Firefox lost users during “failed” Yahoo search deal, says Mozilla CEO

evanuggetpi@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 438 points –
Firefox lost users during “failed” Yahoo search deal, says Mozilla CEO
arstechnica.com

Baker's testimony shows that Mozilla depends so much on its deal with Google for revenue that "the biggest loser of a DOJ win in the Google case would be Mozilla."

98

You are viewing a single comment

While I’d prefer the do that also, I think the issue is that Google pays them so much, they couldn’t afford to exist without it.

I mean, they could. They have been cutting costs in the wrong areas, though - those harder to replace if exgoogled. There's plenty of unnecessary fat in Mozilla as an organization. They have been doing lots of expensive (in terms of developer and testing resources) unneeded crap (apparently to support the appearance of relevancy, which is different from relevancy itself), they also don't need that many management people.

Let's please remember how Mozilla started. Yes, a browser back then and a browser now are two completely different things, but the imbalance in resources has always been there. It's just that now they are spreading resources where they shouldn't, to imitate Chrome in things secondary to a browser itself. They don't have the resources for that even with Google, and of course they won't otherwise.

Also supporting something like XULRunner or in general olden times Gecko would help, so that people could use FF's engine like they still do with Chromium and Webkit. That would increase the amount of people contributing in various ways.

That's how I see it, my humble opinion and all that.

You’re absolutely right. I agree with everything you said. The whole situation is really frustrating as users.

It's pretty much their only revenue stream, considering they give all the software away and don't have ads in the browser.