Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeltz | Hacker News Reader

While Mozilla wastes a lot of money (for example on their high exec salaries), they also have done a lot to improve Firefox the last few years. It is much faster and more stable now.

View on HN

Well, my point was that they spend a lot on things that aren't their core product (Pocket, Lockwise, Monitor, Send, Firefox OS) while being unwilling to fund their long time project with an actual audience.

Pocket was already an external product (readitlater?). Send solves a real problem people have, and it was probably easy to develop it separately. Similarly to Monitor, you don't have to touch the core product to make it. Lockwise was probably easy to make, if you already have Firefox Sync, it's just a viewer app.

> Pocket was already an external product

OP's point still stands though. Mozilla spent millions acquiring Pocket. They also made it so users can't disable it as a plugin like they used to be able to.

Pocket played into an overarching internal strategy that I believe Mozilla has shifted away from since (but it's still useful for populating the default New Tab page).

If you want to make an ex-Mozillian shudder, sneak up behind them and whisper "Context Graph" in their ear.

You just made a current Mozillian shudder!

And this a semi-annual reminder that it has been X years since Mozilla Corp spent $29m to acquire Pocket and said it will "become part of the Mozilla open source project", and Pocket is as open source today as it was on the day before the acquisition, which is to say, it's not.

X here is 3.

Mozilla abandoned Firefox OS several years ago. Lockwise replaced the old password manager. Monitor and Send complement and advertise the core product. Pocket has revenue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com