After I noticed Firefox has removed the Pocket branding but kept the Pocket stories, I also noticed the settings screen on the homepage no longer lets you disable sponsored stories or links.
Firefox 115:
Firefox 139:
You can still remove these advertisements, but you have to leave the homepage and dig through the settings to find that option.
Would you have a source that details how Mozilla spends money on the software development of Firefox vs other projects? I couldn't find it in the financial report, so I guess you have another source.
We have demonstrable evidence of Mozilla opening a public forum to solicit user requests in 2022, then ignoring them for about 2 years, then hating the forum to announce Shopping Assistant and Orbit and other now-dead things
But how much of their resources did that represent? 1%, 10%, 50%? This being a problem really depends on that number.
They are trying to find ways to earn money independent of Google royalties so they can keep making massive FOSS projects, that compete with FAANG technology, independently. For me all the community troubles and failed projects mostly show how hard this is.
No, i made it the fuck up. But if you look at how many actual code changes happen on each release and then substract all the shit that nobody wants, there is little left. Firefox is basically in maintainance mode the way i see it. If you then look at all the other stuff mozilla is doing (ad tech, AI garbage, useless cloud features, marketing) you get a picture of where the management is placing priority. Things that lead to monetization. There are a few cool things like Thunderbird and Mozilla Location Service, but the latter has already been killed off sadly.