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> It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.

Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M USD".

It's sad, I'm sure there was a better path Mozilla could have taken, but they've had a decade or more of terrible management. I wonder if the non-profit / corp structure hasn't helped, or if it's just a later-stage company with a management layer who are disconnected from the original company's mission and strategy.

> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.

LOL the day that Firefox stops me from running what I want is the day I'll get rid of it.

Do these people even know their users?

For example: Fedora Silverblue default Firefox install had an issue with some Youtube videos due to codecs. So I tried watching youtube on Chromium. Ads were so annoying I stopped watching by the second time I tried to watch a video. Stopped watching youtube until I uninstalled default firefox install and added Firefox from flathub. If the option to use a good adblocker gets taken away I 'll most likely dramatically reduce my web browsing.

P.S. Maybe someone ports Vanadium to desktop Linux? If firefox goes away that 'd be my best case desktop browser. Using it on my mobile ;)

Also, a small minor detail here: We're not paying for firefox! why are so many people feeling entitled? Mozilla has to do something other than beg Google to survive. Perhaps we need a fork of firefox that is sustained by donations and is backed by a non-profit explicilty chartered to make decisions based on community feedback? I don't see a problem with that wikipedia-like approach, I don't think any of the forks today have a good/viable org structure that is fully non-profit (as in it won't seek profit at all). Mozilla has bade some bad decisions recently, but they're a far cry from the world-ended outcry they're getting.

If we don't donate to Mozilla and we don't pay them money, then we have to be the product at some point. Even if they don't it to be that way, they have to placate to some other business interests.

I hope the EU also pays attention, perhaps some of their OSS funding can help setup an alternate org.

I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

Mozilla has hired a lot of execs from Meta and bought an ad company, looking through a lot of their privacy policy at the time, a lot of it involves rewriting it to say that they can serve you sponsored suggestions when you're searching for things in their search bar and stuff and sharing out some of that data with third parties etc.

Firefox was bringing in half a billion a year for the last decade, if they would've just invested that money in low risk money market accounts (instead of paying their csuite executives millions of dollars in salary and putting the rest on non-Firefox related related social causes), the company would be able to easily survive off the interest alone.

I've been using Firefox since 2006 and have defended it for decades even when they've made questionable decisions that have gotten everybody upset with them. But this time it wasn't just making stupid decisions to try and fund the company, this time they actuality sold out their own customers.

In public announcement in the above link explaining why they removed "we don't sell your data" from the FAQ, the rationality was that some jurisdictions define selling data weirdly, they cited California's definition as an example but California's definition is exactly what I would consider the definition of selling my personal data.

They're justifying this by saying that they need it to stay alive since they're not going to be getting money from Google anymore, but I argue that you shouldn't sell out your customer base on the very specific reason anyone would choose you. I would rather pay a monthly fee to use Firefox to support them, but even if you gave them $500 million today they would just squander it away like they've done since forever so I really don't have any solution I can think of which frustrates me.

I switched to Orion (and use Safari if a site doesn't work in Orion), which can be a little buggy at times but I'm happy that it's not based on chrome at least.

As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?

The new CEO is just the final nail in their coffin.

* Windows and Android. I even pay for their vpn because there is apparently no way to pay for the browser, which is what I actually use.

At any rate, I think their only good path of to get rid of Gecko.

The best would be to replace it with a finished version of Servo, which would give them a technically superior browser, assuming Google doesn't also drop Blink for Servo. It may be too late for this, but AI agents may perhaps make finishing Servo realistic.

The other path would be to switch to Chromium, which would free all the Gecko developers to work on differentiating a Chromium-based Firefox from Chrome, and guarantee that Firefox is always better than Chrome.

If Mozzilla brings AI or removes ad blocks then they are every way just worse Chrome and there is zero reason to use them over Chrome.

I guess I should already start porting my Firefox extensions over to Chrome since this ship is sinking stupid fast.

> and thus ad-supported

What a sad view of the web. Advertisement is a net-negative for society.

The Mozilla Foundation has received around USD ~26 million in 2023 in donation from the Mozilla Corporation (~70%) and other sources (~30%).

2018: $2,458,350

2020: Over $3 million

2021: $5,591,406.

2022: $6,903,089.

2023: ~$7m

Mozilla declined to detail the CEO's salaries for 2024+

NObody trusts mozilla anymore, specially after they turned into an add company and started paying their CEOs exorbitating ammounts, considering what was being invested in their core business (supposedly making a better browser).

My image of Mozilla as a bastion for user first software just shattered.

[1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/get-started

Firefox is only good for getting forked into better browser like Mullvad Browser, LibreWolf and Tor Browser.

The web standards are growing faster than non-profit engines can implement them. Google & Apple are bloating the web specs in what looks like regulatory capture.

If Blink/Webkit dominate for long enough, they will lock everything down with DRMs & WEI. Maybe it's time to work on lighter protocols like Gopher & Gemini that don't need 20GB of RAM to open 20 tabs ?

That's just miss interpretation. The way he told that was probably badly reported by the journalist and now it's getting miss understood.

Let's be honest and give this guy an honnest chance instead of witch hunting.

I really didn't like his interview and his blog post but even then, judge on the facts and not the talk !

I know most HN users are on Firefox, but they should get used to an alternative now, not when its inevitable death happens.

Instead of which he inverts it "we'd get like $150m if we did this thing we won't do because well.. we haven't decided to." with the implicit "... yet"

And I agree with comments below: he discounts risk side loss of income because of people walking away.

Ad blocking relies on the ability to use filters to block network requests at the browser level, and visual elements at the DOM level. "AI Browsers" are designed to add bloat to the browsing experience, by offering to summarize something, or providing contextual information like say, a product recommendation that pulls data from a third party site. Network request and DOM element blocking would instantly negate that.

I've moved to Librewolf myself.

If killing ad blocker support is what keeps Firefox alive, I understand the move and would probably make the same call.

Firefox

Mozilla VPN

Mozilla Monitor

Firefox Relay

MDN Plus

Thunderbird

-

Some of these products are just repackaged partnerships.

-

Firefox - Funded by Google with the search partnership bringing in $500M in revenue. (free)

Mozilla VPN - Repackaged Mullvad VPN and using Mullvad servers.

Mozilla Monitor - Repackaged HaveIBeenPwned. (free)

Firefox Relay - No different to Simplelogin and not open source. (free)

MDN Plus - Be honest, you wouldn't pay for this since this was offered for a long time for free, MDN is already free.

Thunderbird - Most likely funded by Google (free) (using Firefox Search Revenue)

-

Be honest, would you pay for any of Mozilla's products when most of these can be found for free or close to free?

That is the problem.

This is an old article but has some good examples:

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

If I could use something similar on Brave, I would go back in an instant.

My main issues with FF are that it is a battery hog on MacOS, doesn't have AV1 playing capabilities (or it has, but I would need to go through some configuring that I don't need to do in other browsers) and sometimes it stalls in certain pages (that's probably not FF fault, but that the web developers don't optimize for it... but still, it's not a problem on Brave, so, I don't really care for apologising for it).

Be the gang all f'n ready

1. The ad blocker. 2. The sense of superiority over the normies (because of the ad blocker) 3. Theming

If adblockers are killed, that removed points 1 and 2. I am pretty sure I can do the same theming in Chrome (I have simple tastes) so that makes 3 a non-factor. And combined with the companies that refuse to make their sites work with firefox, there is no reason not to use chrome. Privacy is a non-factor since my identity is already wholly linked to my google account. I would have to first switch off off there and I am not putting in the effort for that.

While it is not my main browser (Vivaldi is), I have 5 installs of Firefox Portable for different things, like one for YouTube, one for testing pages against Firefox and so on.

> I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”.

I completely disagree. First of all the original quote is paraphrasing, so we don't know in which tone it was delivered, but calling something "off-mission" doesn't at all sound like "we'd do it for money" to me.

https://donorbox.org/ladybird

We actually need to consider the possibility that yes, it is. More precisely, that the new CEO is trying to do that.

It doesn't take a grand conspiracy to join an organisation on false premises. It's totally easy. You can, today, go join a political party without agreeing with them at all, with the intent to sabotage them. Or another organization, including a workplace.

And just like some people just lie for amazingly little reason, I'm increasingly convinced some people do this. Maybe for a sense of control, maybe because they think they'll get rewarded. For every person who holds a crazy belief in public, there's probably one who holds the same belief but doesn't feel the need to let others in on it. As the world gets more paranoid, it'll get worse, open fears are the top of the iceberg.

If Enzor-Demeo ends up tanking Mozilla, there are plenty of people who will be happy with that. It's not as if his career will be over, far from it. Ask Nick Clegg or Stephen Elop. We all need to wake up to the idea that maybe the people who are supposed to be on our side aren't actually guaranteed to be unless we have solid mechanisms in place to ensure it.

It's so tone deaf that it is likely to probe the community into drastic action if he were to attempt to push that through. Including probably much of the developer community. I'm talking the kind of action that boils down to forking and taking a large part of the user base along. Which is why that would be very inadvisable.

The problem with being a CEO of a for profit corporation, which is what he is, is that his loyalty is to shareholders, not to users. The Mozilla Foundation and the corporation are hopelessly inter dependent at this point. The foundation looks increasingly like a paper tiger given the decision making and apparent disconnect with its user base which it is supposed to serve.

All the bloated budgets, mis-spending on offices, failed projects, fancy offices, juicy executive salaries at a time where revenue from Google continued to be substantial all while downsizing developer teams and actually laying some off isn't a great look. Stuff like this just adds to the impression that they are increasingly self serving hacks that don't care about the core product: Firefox. This new CEO isn't off to a great start here.

Half a billion, they are both milking and lying to you

Or it could be it really was on the table since they just entered the advertising business and think AI is the future of Mozilla, a "fuck those freeloaders", heartfelt from the Porsche driving MBAs in Mozilla's management. Who knows. But it's a choice which interpretation one assumes.

Well, it would be a shot in the head. What would be the point of using Firefox if it can't block ads better than Chrome, and on mobile as well???

Doing so would not "bring in an additional 150 millions, or 50 millions, or 1 million! It would kill the product instantly.

You know what would be neat? If the Gemini protocol were slightly expanded for video/image embeds, and then having Firefox/Ladybird support it out of the box.

Instead I thought screw it and just went nuts deep into chrome, atleast it was more functional.

ps - ( apparently mozilla took it out sometime later , but to me the damage to its reputation was done)

So they need some kind of pivot.

Look at browser stats, what they're doing is not working and asking them to continue doing it will kill them. They have to change or they will die.

Their core audience (people on this site) is shrinking constantly. You can not save them.

I feel like this is a case where a bunch of smart people like something so much, or the idea of something, that they've completely blinded themselves to the facts.

Remember when Kodak ignored digital cameras and became irrelevant? That was bad because it decreased shareholder value. That will not be allowed to happen again.

Grow a pair already. And stop calling normal average "typical"

Capital extraction is fundamentally opposed to user freedom. If we want an open web, we, the people need to be maintaining it and not rely on MBA types to do it for us.

Moving to Blink or Webkit, keeping MV2 and XUL, was where the effort should have been placed. Also, I never understood Pocket or any of their other decisions. Now it's being floated to ban adblockers. Poorly run organization that given its direction and decisions, deserves to die.

I'm not against Mozilla making money. Like a regular citizen needs to make money, companies and even nonprofits need it too.

Don't second guess yourself OP. Firefox is not a product. It's an open-source project countless people have contributed their time and dime to over the years. The Mozilla corporation didn't create Firefox, the open-source community did. Mozilla was entrusted to be the stewards of the project and have repeatedly violated that trust. Mozilla is commoditizing other people's hard work while enriching themselves in the process at the expense of the community and abused the trust we placed in them to get away with it.

I will one day just add "Remove all ads on the page I am browsing" into my BROWSER_AI.md file.

It's truly impressive how they've managed to do every user-hostile trick Google Chrome also did over the years, except for no real clear reason besides contempt for their users autonomy I suppose. Right now the sole hill Mozilla really has left is adblockers, and they've talked about wanting to sacrifice that?

It truly boggles the mind to even consider this. That's not 150 million, that's the sound of losing all your users.

Call me petty but I still can't let this one go. At the time they basically stole the Firebird name from the database project and did not hesitate to use AOL's lawyers to bully the established owners of the name. So they didn't actually become shady over night. It's in their DNA.

Obviously we are not happy about ads, but we all understand that having money is pretty neat (if only to pay ones salary). Help the CEO fella: What great, unused options is Mozilla missing to generate revenue through their browser?

It would be amusing if the only browser left that could run ad-blockers was Safari.

I feel like this question has been valid for almost as long as I can remember (e.g. the Mr. Robot extension incident). I find myself struggling to tell if Mozilla is an inherently flawed company or if it's just inherent to trying to survive in such a space.