But Mozilla isn't either. That's the trouble. They make plenty of money from Firefox but then don't spend it on Firefox, so Firefox market share declines, so they make less money from Firefox. Maybe they should try turning that wheel the opposite way.
From where I sit, it looks like there has been a lot of technical effort going into Firefox in the last few years - like 'Electrolyis' and 'Quantum'. 'Quantum' in particular has been translating the more experimental work (Rust & Servo) into improvements in Firefox.
So it seems more like they've been losing marketshare despite investing in Firefox. Google has much more money to spend on development, and can potentially also make popular sites like Youtube or GMail work best in Chrome.
I use Firefox and I hope it will get more popular again. But I'm baffled how many people seem to think that if only Mozilla tried properly, the users would come flocking back. All the evidence suggests that most users go to Chrome no matter what they do.
MS switched to a Chromium base because they couldn't keep pace with Google's ever shifting web tech. Apple goes at its own pace, sometimes not implementing Google's standards at all.
Mozilla wants to have a say in how Google makes web standards. To do that effectively they need to keep up with Chrome. Admittedly even then Chrome's massive market share makes arguing against Google difficult. Apple sometimes joins the conversation but only when it directly affects something they're currently interested in.
Which is why they aren’t. The amount of money was one of the big reasons they founded the Mozilla corporation, which is owned by the non-profit Mozilla foundation.
Mozilla Foundation holds 100% of M.Corp. and no one is allowed to purchase part of it. Essentially, this means Foundation owns all those earnings fully in some way (sans taxes); they need some legal channels to funnel it.
reply