Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

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What a crazy misread

  > At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. 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.[0]

Read:

  If we were just profit motivated we could block ad blockers, but we're not

The article has a lot about how they're struggling for money. Which is a constant issue for Mozilla. Which a big reason for that is the low browser share. Which a big reason for that is crazy comments like this and people feeling better about using a browser that steals their data...

[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz...

> The article has a lot about how they're struggling for money.

Not really. The closest it comes is briefly mentioning some 2024 layoffs.

What the article is discussing is revenue diversification.

> Which is a constant issue for Mozilla.

No, Mozilla has had a consistent and growing revenue stream from Google.

> Which a big reason for that is the low browser share.

In what way? Software development costs have been less than half Mozilla's annual revenue for over a decade.

> 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.

This isn't a direct quote, but voy does the Author of that article not inspire confidence by the way this is worded. "It feels off-mission" should be "It would be antithetical to everything Moxilla standa for". The way this is phrased it feels like Mozilla explored this and decided that the 150 million wasn't worth the reputation hit (yet.)

Edit: I do suspect that the lack of revenue diversity led to product decisions that favored their paying customer's and prevented the types of browser innovation that would have competed more successfully for market share against that paying customer.

  >> Which is a constant issue for Mozilla.
  > No, Mozilla has had a consistent and growing revenue stream from Google.

Which they don't want to be dependent upon?

I hope this fact is obvious...

Also, should be obvious but the consistent and growing revenue stream is hardly going towards the browser. Most of it is going back to the employees (namely the CEO, etc).

It's so obvious that I stated it in my comment...

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