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Mozilla Turbulence

Opinion · September 18, 2020

The last few months of Mozilla news hasn’t all been exactly positive. The once beloved company is fighting to keep its head above water as well as retain its open and anti-corporate identity.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain

Just over a month ago, Mozilla laid off 250 employees. Understandably, 2020 has been a challenging time for many companies. However, the layoffs were not due to the pandemic or any other reason, the poor executive leadership at Mozilla is to blame.

The CEO of Mozilla Corporation Mitchell Baker continues to be compensated quite substantially, despite market share and dominance dropping. Over the last 10 or so years, Mozilla has been a mishandled and misguided mess (remember FirefoxOS).

Firefox market share vs Mozilla Foundation chair salary (2.5 million/year in 2018) pic.twitter.com/htEKDNFMDH

— Saoirse Shipwreckt (@withoutboats) January 15, 2020

Now, Mozilla has announced Firefox Send and Firefox Notes are being binned. Look, I get they are trying to diversify and move away from their reliance on Google search agreement money (which constitutes a large majority of Mozilla’s funding), but it looks like Mozilla is becoming a VPN company and less about being a browser and resource for the development community.

One thing we do have to acknowledge is Mozilla is held to quite a high, some would say, impossible standard from the community. Mozilla champions itself as the open-source warrior for privacy and safety, against advertisements and trackers. So, when the topic of Mozilla wanting to make money pops up, the community gets a little cagey (especially the Hacker News crowd).

People seem to forget that Mozilla is very reliant on Google, a company that goes against a majority of things that Mozilla stands for. But, there is no alternative. It is an interesting situation, given another not-for profit WikiMedia which runs the Wikipedia site, seems to always manage to cover its costs (admittedly, a lot less overheads). Why are people more willing to support Wikipedia than Mozilla?

Many agree that Mozilla is important and that it needs to survive. However, you’re probably reading this on Google Chrome (hey, it’s okay, I am using Chrome too) and you’ve probably never donated to Mozilla.

Now, the inexcusably high salary of Mozilla Corp Mitchell Baker is worth reiterating. For a company trying to find new revenue streams and survive in the face of Chrome’s dominance, $2.5 million US dollars is way too high. I think a good CEO is worth being compensated and Baker is arguably earning above her value.

Mozilla is a company worth saving, but first it has to save itself.

Dwayne

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Mark Roeling
Mark Roeling
2 years ago

From the game changing company (browser) during the IE4/5/6 era, to the company it is now… Incredible.
I think almost every deverloper in the late 90’s early zero’s used FF. But inflexibel and cumbersome, Chrome overgrew FF very fast.
With new players on the market like Brave, Vivaldi, and as special mention MS Edge, or even Tor, Firefox needs to move. Move to survive. Move on to the future. Embrace the standards again, and be flexibel if needed.

Yes, I still develop using Firefox. But no longer as my first browser (Chrome, and FFDev if needed). And the last time I used Firefox as personal browser feels like an era as well. Edge on Windows, Brave on Ubuntu.

Personally I don’t think Firefox/Mozilla can coop the current browser market, combined with the pressure from the pandemic. It already dropped 25% (=250) of their employees in August.
But just like MS dropping IExplorer, it’s bad for the diversification of the internet if another player has to stop. So let’s hope it does survive…

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