Google's Shadow Over Firefox 385
eldavojohn writes "The Mozilla Foundation's chief executive now earns roughly half a million in pay and benefits. With $70 million in assets, the Foundation gave out less than $300,000 in grants to open source projects in 2006. And in 2006 85% of their $66 million in revenue came from Google. When these figures first came to light, people worried whether Firefox was becoming a pawn in Google's cold war with Microsoft. The Foundation addressed these fears and largely laid them to rest; but now the worry is that, even though it's clear that the community's code is what makes Firefox successful, Mozilla may be becoming dangerously reliant on Google's cash."
The lesser of two evils (Score:5, Insightful)
NO messing with firefox will be tolerated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other Revenue Sources? (Score:2, Insightful)
Money spent on R&D (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn you, FF... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, people: capital is good, that's how you pay for stuff and people, and fund projects. And it's not like Google is bribing the Firefox Foundation, the money comes from search engine integration in Firefox. Also, I can't recall Firefox being involved in any shady business where they have sided with Google against Microsoft. Furthermore, The Firefox Foundation did negotiate with Yahoo before sealing the deal with Google, so they clearly have other options than just Google. Who knows, when the contract with Google expires in 2008, maybe even MS will try to make a deal with The Firefox Foundation.
From the summary: Nowhere is this fear expresses besides in the summary. Less editorializing, please.
Re:Google has influenced Opera, also. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, please. That's nowhere near as fun as bitching on random websites.
Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, if he actually filed usable bugs, they'd get fixed, and then he'd have nothing to whine about any more.
The Bigger Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google has influenced Opera, also. (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I don't mind advertising too much, if I'm looking at a site that is helpful or one I like, then I certainly don't mind, the only times where I can actually say I find it intrusive is on sites that are there purely for ad revenue, usually with content scraped from other sites, and those I can detect almost entirely (using a manual process no less) by the fact that they are infested with advertising, so in a sense gratuitous and inappropriate advertising is a deterrent all on its own, sure I am giving whoever is responsible for those sites revenue on that one instance where I come across the site, but then that's it, surely advertisers must realise that sites like that are not generally going to generate revenue anyway.
So I guess you could say I do most of my ad-blocking mentally, with an added bonus of blacklisting useless sites at the same time.
As a side note, I find it quite interesting when you compare the web in general (and the advertising therein), second life (and the commercial mess that particular sim already is and appears to be aspiring to become) and real life (I spent a moderate period of my life in Hong Kong, a place where the adverts and neon certainly add to the atmosphere) and try and figure out which advertising actually works. I seem to find that I buy things that I hear about from others, much more than what I see advertised. maybe its time for people to be able to get cash for real life referrals for any type of product (you could fill out a form to say who recommended what when you pay for your shopping....). Advertising only really seems to work when the advertiser has a novel product, that is useful or attractive *and* it is not already well known.
Oh and cold calling (telephone or in person) and junk mail (whether email or real mail) never work, If I want a credit card, I'll talk to my bank and then shop around, if I want double glazing, I'll find someone to do it.
Funny, maybe I should take my own views into account when I organise my own advertising.
Re:Would it make you feel better... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying that the Mozilla Foundation is likely to lose Google's cash any time soon, but that's a general principle - don't put all your eggs in one basket, and all that.
Money for Google well Spent (Score:5, Insightful)
With operating revenues in the billions, Google is getting a huge benefit for a very small outlay with the money flowing into the Mozilla Foundation. These days, it is less common to have a hotlink lingering around for your search engine of choice because they are so ubiquitous that they are expected to just "be there".
And if you run Firefox, the default search engine at the top corner of the screen is none-other-than Google. It is a beautiful interface that has been embraced by users (me and you), the vendor (Google), and the merchant (Mozilla). A rare win-win-win for all. You and I get easy access to search online for anything with the click of a button. Google gets a way to funnel us into their site so they can show us their advertisements. Mozilla gets money to pay their engineers to improve a world class software application.
Given this information, it is silly to think that Google would terminate their beneficial relationship with Mozilla because it would significantly hurt them where it matters most (getting users to their site).
Bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the Samba and Apache crews can use a little of the love. Hell, the people who created Adblock are the reason I use Firefox... Give them some of the damn cash! Which other open source projects do you think have done the community a lot of good and deserve some of the bank?
Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
For the same reason that Microsoft... (Score:4, Insightful)
they also hire 90 people (Score:3, Insightful)
what else would you expect? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't this the way it's supposed to work? If the app in question was developed privately, would that then be okay?
Companies make deals all the time. If Google had struck the deal with Microsoft, would that be better? In IE 7, there is a slick little search bar that can be set to Google, too. I bet Google sends even more money to Microsoft for their search bar, since there are so many more users of IE. Is that better?
Re:they're not limited to two evils (Score:5, Insightful)
Top notch programming can be done for free, but for large products that is the exception rather than the rule, even for open source applications. Most of the people who think large open source projects are done primarily by unpaid developers as a hobby, simply don't have any real experience in OSS development.
Most open source projects that work really well are capitalist endeavors. The difference is that the users of the software are also the developers, instead of having developers sell the software to users after marking up the price. Mozilla provides a functional and useful Web browser, with better security than IE. The company I work for has done a very small amount of work on Firefox, because we use Firefox and wanted a feature for our own use. We're users and developers. Other companies that have standardized on it hire developers to program and contribute some feature to the project. We do this because it makes our business money by improving our tools. I guess my main point is that most OSS projects are driven by capitalism, just with the "programming as a service" instead of "code as a product" model of capitalism.
Re:Support of non MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Advertising supported irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit! (Score:4, Insightful)
A good CEO for a for-profit company can easily make millions or tens of millions. Those for non-profits can easily make hundreds of thousands and Mozilla isn't exactly a tiny non-profit.
They're paying the CEO what is essentially a fair wage for the position and even then the person being paid it is sacrificing massive amount of potential money just by working for Mozilla (instead of a for-profit).
Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
It kinda pisses me off that a couple years ago as a starving college student I donated money to the Mozilla Foundation. If I knew their CEO would one day be raking in that kind of cash I would have donated to a more worthy cause. Not that there aren't other non-profit directors raking it in (I'm looking at you, Red Cross [bbb.org]).
Re:Google has influenced Opera, also. (Score:4, Insightful)
We've reached a point where advertising is causing some serious social problems. For example, the marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to consumers has increased the cost of medicines and has given us entire lines of less effective drugs that come to market just because the pharmas know they can push it on unsuspecting consumers who get suckered by the ads. Perfectly fine and effective drugs are overlooked because the patents have run out and forever-growing profits must be maintained. My next-door neighbor, who's a physician, says that a majority of his patients come to his office asking for a specific drug because they saw an advertisement. Sometimes, even after he's explained to his patient that there's a more effective or just as effective generic, the patient insists on the more costly, well-advertised drug. He's had patients leave and go to other doctors when he's refused to prescribe some pill with a good commercial.
We really need to have a little pushback when it comes to marketing. It would be more effective than you may think in slowing down the complete takeover of our lives by corporate power.
Don't think for a second that there's not lobbyists trying to get adblocking software defined as malware so there can be a law passed against it. With the ready availability of consumer information, and sites like Gizmodo hawking new products, consumers no longer need advertising at all, I would suggest. It's intrusive, it's damaging, and given that we've just had 24 straight month of a negative saving rate in this country, and with consumer credit finally getting a little less free and easy (thank God), it's hurting us in a very real way.
Re:Conflict of interest between Firefox/Google (Score:3, Insightful)
The "ping" feature is a poor example. Sites can already do what "ping" does, just slower and in a way that's more difficult for users to disable.
Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup. Games and videos, mainly. The only time I've had flash annoy me is when it's ads.
Re:Other Revenue Sources? (Score:3, Insightful)
ie: Why would I leave my 100K tech job, to become a team leader unless it pays more.
I see where the problem is! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, I guess the danger is that google could force firefox into all of us and begin to charge us... wait. firefox is open source and not even "MS-open source", so we can always fork it even if we got dependant on it! (For a browser which does not try to add propietary extensions that sure sounded hard...
Ok, so that wasn't the problem so what the problem really is? I SEE! We should give the money to other open source projects! Yes, why should all money go to mozilla? It is unfair! ... Now that I think of it, this was money earned by firefox, then I see absolutely no reason to give this money to apache or mysql... sorry guys but that just doesn't make sense...
Ok, I can't think of any other creative reason to think there is actually any problem with this, I guess just in case we could go to opera! ... Err, wait! It is closed source, so opera is a browser that can actually lock us in! Not only that, but it is probably meant for that, and that's the reason they get money from the WII deal! Oh no, then using opera just in case is not an answer...
Then go Safari! ... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...
Then go any other open source browser! I'll just stick to firefox because: a) I like the plugins I use, b) I see absolutely no problem with this.
We could just calm down, an true-FLOSS project getting money absolutely from donations and zero charges to users, or would you prefer mozilla not to get any money? And just let firefox die?
Actually it would make me feel better (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money spent on R&D (Score:4, Insightful)
As for addressing the problem, is the a bug ticket on it? Can yo reproduce it on a clean ff install? Can others reproduce it? It's hard to solve a problem that cannot be reproduced and that seems to be the case for many of these bugs that people somehow think can magically be fixed in 10 seconds.
Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you completely uninformed or are you being intentionally untruthful here?
You're just plain wrong here.
The original goal, that I helped define in early 2002, was to make a browser that could actually compete with IE and gain market share where the feature bloated and designed by committee Mozilla Application Suite had failed. We didn't skimp on features and included many features, bringing it up and beyond parity with IE, that the suite never had.
Horseshit. We cut launch time and new window time in half in just a few months. We cut the download size by almost 300%. Simply removing the other app XUL overlays was a huge performance win all by itself. Then top developers (this was Dave Hyatt, the creator of XUL, and Joe, Ben, and Blake, the most experienced XUL programmers on the earth at that time) writing much cleaner XUL with sane CSS rules and avoiding the known slow XUL features, were able to get the new browser so far ahead of the Suite performance and usability that the Mozilla leadership agreed it would be a better path forward than the Suite.
From the 0.1 release [mozilla.com] (the first public release of the browser that would become Firefox) notes:
(emphasis mine.)
And that was the first release before we'd even grabbed all the low hanging performance fruit. Speed and size continued to improve with every single point release while we built great new features like complete settings and data migration, extension management, customizable toolbars, web form auto-complete, and more. The browser was more featureful, faster, and smaller than the Suite.
Yep, we gave users a set of features that people wouldn't or couldn't implement in the Suite. We listened to the users, which had outgrown the Suite's user base in size and involvement long before we shipped 1.0, and built the browser that we believed they would love using enough to spread to their IE using friends, families, and co-workers.
Again, this is just bullshit. Go back and read the Phoenix 0.1 release notes. "Phoenix is not your father's Mozilla browser. It's a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features." Shall I repeat it. "a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features." Where in that statement of purpose do you read that the goal was to make a minimalist browser?
When we shipped Firefox 1.0, the Windows version clocked in at a 4.7MB download compared to the Suite's 13MB download. Firefox 1.0's startup time on low to medium end systems was half that of the Suite and a noticeable improvement even on the fastest systems. Firefox 1.0's memory usage at startup was about 10% better than t