Follow the money:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio...
I only dug into this after having a mildly unproductive run-in with what-wg. Mostly Google and Mozilla guys, and not terribly open. Asking them "why" typically gets very evasive replies, if any at all! The guy Phillip at Opera was a class act though. Been using Opera ever since!
I don't even know where to start with your comment. You're linking the Mozilla Corp wikipedia page, insinuating they're "not terribly open" (and putting Google in that basket), on a subject you give almost no hints about, but hey Opera is a thing? And somehow this comment means that Mozilla is not independent?
I doubted Mozilla Corp's "independence" in the first sentence. "not terribly open" in the last paragraph was in reference to the WHAT-WG group, which is "[m]ostly Google and Mozilla guys". From the posts in that group, those guys seem more like co-workers than competitors.
For anyone who believes money to be some kind of motivating thing, it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy.
edit: And apparently I have to have "hits" to my name to state that getting 85% of your revenue from Google puts your independence into question???
Leadership at Mozilla have already shown themselves willing to break with Google. And I doubt it's any secret that they've been looking for alternative revenue sources.
If you want to question Mozillas independence please bring something more substantive than baseless speculation.
In what bizzaro world can you derive the majority of your revenue from a thing while simultaneously declaring independence from it?
Furthermore, it's good to note that they have actually diversified: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/new-search-strategy-f...
As long as search is the revenue center, there isn't much room[1] for diversification. If they need annual revenue of ~$400M to operate, it's either Google or Google.
edit: On that last point, I could be wrong. Most of the biggies could throw half a billion at them indefinitely if it served the right purpose.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-dea...
[1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...
As for:
> For anyone who believes money to be some kind of motivating thing, it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy > edit: And apparently I have to have "hits" to my name to state that getting 85% of your revenue from Google puts your independence into question???
You aren't bring its independence into question, you are stating its an easy conclusion that Mozilla is Google-by-proxy.
The 85% was from 2011. As of 2015 Mozilla stop receiving cash from Google inpart to them changing there default searches (why google paid Mozilla). That may have changed recently with Firefox 57 as they change the default search back, but even then google announced a while back they were cutting how much they were going to pay, so I doubt it will be the same 85%.
A non-profit that has a taxable subsidiary and receives the bulk of its funding from the search industry does not strike me as being particularly independent.
Are you claiming Mozilla was the tool of Google, switched to being the tool of Microsoft or Yahoo, and then back to being the tool of Google?
Or are you claiming that Mozilla is the tool of the "search industry" which is some amorphous group containing all of the above?
Google (and other companies in some countries) pay Mozilla to be the default search in Firefox. It's a business transaction and adequately explains why Mozilla gets paid. Conspiracy-theorizing claims that secret terms bind Mozilla to some hidden agenda should not be believed in the absence of evidence, and I haven't seen any. (And I'm a former Mozilla Distinguished Engineer.)
From the tone of the replies, kicked off by a guy in the analytics industry who went so far as to google me for a comment, Upton Sinclair is screaming from the grave:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
edit: And granted, they can currently play Google against Bing, although that isn't a terribly impressive degree of freedom.
edit edit: And where did the word "secret" enter into the conversation? It's like you depend on a search engine (or a batch of them during your break from Google) for most of your revenue, and I'm the one who has to prove that you're not influenced by that???
Incidentally I explicitly defined "independent" in my blog post: "I mean a browser with its own implementation of HTML, CSS, JS, etc". Choosing an alternative definition and then ranting about it is irrelevant to what I wrote.
dependent *adj*
1. free from outside control; not depending on another's authority.
2. not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence.
Please spell out exactly who you think is influencing Mozilla, and to do what (that Mozilla wouldn't normally do for the sake of their mission). And please support your claims with evidence.
("X pays $Y to Mozilla" is already adequately explained by the fact that Firefox-generated search traffic is valuable to X.)
Good lord, get a hold of yourself. I work in the gaming industry (easy mistake to make, right?) and you seem to have read "hints" as "hits" and made up a whole scenario from that... I didn't Google you (nor would I care to), I just called out a completely bullshit comment when I saw one.
The foundation of your entire argument is loose accusations, outdated information cobbled together in a web of random words and quotes you found appropriate. You have incorrectly profiled everyone who replied to you. It is hard for anyone here to have an argument with you, or even take you seriously.
In 2017 they're going back to the 800lb gorilla of search and browsers for the bulk of their operating revenue, and I'm supposed to just accept that as "independence" and back off? There is a disconnect here that I'm obviously not going to bridge, so fine, they're independent! Go write their non-profit-for-profit chimera a check and "take back the web".
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-dea...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/verizon-i...
I'm not aware of a renewal of the Google financial partnership. Feel free to correct me if you find information that goes beyond 2011. There certainly could be a new deal with Google there but Mozilla is not in the negociating position it once was, so there just as well could not; and seeing as I'm finding zero info about it, I'm leaning towards "there isn't".
But hey, I guess if they don't make a billion dollars a year through donations and take in zero outside revenue, they're not independent.
When money from search, which whittles away at privacy to deliver the right ads, or money from Verizon, who isn't a friend of privacy or the open web, is what keeps the lights on, don't you think that is just a little misleading to Joe Internet who is thinking about donating his time or money to their cause?
Mozilla revenue is up, they're making a LOT of profit, and the Yahoo deal was supposed to be 5 years so they're not likely to be losing money by switching to Google: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-revenue-jump-fuels-its-fir...
As for the source, I can't seem to find a source for this. I may have been mistaken, but it was something I heard several years ago on a google related podcast.
I am glad that Mozilla exists, and I was glad that they existed even when I used Chrome (pre Firefox Quantum).