This is the second layoff at Mozilla this year, the first affecting dozens of staff on the side of the organization that builds the popular Firefox browser.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46655413

The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Firefox browser maker Mozilla, has laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a “relentless onslaught of change.”

  • snowcrushed573@lemmy.worldEnglish
    311·
    vor 6 Stunden

    Everytime I see comments regarding Mozilla’'s financials,I have the same effing question: How does a company like brave or opera maintain their browser ?? AFAIK both don’t have the level of community backing that Mozilla does nor do they have any (again AFAIK) agreement with a company like google for default search engine placement

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      vor 59 Minuten

      They use chromium.

      Firefox does not.

      The grand majority of software engineering effort goes into the browser development that they never have to work on for the most part.

    • sibachian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      171·
      vor 3 Stunden

      those are just rebranded chrome(ium). all browsers except firefox and safari are rebranded chromium or firefox. edit: there are some other projects but none are mature.

      • tb_@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        vor 2 Stunden

        Apple also maintains their own browser engine, but that’s Apple.

    • fatalicus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      vor 2 Stunden

      Brave just tries to scam their users for money.

      Like when they added “donate to the content creator” links on YouTube and such, then didn’t actually give the money to the content creators.

    • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      vor 3 Stunden

      Alongside what the other guy said, Opera definitely does have search engine deals, idk about brave since they launched their own. But brave has their own private advertising system

  • PetteriPano@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1901·
    vor 11 Stunden

    Gee, I can’t imagine why they chose to drop this bomb today.

    It’s like they wanted it to be drowned in other news.

    • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
      371·
      vor 9 Stunden

      If Mozilla does become defunct, it does raise the question of whether Chrome would be considered a Google monopoly, and therefore subject to antitrust legislation.

      I can’t imagine any governments would look kindly upon internet access being guarded behind a single company’s product.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        vor 40 Minuten

        Google should be subject to antitrust legislation regardless.

        Their position as a monopoly is what enables this.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
        22·
        vor 6 Stunden

        I can’t imagine any governments would look kindly upon internet access being guarded behind a single company’s product.

        laughs in 2001

      • drathvedro@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        vor 3 Stunden

        They could try to employ some kind of Apple defense, like, you wouldn’t hit Apple for having monopoly on iOS. As long as it’s not the only solution on the market. And for web, most of time, you could access the same resources and get similar experience by downloading… the apps… wait, they have a monopoly on that, too. Well, they are completely screwed in that case.

      • ravhall@discuss.onlineEnglish
        92·
        vor 7 Stunden

        There is a new browser based on WebKit (safari), called Orion that looks promising. However, it’s only on macOS and iOS at this point. Hopefully Linux and Android will be a consideration at some point.

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
          5·
          vor 3 Stunden

          There’s also a new browser based on Firefox/Gecko called Zen. There’s way too many browsers based on Webkit or Blink.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          vor 7 Stunden

          Chrome’s engine was originally forked from WebKit. That makes them too similar (even years later) for WebKit to count as a real alternative.

          • bamboo@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            vor 2 Stunden

            I strongly disagree with this. In practice, supporting chrome does not imply supporting safari and vice versa. In particular, Safari is much, much slower about adopting new web technologies. Google basically implements support for anything they can think up, Apple waits for it become a ratified standard and then implements it only if they want to. Their JavaScript implementations are also completely different.

          • ravhall@discuss.onlineEnglish
            62·
            vor 7 Stunden

            The point is to leave a google controlled ecosystem… which means it counts as a valid alternative. What would you suggest besides chromium and gecko?

              • ravhall@discuss.onlineEnglish
                1·
                vor 3 Stunden

                Haha. So I really do wish that all websites had a text version, or like markdown. Can you imagine how damn speedy things would be? Every website would have the same layout. As much as I appreciate good web design, there’s a lot of bad UI choices out there.

      • WldFyre@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        vor 7 Stunden

        Splitting Chrome from Google wouldn’t make Chrome not a monopoly, though, right?

        • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          vor 6 Stunden

          The split might leave a monopoly still, if it’s the only major browser.

          • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            vor 5 Stunden

            It would be a lot easier to compete with though, since Google couldn’t treat it as a loss leader that still bring them in search revenue by default.

      • Gemini24601@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        vor 6 Stunden

        Also, Ladybird is looking very promising, so in a few years we should have a true fourth browser engine.

      • dubyakay@lemmy.caEnglish
        23·
        vor 9 Stunden

        Let’s just separate GOOG from Chrome / Chromium and Google Search completely. So that the direction of the most used browser, most used search engine and the biggest advertiser don’t circle jerk each other.

  • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    87·
    vor 10 Stunden

    I suspect their financial position has changed. Perhaps Google’s being found as a monopoly has made them decide not to help fund Mozilla’s efforts as substantially.

    Ashley Boyd lead the advocacy team, here’s the kind of stuff they were doing:

    https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-welcomes-ashley-boyd-vp-of-advocacy/

    In fall of 2016, Mozilla fought for common-sense copyright reform in the EU, creating public education media that engaged over one million citizens and sending hundreds of rebellious selfies to EU Parliament. Earlier in 2016, Mozilla launched a public education campaign around encryption and emerged as a staunch ally of Apple in the company’s clash with the FBI. Mozilla has also fought for mass surveillance reform, net neutrality and data retention reform.

    https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/05/mozilla-foundation-lays-off-30-staff-drops-advocacy-division/

    “The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all. That unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward,” read the statement shared with TechCrunch.

    Reading between the lines, I’d keep an eye on them collecting your data and consider one of the privacy-focused forks.

  • Marthirial@lemmy.worldEnglish
    193·
    vor 9 Stunden

    Their question is: how much would you pay for not using a Chromium based browser?

    People switching to the browser and zapping all ads, demanding open source and vitriol for any kind of monetization. How can they survive? They would have to become a subsidized utility, which not even the Internet as a whole has achieved.

    • panicnow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      vor 1 Stunde

      I get not wanting to use a google, microsoft or crypto laden browser, but I would be willing to use a well supported browser that used chromium as the page rendering engine. It seems to be extremely difficult to get another engine to be competitive in the marketplace. Maybe the resources would be better spent putting the chromium engine inside a different container. I’m sure there would be drawbacks, but I think there would be compatibility benefits too.

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      2·
      vor 3 Stunden

      I wouldn’t mind paying money for a good browser. I paid for Opera back in the day, and browsers are significantly more complex (and cost several orders of magnitude more to develop) now compared to back then.

    • PlasticExistence@lemmy.worldEnglish
      54·
      vor 10 Stunden

      It’s looking increasingly likely that the US Department of Justice is going to succeed in their antitrust efforts against Google. Currently, Mozilla gets something like 85% of their funding from Google for being the default search engine in Firefox. That may be deemed anticompetitive behavior by a judge, at which point Mozilla will be left with very little funding compared to their current situation.

      I’d bet these actions are in anticipation of that happening.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.eeEnglish
        251·
        vor 10 Stunden

        Yeah, and although it will be painful for Mozilla in the short term - it would be a good outcome. It was always bad that Mozilla’s main source of funding was from their most powerful competitor. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. And obvious way to skew decision making. … But that money is just so addictive.

        There will be some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms if the money gets taken away, but everyone will be healthier in the long run… unless the overpaid CEO continues to suck in all the remaining money and leaves nothing for the people actually doing the work. That would be bad. In that case, if the corporate structure chokes the company to death, I suppose we’d be hoping for Ladybird, or something like it to take Firefox’s place.

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      3·
      vor 3 Stunden

      They’re likely preparing for their funding from Google to be cut. Having a lot of money in the bank doesn’t matter if your income is lower than expenses, since you’ll run out of money eventually.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      vor 6 Stunden

      well you see. all the cool kids are laying off staff and Mozilla wants to hang out at their pool next summer.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      131·
      vor 8 Stunden

      Not necessarily. If they’re low on cash then cutting unnecessary costs is not unreasonable. What is Mozilla’s core goal? Perhaps the “advocacy” and “global programs” divisions weren’t all that relevant to it, and so their funding is better put elsewhere.

      • Virkkunen@fedia.io
        1·
        vor 2 Stunden

        Let’s wait and see how this funding won’t be talked about ever again and later on the CEO coincidentally gets yet another raise

  • btaf45@lemmy.worldEnglish
    859·
    vor 10 Stunden

    Why the heck did Mozilla need 120 employees for anyway? I hate that Firefox is updated so often because I always get Firefox Update Fatigue. I hope that fewer employees means fewer Firefox updates.

    • raina@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      31·
      vor 3 Stunden

      Well this is a unique take. But don’t worry, there’s a Firefox for you, too. Try the ESR, or Extended Support Release, it

      receives major updates on average every 52 weeks with minor updates such as crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates as needed, but at least every four weeks.

    • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      541·
      vor 10 Stunden

      Just turn the updates off. Might want to remove the seatbelts from your car too, so annoying having to put them on and take them off every time you need to drive somewhere.

      • btaf45@lemmy.worldEnglish
        28·
        vor 7 Stunden

        Doesn’t work. Firefox keeps nagging me to update every freaking time I open the browser. Now if they let me turn the nagging off it wouldn’t be so bad.

        I want an update once per quarter, not once per week. Only more often than that if there is a critical security fix.

            • tomalley8342@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              vor 3 Stunden

              You will get one update per year, and “only more often that that if there is a critical security fix”.

              • dan@upvote.auEnglish
                4·
                vor 3 Stunden

                There’s no winning. Some people use the regular version and complain about the updates, while others use the ESR release and complain that sites that use cutting-edge features don’t work properly.

                The solution to updates is to use Linux, since then it’ll update through your distro’s package manager along with your other software.