Since the launch of Firefox 1.0 in 2004, we have shipped with a default search engine, thinking deeply about search and how to provide meaningful choice for people. This has always meant refusing any exclusivity; instead we preinstall multiple search options and we make it easy for people to change their search engineâwhether setting a general default or customizing it for individual searches.
The fact that you can add other search engines is great, but the search engines settings is odd and confusing.
For the past seven years, Google search has been the default in Firefox in the US because it provides the best search experience for our users. We can say this because we have tried other search defaults and supported competitors in search: in 2014, we switched from Google to Yahoo in the US as they sought to reinvigorate their search product. There were certainly business risks, but we felt the risk was worth it to further our mission of promoting a better internet ecosystem. However, that decision proved to be unsuccessful.
This is a lame excuse. Yahoo probably gave them as much or close to Google for them to make that choice.
Firefox usersâwho demonstrated a strong preference for having Google as the default search engineâdid not find Yahooâs product up to their expectations. When we renewed our search partnership in 2017, we did so with Google. We again made certain that the agreement was non-exclusive and allowed us to promote a range of search choices to people.
Sorry, but what? Was any survey conducted? I am sure Firefox users will prefer to be asked what they want.
So how do browser engines tie into the search litigation? A key concern centers on proposed contractual remedies put forward by the DOJ that could harm the ability of independent browsers to fund their operations. Such remedies risk inadvertently harming browser and browser engine competition without meaningfully advancing search engine competition.
The concern is genuine. However I am a bit sceptical. Alternatives search engines will be boosted by those remedies - with Google being forced to sell for cheap their search results to competitor- and since search quality might be less important, many will like to buy their way to 4% of Search engine market share.
Of course, Mozilla will likely receive less money. But they will not go bankrupt - they will likely still receive hundreds of millions- overnight, although they might need to fire their $7M/year CEO.
Rather than a world where market share is moved from one trillion dollar tech company to another, we would like to see actions which will truly improve competitionâand not sacrifice peopleâs privacy to achieve it. True change requires addressing the barriers to competition and facilitating a marketplace that promotes competition, innovation and consumer choiceâin search engines, browsers, browser engines and beyond.
I totally agree on " addressing the barriers to competition and facilitating a marketplace that promotes competition, innovation and consumer choice". This though, would need regulatory action, which has a 0% of happening within the next 4 year, and prob <10% after.
I do agree it shouldnât be sold to another Big Tech company as they would just recreate the same monopoly again.
Will someone please think of the poor CEOs?
Just to be clear, I got the CEO salary number wrong. Still a lot though.
Very wrong. By an order of magnitude.
0.5B is roughly Mozillaâs entire operating budget for a year. The CEO earns roughly 1% of that number.
What is the fair and reasonable salary for managing an org of 500-1000 people in a city with some of the highest cost of living in the world? I donât have an answer or an opinion, but I donât think that âlow single digits millionsâ is a totally outrageous answer.
Mozillaâs CEO makes considerably less in a year than Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill gates make in a day. And as a non-profit org, there are no stock options, equity, etc, its just salary. People who choose to work at Mozilla are in most cases likely taking a paycut to do so. Mozillaâs target compensation is to pay a little more than comparably sized charitable organizations, but less than comparably sized for-profits.
almost by two orders of magnitude
Its akin to claiming @jonah is making $2100/hr in his new role of Director instead of $30/hr
And? Everyone make mistakes, I corrected it yet you are still talking about it.
Itâs not a perfect answer, but Brave CEO make a little under a million.
And I think that the CEO can be comfortable with one million every year, this would still be probably 2X more than best silicon valley devs.
Mozilla Corporation is controlled by Mozilla Fundation, but the former is just a for-profit company.
And it would actually be good if the CEO pay was actually tied to metrics such as revenue or browser market share. This way they would actually be incentivised to perform.
Again, it doesnât make sense when other CEOs make less money. Brave, Signal, CEOs make less money.
Iâm a big proponent of the idea to make it the law to tie the CEO wage with a hard multiplier (e.g. 10x) to the LOWEST wage that is paid to someone in that company*, i.e. someone gets 20k/a the CEO gets 200k/a max.
*including outsourced jobs etc. so that there cannot be any trickery
Honestly I would rather it be the opposite. The lowest wage employee can make no less then 1/10th the CEO, for this example. This way the lowest paid employee is probably guranteed a living salary.
For me, I dont really have an issue with how much a CEO makes as long as everyone under that CEO is also making a fair wage.
Braveâs CEO runs a much smaller AND for profit company that he owns considerable equity in. He isnât an employee, he is an owner. If Brave profits, he profits. Mozilla by contrast is a non-profit, any profit stays within the organization.
If Brave succeeds his wealth will come from his equity not his salary, that is not a possibility at a non-profit. IIRC Bezoss salary at Amazon was something like 80k, but he made hundreds of billions in total. When you own a considerable amount of a for-profit company, salary is not necessarily the most relevant part of your comp. Itâs apples to oranges to compare non-profit salaries, to for-profit salaries unless you consider total compensation, and potential profit.
Mozilla Corporation is controlled by Mozilla Foundation, but the former is just a for-profit company.
Yes. I think you are not understanding the relevant point here. Because of ^ this structure, all profit stays within Mozilla executives donât get a % of the profit.
Profits can flow from the child (Mozilla Corp) to the parent org (Mozilla Foundation), but because the parent Foundation is non-profit, no profit, leaves the organization. Unlike Brave or Amazon, or Discord, profits canât flow out of the organization to the owners, shareholders, executives, and VC lenders. they must be reinvested or held within the organization. Thatâs a good thing for the org (as it eliminates some conflicts of interest) but it means that non-profit employees are fully dependent on salary for compensation, whereas with for-profit startups, salary and equity both play a role.
Braveâs CEO, Signalâs CEO
- Signal is ~5% the size of Mozilla and currently losing money/not sustainable. As a % of their budget, Signalâs CEO makes more than Mozillaâs does. You canât compare managing a 40 person org to a 500-1000 person org. That is not at all comparable.
- Brave is a private for-profit startup, itâs CEO owns considerable shares of the company. That is where his well will come from if Brave is successful. That isnât a possibility that the CEO of a non-profit has. But even setting that aside. Consider that Brave is roughly 1/8 to 1/4 the size of Mozilla. Even if we put blinders on and only consider salary (which doesnât make sense to do), it isnât unreasonable to make a smaller salary for managing a smaller organization (or a larger salary for managing a larger organization).
I really donât know what I think the right number is for managing a large org, I just donât donât think the current pay is outrageously off base, for a revenue positive non-profit organization.
Itâs a fair point he owns much of Brave.
Signal is currently funded by Whatsapp funder. This is not sustainable yes. But just like Google contributing 90% of your revenue, when the Feds are coming to Google. And it doesnât make sense to say âAs a % of their budgetâ, there is a baseline for any executive.
And again, why is that bad ? Breindan Einch created Brave from scratch after being fired from Mozilla, and now it is a successful company.
Say all you want about how Mozilla non-profit is good, all I see is that it is a sinking ship (I still use the browser, but managment is terrible). Now going against action to hurt one of largest spying company in the US because you are corrupted by their money is the final straw.
Their browser is still very good, and has a better UI than Brave so I am sticking with it for Now, plus MV3 sheningans.
I just want to add that despite what I said, I wouldnât have a problem that their leadership get paid shitload of money if they were actually making the browser successful.
I do always wonder what metrics many people here use to gauge success⌠When compared to other browsers, maintaining firefox and a completely separate browser engine is much more difficult but that seems to be ignored by a lot of peopleâŚ
Agree to disagree. I donât think it is a 1:1 relationship, but size of the budget, size of the org, and revenue are very relevant practical factors.
And again, why is that bad ?
I didnât say it was (though I would argue that in many cases it is, and leads to misaligned incentives).
What I said (or mean to say) is it is an apples to oranges comparison to compare a non-profit where salary is everything, to a for-profit where the CEO-owner is also a major shareholder. Ownership/equity in the company will be worth a lot more than salary if the company becomes successful, or is bought by a bigger fish, and even if it fails, it can be parted out and sold off to private equity and vulture capital for the IP, the brand, or whatever else. The same is not possible with a non-profit.
In brief, my point is you canât compare salary of the CEO of a not-for-profit org, with the salary of an owner-CEO of a for-profit, since in the latter case, a large share of earnings are expected to come from equity not salary.
and now it is a successful company.
Afaik that is unknown. Unlike Mozilla or Signal, Braveâs finances are not released to the public.
Brave is usually very vocal about their successes or milestones, but as far as Iâve been able to find in my research, theyâve never claimed to be profitable, which makes me think they probably arenât.
Iâm not rooting for Brave to fail, I hope they succeed and become sustainable, I use both Brave and Firefox daily, but if I had to guess, Iâd guess Brave is still operating at a loss. The big bet Brave is founded on is that people will opt-in to the crypto-backed advertising framework theyâve built. And so far, it doesnât feel like many of their users have opted-in. Since that time, theyâve diversified a little bit, but still heavily dependent on people opting into their advertising system. I think Eichâs eyes are very open to the speculativeness and risk of the bet they are making. Iâve never been super comfortable with their vision, but Iâve supported and defended their right to try.
We share this desire, but Iâm not sure how much control Mozillaâs CEO or anyone else has over this at this point in time. Its a systemic problem that most likely requires systemic change beyond what any one person or company can do. Mozilla may not be thriving, but they are persisting on a playing field where literally every other independent player of consequence (even Microsoft) has either failed, or chose not to try (became a derivative browser).
Almost none of us âbackseat driversâ have solutions, we have criticisms and complaints, but nobody ever articulates a fleshed out vision of what alternative path Mozilla should be persuing beyond one liners like âfocus on the browserâ (âŚbut Browsers donât sustain themselves), âdonationsâ (âŚrealistically, how?), âUI refresh / feature xyzâ (may appeal to some power users, but the masses donât care and just use what is preinstalled or what aligns most with their ecosystem of choice (Apple or Google).
I donât think it is at all coincidental that the only two remaining browser makers apart from Firefox, the only two that have gained meaingful marketshare since the smartphone became ubiquitous, also happen to be the only two companies that control the two dominant consumer-facing ecosystems, and also have a duopoly over consumer mobile OSes.
The problem with managing Mozilla, is a vocal group will hate you if you âdonât focus on the browser enoughâ (seek out other revenue sources) but theyâll also hate you if you do âfocus on the browserâ because web browsers on their own arenât self-sustaining and depend and without alternative revenue streams depend on things like search deals and sponsored links/ads which people (understandly) donât like.
The way I see it, I think it is a a âdamned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-donâtâ scenario. I would not want to be in her shoes, and I donât believe I have any novel solutions, unless/until their is some systemic change.
Yeah Iâve seen a lot of this on this forum.
So much Mozilla justification in the thread, youâd almost think its PR astro turfing.
This is just âleopard meets faceâ moment for Mozilla. The revenue based on hoping Google wants to sustain a competitor was doomed to fail. But whenever this was raised, Mozilla defence teams online repeatedly told everyone âIf not Google, someone else will pay to be the default browserâ.
Signal is not bleeding users. Its infact gaining them at unprecedented rate (Source). Signal is also the golden standard among private and secure chat apps, while Firefox is not even liked by folks in the FOSS community who use forks for better UX and features.
Mozilla on the other hand keeps losing users, again and again and again.
I wonât get into the CEO and Brave thing, because its up to companies to look at their finances and pay their CEOs. Idc what they pay if its viable in their financial models.
The same metric as any other company. Or does Mozilla exist outside of the capitalistic evaluations? Mozilla also uses the same metrics.
Microsoft hasnât failed. This is just financial illiteracy. Microsoft just understands its easier to not waste money maintaining a browser when a perfectly usable and secure chromium exists. This is exactly what I want from companies, not wasting time reinventing the wheel. Its like saying every company not having their own kernel is a bad thing even though linux exists.
What a ridiculous argument. Pay me millions, make me an executive, and then I will help. Its not the users job to help a company, and you donât need to propose solutions in order to qualify for presenting issues. Why do so many FOSS advocates have this illusion?
Users are not supposed to solve business problems. The users job is to complain and switch if those complaints arenât heard. Drill this into every FOSS advocates head.
Chrome was gaining market share on desktop BEFORE android got big. It wasnât the default, and Firefox was the biggest player after IE. Lets not rewrite history. What was the issue then? Same as today.
No its not. Its just another company failing because of poor vision and leadership. Same as any other company. Making a FOSS and privacy oriented browser does not make Mozilla exempt from the forces of capitalism. Innovate or die.
Theyâre being too comfortable taking google $$ and giving it to the ceo instead of innovating and keeping head in the game. Now the reality catches up. Nokia, Blackberry, Blockbuster used to be a gargantuan in their own field too but now defunct. I used to be amazed at Mozilla rise in the early 2000s, their tab based ff is phenomenal back then.
Now ff mobile on my android canât even keep loaded tabs in memory, reloaded every freakin app change. Inputting totp 2fa code is almost impossible without thinking to throw the phone to the wall. No wonder theyâre in the predicament.
This is how you get all your companies to move their headquarters to another country.
Because capitalism famously always rewards innovation and not monopolistic and unfair practicesâŚ