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Mozilla: DOJ's Plan for Chrome Risks Hurting Smaller Browsers (uk.pcmag.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The Justice Department's proposal to force Google to rein in and even sell off its Chrome browser business may seem like a win for competitors such as Mozilla’s Firefox browser. But the company says the plan risks hurting smaller browsers.

In their recommendations, federal prosecutors urged the court to ban Google from offering "something of value" to third-party companies to make Google the default search engine over their software or devices.

The problem is that Mozilla earns most of its revenue from royalty deals—nearly 86% in 2022—making Google the default Firefox browser search engine.

"If implemented, the prohibition on search agreements with all browsers regardless of size and business model will negatively impact independent browsers like Firefox and have knock-on effects for an open and accessible internet,” Mozilla says. “As written, the remedies will harm independent browsers without material benefit to search competition.”

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[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 225 points 3 weeks ago

May I be frank? I suspect that, in the long run, Mozilla not getting this money will actually benefit Firefox. Sure, so exec will get pissed as they won't get 5.6 million dollars a year, and Firefox won't get some weird nobody-asked-for feature that'll be ditched some time later; but I think that they'll focus better on the browser this way. Specially because whoever is paying the dinner is the one picking the dish, and with a higher proportion of their effective income coming from donations, what users want will stop being so neglected.

Just my two cents.

[-] ryper@lemmy.ca 70 points 3 weeks ago

Firefox won’t get some weird nobody-asked-for feature that’ll be ditched some time later

Nah, the features nobody asked for will just be limited to ones that will provide a revenue stream.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 15 points 3 weeks ago

However once they lose the googlebux, a meaningful part of the revenue stream will be donations. And features implemented because of donators asking for them are, typically, things that we users desire.

[-] pelya@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

Donations are not sustainable. Many open-source projects tried them, and the only thing they can cover are server costs or conferences, developers are still working for free on their own time.

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 68 points 3 weeks ago

I totally agree.

Frankly, Mozilla should be embarrassed to have released this statement.

It's basically 'Please don't harm our competitor for corruptly bribing rivals! We like those bribes very much!'

[-] lung@lemmy.world 26 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah but in the short term the company will literally go out of business

[-] e0qdk@reddthat.com 29 points 3 weeks ago

Not likely. Mozilla had $1,321,539,000 in total assets -- roughly half a billion dollars of which was in "cash and cash equivalents" -- in their last (2022) audited financial statement: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf

[-] lung@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago

Y'know, you're right & that's wild. I guess I should have known, but didn't assume that they have like 600m in unrelated investments. Though the burn rate is quite a lot too, so they probably would scale back browser dev a lot if it lost its profitability & become a pure VC kinda org

[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 9 points 3 weeks ago

I care about Firefox and Thunderbird, not Mozilla. The software is open source and will persist.

[-] tb_@lemmy.world 22 points 3 weeks ago

The way Mozilla can advocate for web standards will be sorely missed.

[-] Pika@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

To my knowledge they don't though, Chrome has had the overall market share for years. Most of the time the mozilla project is tailing behind Chrome, because anything that they add to Chrome if the other browsers didn't follow suit they were left in the dust. I haven't seen the Mozilla project as a Trailblazer in years

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 5 points 3 weeks ago

Perhaps.

Worst hypothesis the company gets completely bankrupt, but someone takes up the torch.

[-] lung@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago

The thing is it's never been more expensive and time consuming to write a browser, it's bigger scope than a kernel in many ways. Stuff like Epiphany isn't even close, despite relying on Apple's webkit. Most distros just push people to Firefox now, despite a history of KHTML and all that. We would need something like the Linux Foundation to pick it up (which runs on corporate sponsorship for a shared resource)

[-] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 3 weeks ago

If Google is the only thing holding up the non-Apple web browsers, maybe then this will lead to scaling down the insane scope of the web standards so it becomes reasonable to implement and maintain a browser for non-megacorps.

Wishful thinking, but hey.

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[-] irreticent@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago

WTF‽

"The head of Mozilla earned roughly $5.6 Million during 2021."

[-] valkyre09@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Excuse me, where do I fill out the form to have the first $30,696 of my salary processed as non taxable benefit? Please and thank you

[-] astro_ray@piefed.social 139 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

what Mozilla is really afraid of is losing the over inflated bonus the execs get paid.

[-] prof_wafflez@lemmy.world 60 points 3 weeks ago

Mozilla needs to ditch their CEO and maybe even their board. They’ve lost their way all because the leadership is greedy

[-] HailSeitan@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago

That’s mistaking a structural problem for a personal one. Zeynep Tufekci has a great argument about why that wouldn’t work:

It’s reasonable, for example, for a corporation to ponder who would be the best CEO or COO, but it’s not reasonable for us to expect that we could take any one of those actors and replace them with another person and get dramatically different results without changing the structures, incentives and forces that shape how they and their companies act in this world.

[-] TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world 69 points 3 weeks ago

That's unfortunate, but it still needs to happen. Mozilla will adapt.

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[-] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 62 points 3 weeks ago

I understand why Mozilla would want to keep the money coming from Google, but it might also be good for them to be less dependent from Google.

Nothing is preventing them from cutting deals with other search engines if they want to keep doing that.

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 63 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I feel like Mozilla is a big money laundering scheme at this point. It only exist so chrome isn't a monopoly, and I pretty sure the CEO and several other workers are getting paid an obscene amount to do nothing all day while only 20% of the money actually goes toward working on the browser.

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago

Just out of curiosity, where does the 20% estimate come from?

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's half exaggerated and half true.

Last year, there was some breakdown of Mozilla earnings circulating on the web and I vaguely remember them gaining like 600 or 800 millions (mostly from Google) while only spending something around 200 millions for software dev, and this was in 2022 (their revenue from Google increases each year for some reason). That's 33% to 25%, so it's either 66% or 75% of Mozilla revenue used for god knows what.

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 weeks ago

Thank you for that breakdown. I'm a big fan of Firefox, but have been aware of there being issues with Mozilla for some time now (albeit from the periphery). I figured when these cases came against Google, that even though I generally supported the breakup of the monopoly, I knew that a story like this one would eventually land.

If Mozilla is indeed burning money instead of putting the majority of it towards Firefox and, to a lesser extent, Thunderbird, then yeah, they're going to need to reassess their budget and where to allocate their assets as without big moneybags Google forking over the funds, it'd be within their best interests to really invest hard into making their browser better.

Thanks again.

[-] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 59 points 3 weeks ago

"Listen, making the entire market dependent on one corporate benefactor just sothey aren't a 100% monopoly and only a 99% one is important"

Jesus Christ Mozilla, do you hear yourself?

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 21 points 3 weeks ago

Remember, Mozilla spends more on executives and their “outreach” programs than they spend on Firefox developers.

[-] R3D4CT3D@midwest.social 28 points 3 weeks ago

tldr: but muh paycheck!

[-] SeikoAlpinist@slrpnk.net 21 points 3 weeks ago

There are other search engines. Maybe Firefox can partner with them.

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 23 points 3 weeks ago

I'm guessing that once Google is prohibited from providing incentives, the bottom will fall out of that particular market and those other search engines will likely pay less, if anything, for the privilege.

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[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's certainly better than the status quo. Sure, Mozilla will hurt at first because they've put their revenue source in the same basket, but it's an opportunity to grow back.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You've just given a great summary of the history of breaking monopolies, really. History says you are correct. For example, AT&T is still kicking.

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[-] jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip 18 points 3 weeks ago

Oh my fucking god Servo cannot get here soon enough.

[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 13 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, I don't care. Just do it.

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[-] nicomachus@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 weeks ago

Mozilla will be fine. I'll literally pay them annually if worst comes to worst and I bet others would too.

[-] rikudou 10 points 3 weeks ago

Not sure I would. Though I probably would for some high quality fork. At this point I don't have much faith in Mozilla.

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[-] interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 weeks ago

Give them money so they can pay their CEO 83 times my salary ? Fuck no, never.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

Before or after they fire 90% of their staff?

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[-] stupidcasey@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

Maybe force them to give it to Mozilla since they are the primary ones that are hurting from googlopoly?

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 15 points 3 weeks ago

How will Mozilla fund development? Firefox only survives because Google pays them.

[-] Dekkia@this.doesnotcut.it 15 points 3 weeks ago

I guess they could start saving money by not paying their CEO millions/year.

[-] theherk@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

I guess google would pay for search on chrome too, which is extra funny.

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[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

What smaller browsers?

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this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024

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