Comment by bdcravens
1 year ago
Part of what the DOJ is seeking against Google would severely impact Mozilla financially however, as they want to ban them from paying to be the default search engine.
1 year ago
Part of what the DOJ is seeking against Google would severely impact Mozilla financially however, as they want to ban them from paying to be the default search engine.
Indeed. Kagi proves users are willing to pay for search (me included, recently).
At the moment it has only proven that 0.00000000001% of users are willing to pay for search.
That's enough to be (apparently) profitable. It doesn't matter if most people don't pay for search as long as enough people do that paid search can exist.
https://blog.kagi.com/what-is-next-for-kagi
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It's more like 0.005%-0.02% of queries and like 0.001% of users depending on what statistics for Google you go by, but of course still very insignificant.
Ah yes, the mystical 0.0073 units of people paying for search, assuming every person searches.
Over a year ago, Kagi hit 20k paying members. This puts monthly ARR between $200k and $500k ($10 to $25/head), roughly. That's 0.000273% of all people -- quite a jump!
Someone in an infosec podcast recently summed up the whole situation far better than I've been able to:
The vast majority of people won't pay for privacy.
Some people will pay for search. Some people will pay for content. It's really not many, though. Can you imagine if effectively everything on the internet was paywalled? I sure as hell don't know what the solution is, but we wouldn't've gotten to this spot right now, with all of the good and the bad of the internet, if the vast majority of sites and services on the internet charged for use.
(My best guess is that we can have the good that we have now with ads that aren't individually targeted. I literally have no guesses other than that.)
I appreciate your thoughts.
I have loved Kagi's "small web" where I find interesting items, almost like stumbleupon. It reminded me that not every site on the internet is optimizing for eyeballs.
>>The vast majority of people won't pay for privacy.
Depending on your threat model, paying (e.g. with credit card) destroys privacy.
Which is why Mozilla are getting desperate to diversify their revenue.
Mozilla diversifies by increasing the CEO's salary for nothing.
Wiki: In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5 million, and again to nearly $7 million in 2022.
The new CEO brings computing for AI money bleed that almost no one wants.
We know this because of Mozilla's commitment to transparency. These figures come from their annual reports
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2023/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2022/
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2021/
etc
I'm not defending it at all, but I think it's worth pointing out this pay rate is below the rate most CEOs of tech companies of this size are making. I don't really know what the solution here is but I imagine any CEO they replace her with would also seek a high salary. I'd love for them to become a worker-owned cooperative like Igalia but I really don't see that happening any time soon
I don't agree with Mozilla paying that huge CEO salary, but…
Do you know Firefox's handy new offline translation feature? That's AI a well. And Firefox is the only browser that doesn't leak your web page when translating it.
There are plenty of other uses for AI, such as describing images without alt-text for the blind, or summarization. I, for one, want AI in my browser, you can't really say that “nobody wants it”, when many people clearly do.
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What's the news on them getting into AI?
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If only their goal would be to provide an excellent privacy browser, instead of getting revenue :)
All they need is to accept donations that go strictly to the browser and not to the latest blockchain/AI hysteria.
Name a project whose development costs as much as Firefox and that survives from donations.
Many people want AI in their browser. And what does Firefox have to do with crypto?
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This to me is the ultimate sign that Mozilla has zero values or principles.
They've long advocated that Big Tech is a problem, but as soon as somebody tries to actually address it and this coincidentally impacting Mozilla, they abandon any and all principles.
That would be a good thing. If Firefox is funded by donations, rather than by Google, it ensures there is no enshittification in the future. And yes, donations can fund a big project, as evidenced by Thunderbird and Ladybird.
Nobody uses Ladybird, at this point it's vaporware. And Thunderbird is still based on Firefox.
The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year. That's more than what Wikimedia can get from donations, and Wikipedia is a website that everyone uses. And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
And let's say that it manages to bring those costs down to $100 million per year or less and manages to get it from donations (when pigs will fly) … it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
If it costs $200 million a year to develop Firefox, then their management team is guilty of gross incompetence.
I am betting this is really paying for the crappy side projects and HUGE pay for the Mozilla Foundation people (just like all the BS spending the Wikimedia foundation does) and has nothing to do with Firefox itself.
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I think it's unfair to call Ladybird vaporware this early. There's nothing suspicious about their development schedule for the scope of the thing they're trying to build.
I agree I don't think it should be in the alternative browser discussion until they do produce something, however.
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I don't block ads on YouTube because I can't afford Premium.
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> And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
Does Google guarantee it won't spy on me if i pay for Premium?
... no, didn't think so.
Besides not everyone uses youtube to the point where paying for it is worth it.
> The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per year.
Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes on harebrained initiatives overall?
> it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per year.
But that's to add features that benefit Google not the Chrome users.
Plus Google has money from their ad quasi monopoly so they can afford to be wasteful.
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Mozilla thus far have been very reluctant to take donations to Firefox specifically. AFAIK you can still only donate to the Foundation, not the Corp, which means that most if not all of the cash will get spent on random non-Firefox-related things that you probably couldn't care less about.
And Servo, and Linux, both non-profit. Firefox could also be donated by companies.
I mostly agree, but I am slightly worried that it would lead to slower progress in Firefox. As it stands, Google's funding of Firefox is enough to hire a bunch of engineers to make Firefox a pretty competitive browser.
I don't see how donations ensures that there is no enshittification.