This announcement is very strong in corporate speak. Main takeaway is that they’re out of money and need to are going to focus on making money?
Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.
Firefox needs a company behind it whose income is not tied to the browser. I don't believe you can monetize a browser, not without doing some dodgy shit like forcing search engines on people, injecting ads, premium features, etc.
I know Firefox tried to launch a number of products over the years to try and make money, but at this point it doesn't seem to be working. I think their only hope financially is to be bought up by a FAANG, but they either have their own browsers or no interest in having one.
> In CY 2018, Mozilla Corporation generated $435.702 million from royalties, subscriptions and advertising revenue compared to $542 million in CY 2017.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ (I couldn't find a more up-to-date annual report)
For Mozilla Foundation:
> The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations and 2% of annual net revenues from the Mozilla Corporation, amounting to over US$8.3 million in 2016.
I'd love to donate but only for the browser, not for that other stuff. And that seems to be the main problem here: They make tons of money, but there not investing it where they make the money with.
I would be against it and prefer them to focus on their own products and strike alternative funding deals with multiple companies like what letsencrypt does and NOT solely rely on one source like Google.
Foundations often have trusts. Many of the donations go into the trust and most of your operating expenses (perhaps not including fund raising) come out of the interest payments, not the principle.
I was so disappointed when I discovered Mozilla was spending it as fast as it comes in. There will never be a windfall like the Google donation again.