently donating to Mozilla you're not donating towards Firefox: Mozilla-the-company can't receive funds from Mozilla-the-foundation, those donations are going to charity work.

And, to make this clear: None of this is a grand revelation, or new, or outrageous, it's basically always been like that and it's always been a perfectly proper way to run a charity. Most of the recent pushbacks comes from people hating that Mozilla funds stuff like getting women into STEM, being outraged that the wider Mozilla community is not keen on having a CEO which opposes gay marriage (very staunchly so), etc.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 3 months ago

Good, Baker can go find an other x millions salary elsewhere because it's necessary for her family (as she said in an interview), and Firefox can become a community project again that still pays salary to actual developers but without the expensive bullshitting C-suite.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 3 months ago (1 children)

On the other hand, might also be good for Firefox to not be 86% funded by the maker of its top rival (Chrome).

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 months ago (4 children)

if you only do a monthly donation of $5 a month that's still $60 a year and i urge you do do it. i have a recurring donation for firefox, thunderbird, and wikipedia because i believe they're essential to the internet.

[–] WhatAmLemmy 51 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I will not donate anything to Firefox until Mozilla guarantees my money will be spent on Firefox.

But yeah wikipedia, archive.org, etc. Give them your money.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

mozilla donations not going to firefox was probably the caveat to secure google's funding. If google has to pull their bribes, mozilla might make donations go to firefox.

Or I could be completely wrong. We won't know until we know.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

Yeah, I'll donate to Mozilla the moment they actually apply my donations to Firefox. I'm not going to pay for them to buy ad companies, donate to other charities, or put on charity events. I honestly just want to fund Firefox development.

That said, I'm okay with not 100% of it going to Firefox, as long as the bulk of it does. I understand there's a lot of admin overhead they need to cover and whatnot, and I'm fine with my money going to that. But it seems most donations don't make it to Firefox dev.

[–] 800XL 28 points 3 months ago

don't forget archive.org!

[–] BelatedPeacock 18 points 3 months ago

Mozilla doesn't use their donations for Firefox, though that might change if they lose the Google money.

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[–] LouNeko 46 points 3 months ago (7 children)

I would stand behind the idea of splitting Google in it's seperate branches with no shared assets. Basically Google search becomes is seperate corporation, Google AI, Google Webservices, Google Ad Services, YouTube. etc.. This will hopefully undo some of the webs enshitification since now the essentially most powerful company on the web has to actually offer good product for profit instead of compensating bad product with more profitable one.

[–] BrightCandle 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That doesn't produce any practical competition however. Some vertical splitting of the search business seems reasonable so we end up with multiple companies doing search out of it.

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[–] zecg 45 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I use only Firefox / Fennec, but fuck Mozilla. The obscene amounts they paid their CEO for stupid decisions, their shitty Pocket acquisition, regressions such as saving page as pdf simply disappearing on mobile. Let that rotten corporation die, the code is open source, someone will do a Gecko browser.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I don't think it's quite as simple as someone just forking it. Realistically, a browser is an extremely complex piece of software that requires a lot of organizational effort to maintain, deal with security issues, etc. Pretty much every other piece of software on a similar scale I can think of (the kernel, KDE, Blender, Libreoffice) has some sort of organization behind it with at least some amount of officially paid work. All the major forks of Firefox or chromium follow quite closely to upstream for this reason (which is also why I'm skeptical of Brave's ability to maintain manifest v2 long term, despite their probably genuine best efforts to do so).

I do wish that Firefox were developed and funded by an organization specifically dedicated to developing it. This could of course happen if Mozilla dies. But that's going to require someone starting it, which is not at all a small or cheap task.

I could also see a future where Oracle or IBM buys it 😂🤡

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago (14 children)

I needed, I would pay $5 per month in perpetuity for access to Firefox. Fuck google

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[–] aggelalex 34 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Everybody forgets that if chrome and chromium breaks away from Google because of this ruling, it's going to have the same issues as Firefox, if not worse because it's an arguably worse product. The ruling has been pronounced, but what will happen because of it is yet to be defined.

[–] Tyfud 34 points 3 months ago (3 children)

That's not it at all. The issue is funding Mozilla. Having it as the default search engine is something google currently pays them for the right for. If the DOJ says that's anti-trust practices, then Google stops paying Mozilla for that right, and 80% of Mozilla's funding dries up overnight.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why would Chrome/chromium break away? Isn't this just about the search engine side of things? There's no need to dump Chrome if all they need to do is drop themselves as the default search engine.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If were going to go after them for a monopoly, shouldn't it be for chromium? At least with search there are actual viable alternatives that don't get 86% of their money from a direct competitor...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think they pay others to use chromium tho. Other browsers independently decided to use it. That makes it a lot harder to argue that this is a monopolistic practice than when they explicitly pay people to make them the default.

[–] anyhow2503 28 points 3 months ago

That's not entirely accurate. Google's influence on the web has grown even beyond the web browser engine majority share (which is bad enough in itself). They offer one of the most popular web frameworks and run several of the most popular websites. There is almost no way to compete when the market leader is simultaneously the developer and the major user of new features. Of course everyone else is going to switch to using your browser engine. What else are they gonna do? There are even websites now that just check the user agent string and refuse service if you don't use a chromium based browser. Shit's fucked.

[–] yuki2501 30 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It's a threat to the Mozilla CORPORATION, not the Mozilla Foundation nor the browser.

Nothing to be really scared about. Move along.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (2 children)

why do you think the Mozilla corporation losing 86% of their revenue wouldn’t hurt the Firefox browser?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

There was a well sourced video a few months ago that showed where the money is going. Long story short, not into development, for the most part.

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[–] mlg 18 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Almost hoping this somehow causes browser support to fracture again.

It would be a pain for developers, but firefox and chrome using a gig of ram to view webpages and play videos is horrendous even with isolated design.

Also because I'm tired of google dictating the www by being a monopoly. It's 2024 and jpegxl is being treated as ransomware as if enabling a god damn image format is too hard for web browsers. HTTP3/QUIC was 100% google's invention that they just threw onto the web because no one else is developing this standard anymore. Manifest v3 is an explicit attempt to limit user control over web content. They even cornered the market along with Microsoft using gmail.

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