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Firefox lost users during “failed” Yahoo search deal, says Mozilla CEO (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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."

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[–] 82 points 2 years ago (4 children)

As a FF user: Mozilla has such a small market share now, they should experiment with search. Maybe don't make another "deal" with another ad based search engine, but invent your own decentralized search or mozilla search or whatever.

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  • [–] 65 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago

    That's the core of the trial though, right? That through these deals and other things Google does to stay dominant, they stifle the market for competition. Ie Edge, Chrome, and every other Chromium-based browser pushes Google to the end users and FF pushes some unfamiliar search platform, then there's an uphill, arguably unfair, battle for it to gain enough market share to be sustainable.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The only reason that would work is if they used user search data to sell to advertisers or show ads themselves. That's how Google search makes money, but it's antithetical to everything Mozilla is trying to market themselves as: a privacy oriented browser.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'd pay for a yearly subscription to a privacy focused search by Mozilla.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    No you won't. I mean maybe you, personally, will, but the majority of people won't. People don't want to pay for YouTube without ads, for fox sake.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Mozilla needs sticky viable income streams. Privacy focused search might be something they can sell to other businesses as a service. I would much rather see Mozilla become the next Red Hat than fade away forever.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    The problem is that no one wants to pay money and no one cares about privacy. Privacy in general is a brand new concept which only started its existence about two centuries ago in Catholic countries and still doesn't exist in many parts of the world. Privacy is a foreign concept for humans and paying for it is just silly.

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