Most of Mozilla’s money of course comes from Google to make them the default search engine on Firefox. And of course its a way for Google to ensure there’s at least one alternative browser engine. Reading about how Texeira was recently fired and how executives have been pushing for AI features for a long time, Mozilla certainly loves chasing trends and then forgetting them, like how Google kills lots of products. It seems like the company can’t stand on its own two feet without Google’s funding and is poorly run.
What happened to Mozilla over the years? How much effort did they put in to trying to be a successful tech company? because it hasn’t been until the past few that I really started following Firefox and Mozilla news.
I wonder if Mozilla could’ve been Proton, years before Proton AG existed, making their own comprehensive suite of privacy-friendly tools, since Mozilla makes privacy their brand. And they were late to the smartphone game with Firefox OS. If they were smart, they would’ve ensured their long term survival with an actual business, to continue funding development of their privacy and FOSS software like Firefox, without large funding sources like Google.
The only reason Mozilla still exists is because Google needs them to so Chrome can’t be a complete monopoly.
Their priorities have always been… questionnable. Like, we got FirefoxOS all while Firefox was basically unusable on Android and Chrome rapidly eating their lunch, PWA support was abandonned then removed, which was the whole idea behind FirefoxOS… Then they started Servo, the rewrite of the rendering in Rust only to cancel it midway.
But hey they acquired an ad company, as if people don’t use Firefox so uBlock keeps working. And Pocket, and VPNs and a whole bunch of other crapware nobody wants from Mozilla. It’s like they go out of their way to be the second option.
Mozilla doesn’t operate a VPN, they are just a reseller for a branded Mullvad version. For them it’s merely an extra income stream with next to no maintenance, so that is something I can approve of. Mullvad is pretty amazing (though cheaper than through Mozilla).
Well, there’s a custom app, and their own login and automatic monthly billing. It’ll depend on the person on whether that’s useful, but it’s not next-to-no maintenance. Though for sure way less than maintaining custom VPN infra.
Servo is an active project still just not owned by Mozilla.
Also, Servo was originally more or less a testbed for new rendering pathway (webrender) which, when ready, was then integrated into Firefox.
Yep this is exactly what I meant. Maybe I should’ve made that clear.