1mo ago

Mozilla: DOJ's Plan for Chrome Risks Hurting Smaller Browsers

uk.pcmag.com Mozilla: DOJ's Plan for Chrome Risks Hurting Smaller Browsers

The DOJ wants to level the playing field for browser makers, but the Firefox developer says the plan will take crucial revenue away from smaller companies with lucrative Google search deals.

The Justice Department's proposal to force Google to rein in and even sell off its Chrome browser business may seem like a win for competitors such as Mozilla’s Firefox browser. But the company says the plan risks hurting smaller browsers.

In their recommendations, federal prosecutors urged the court to ban Google from offering "something of value" to third-party companies to make Google the default search engine over their software or devices.

The problem is that Mozilla earns most of its revenue from royalty deals—nearly 86% in 2022—making Google the default Firefox browser search engine.

"If implemented, the prohibition on search agreements with all browsers regardless of size and business model will negatively impact independent browsers like Firefox and have knock-on effects for an open and accessible internet,” Mozilla says. “As written, the remedies will harm independent browsers without material benefit to search competition.”

67 comments

May I be frank? I suspect that, in the long run, Mozilla not getting this money will actually benefit Firefox. Sure, so exec will get pissed as they won't get 5.6 million dollars a year, and Firefox won't get some weird nobody-asked-for feature that'll be ditched some time later; but I think that they'll focus better on the browser this way. Specially because whoever is paying the dinner is the one picking the dish, and with a higher proportion of their effective income coming from donations, what users want will stop being so neglected.
Just my two cents.
- Firefox won’t get some weird nobody-asked-for feature that’ll be ditched some time later
  Nah, the features nobody asked for will just be limited to ones that will provide a revenue stream.
  
  However once they lose the googlebux, a meaningful part of the revenue stream will be donations. And features implemented because of donators asking for them are, typically, things that we users desire.
- I totally agree.
  Frankly, Mozilla should be embarrassed to have released this statement.
  It's basically 'Please don't harm our competitor for corruptly bribing rivals! We like those bribes very much!'
- Yeah but in the short term the company will literally go out of business
  
  Not likely. Mozilla had $1,321,539,000 in total assets -- roughly half a billion dollars of which was in "cash and cash equivalents" -- in their last (2022) audited financial statement: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf
  
  I care about Firefox and Thunderbird, not Mozilla. The software is open source and will persist.
  
  Perhaps.
  Worst hypothesis the company gets completely bankrupt, but someone takes up the torch.
  
  Hopefully, yes.
- WTF‽
  "The head of Mozilla earned roughly $5.6 Million during 2021."
  
  Excuse me, where do I fill out the form to have the first $30,696 of my salary processed as non taxable benefit? Please and thank you

what Mozilla is really afraid of is losing the over inflated bonus the execs get paid.
- Mozilla needs to ditch their CEO and maybe even their board. They’ve lost their way all because the leadership is greedy
  
  That’s mistaking a structural problem for a personal one. Zeynep Tufekci has a great argument about why that wouldn’t work:
  It’s reasonable, for example, for a corporation to ponder who would be the best CEO or COO, but it’s not reasonable for us to expect that we could take any one of those actors and replace them with another person and get dramatically different results without changing the structures, incentives and forces that shape how they and their companies act in this world.

That's unfortunate, but it still needs to happen. Mozilla will adapt.
- They haven't launched a successful product in a decade. Pretty sure they'll get more desperate and have even more misses. Probably AI.
  
  Eh. Given how dead Thunderbird was, I feel it's fair enough to call it's recent massive renewal a launch.
  And fkr what it's worth, their recent 'AI' endeavours have been private offline language translation (i.e. no sending data to Google translation servers), and better screen reader functionality for blind people. Both good features.
  
  mozilla ai sold to antrophic?

I understand why Mozilla would want to keep the money coming from Google, but it might also be good for them to be less dependent from Google.
Nothing is preventing them from cutting deals with other search engines if they want to keep doing that.
- I feel like Mozilla is a big money laundering scheme at this point. It only exist so chrome isn't a monopoly, and I pretty sure the CEO and several other workers are getting paid an obscene amount to do nothing all day while only 20% of the money actually goes toward working on the browser.
  
  Just out of curiosity, where does the 20% estimate come from?

"Listen, making the entire market dependent on one corporate benefactor just sothey aren't a 100% monopoly and only a 99% one is important"
Jesus Christ Mozilla, do you hear yourself?
- Remember, Mozilla spends more on executives and their “outreach” programs than they spend on Firefox developers.

tldr: but muh paycheck!

There are other search engines. Maybe Firefox can partner with them.
- I'm guessing that once Google is prohibited from providing incentives, the bottom will fall out of that particular market and those other search engines will likely pay less, if anything, for the privilege.
  
  Would other search engines be able to “pay to be default”? My understanding is if this went through then browsers wouldn’t be able to take money from any search engine to be the default.
- Mozilla should partner with Kagi and bundle the browser with that search engine and share revenue

Oh my fucking god Servo cannot get here soon enough.

It's certainly better than the status quo. Sure, Mozilla will hurt at first because they've put their revenue source in the same basket, but it's an opportunity to grow back.
- You've just given a great summary of the history of breaking monopolies, really. History says you are correct. For example, AT&T is still kicking.
  
  The AT&T of today is not the same one from pre-breakup. That AT&T is decidedly not still kicking.

Yeah, I don't care. Just do it.

Maybe force them to give it to Mozilla since they are the primary ones that are hurting from googlopoly?
- How will Mozilla fund development? Firefox only survives because Google pays them.
  
  I guess they could start saving money by not paying their CEO millions/year.
  
  I guess google would pay for search on chrome too, which is extra funny.
  
  With a user base as big as chrome you would have to look for ways to lose money.

Mozilla will be fine. I'll literally pay them annually if worst comes to worst and I bet others would too.
- Not sure I would. Though I probably would for some high quality fork. At this point I don't have much faith in Mozilla.
  
  Fair enough. They have been up to some wacky stuff lately. I just love the browser so much and don’t want to see it go .
- Give them money so they can pay their CEO 83 times my salary ? Fuck no, never.
- Before or after they fire 90% of their staff?
  
  Preferably after they fire the “Feminist AI Alliance for Climate Justice” people.
  https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/TKUXAQ-1

What smaller browsers?

The comments are a who's who of anarchists. Watch them burn it all down and end up with Microsoft owning the dominant browser again. Idiots...
- Do… do you even know what an anarchist is???
  
  🥱

67 comments