Mozilla Reponds - We Call the Shots, Not Google.

An anonymous reader writes "Recent articles in the New York Times and at CNET have highlighted the growing concern that Google holds significant power and influence over Firefox's development. In an interview published today, Mozilla's technology strategist Mike Shaver did his best to proclaim Mozilla's independence. Yes, Google pays Mozilla $56 million per year, Google is the default search engine, and supplier of many of the browser's features (anti-phishing, anti-malware, incorrect URL resolution). Shaver insists that in spite of these ties, Mozilla still calls the shots over Firefox's development."

I was like that too

[dedazo]

I used to say the same thing when I was a teenager and generally feeling rebellious. Unfortunately my dad had all the money at the time, so for anything that had to do with money he ended up calling the shots.

I'm not saying this is bad, and frankly I don't buy the "OMG Google will subvert Firefox" or whatever the conspiracy theory du jour is, but when 99% (or close to that) of your income comes from a single place, "I call the shots" comes across a little weak. He might be right in his claim that Mozilla is independent with or without Google's $56 million, but without the $56M Mozilla is a very different company, probably one that cannot support 120 million users or pay developers or CEOs.

When it comes to money, it's always worse to have it and then lose it than to never have it to begin with.

oil companies and politicians

[facon12]

Yes they do exactly what they want. Just the same way a politician will make all of their own decisions after getting millions from oil companies and other "pacs" with special interests.

Re:Why doesn't Firefox delete cookies by default?

[QuantumG]

Or maybe it's because of the exact same reason that "saved passwords" are not cleared.. so people don't have to log back into websites that have given them a cookie to cache their login.

I dont mind google funding Mozilla

[Billly Gates]

If you dont like then use IE.

Dont like IE? Then use Saffari? Dont like and your using unix then use Konsqueror.

Anything is better than a convicted monopolist running the show with one browser. Even if Google starts another monopoly we still have 4 free browsers which means more competition. The more browsers the better as it forces webmasters to use more standards and cross test their sites on multiple browsers.

To me it seems some of the more free software zealots are terrified about anything that is being funded and not done by hobbiests on their own spare time. Sorry but captitalism is the most efficient system today and Firefox needs funding. Who is going to debug, run the servers, run the projects, develop code, and run extensive QA for free? Google doesn't want the browser market. It only wants the information.

Can the users demand fixes now?

[recoiledsnake]

Firefox does not look like a very typical FOSS program anymore in which developers don't get any money back from the masses of users. The developers working at Mozilla are getting paid directly from the money that the users are contributing with their clicks. Hence, I think the mantra of 'if you don't like it, fork it" is not really valid in this scenario. Note this is opposed to projects with paid developers like Apache and the Linux kernel which is supported by corporate entities and not end users.

Also, I remember that Mozilla wanted contributions for the NYT ad a few years ago and many of my friends who were students barely scraping by, contributed some of their much needed money to the project. Apart from that I guess a ton of people donated money to Mozilla in the past few years thinking that they needed funding badly. Did Mozilla really need it or were they getting enough money from Google to run that ad by themselves? The fact that the CEO of Mozilla gets a compensation of half a million dollars makes it worse.

Does this also mean the users(who are contributing to the coffers with their use of Firefox) can demand fixes to the nagging bugs and not get a 'if you don't like it fork it' reply? Take a look at this very annoying image captions wrapping bug that plagued users and web developers and was unfixed for seven years despite even stalwarts like XKCD's Randall Munroe complaining in this bugzilla thread. Note that you need to copy paste because bugzilla doesn't allow links from Slashdot https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45375 [mozilla.org]

It makes for very entertaining reading. I personally use Opera(I used to be a big supporter of Firefox back in the day) for it's leanness and speed. I would switch over to Firefox in a flash if they fix the bloatness.

Re:I was like that too

[toleraen]

Could that money come from another source though? Would Yahoo payout like Google does if they switched the default search engines, homepage, etc to yahoo's servers? Sure the cash is really flowing in, but it seems like other there would be other companies that would pay for that right. Maybe not as much as Google, but they'd pay something at least.

Re:I was like that too

[elrous0]

No company gives another $56 million and still lets them "call all the shots."

Re:Uh huh.

[provigilman]

Oh my God, you're right!!! Google is the start page, that must mean that if in the next version of Firefox they want to add something that gives more functionality to the bookmarks, Google gets a say. It must also mean that when they hire a new dev team to work on the browser, Google does the interviews!!!

It could also just be that Google made a deal with them to have the most popular search engine in the world be the default. You can change it, it's not the end of the world, and it doesn't mean that Google has their hands in the day to day running of everything.

I mean, do we really think that Nissan is approving scripts for Heroes and other NBC shows that have the new Rogue in them? No! It's advertising, and I'm sure Nissan pays a hefty to price to ensure that the script for "Claire's dad gives her a new [insert car]" says "[Nissan Rogue]" instead.

Sometimes..

[Viewsonic]

Throwing money at something doesn't automatically create something good. In fact, I think people do the really good work when they're starving artists. Those two guys working out of a garage usually have a hell of a lot more willpower and determination than most fat cats with more money than they know what to do with. They become lax and sterile.

Well, not always. And Firefox is still a damn good product. So long as it stays that way, I'll still be using it. But if they begin to rest on their laurels, the "next big thing" that will put them by the wayside will most likely be another side project out of nowhere from people who are living off Ramen.

Re:Now I undestand what happened to Thunderbird.

[oahazmatt]

Google doesn't want you to use POP3 or IMAP

But doesn't GMail support both of those, now?

Re:I was like that too

[dedazo]

Perhaps Mozilla could give you the option to set the default search engine when you install it. Then Google would pay for Google installations, Yahoo for theirs, Microsoft for theirs, etc. Users win, the search engine company wins, Mozilla wins. More importantly, Mozilla becomes more independent.

And then maybe Microsoft could rent a clue about that. I for one would love to see Google pay Microsoft for the benefit of being the default search engine in Internet Explorer. People who pick Google as a SE mean no revenue to Microsoft in that sense, anyway. And that would also mean more choice for IE users.

Oh, certainly!

[rholland356]

Men serving two masters always say this, and we know it's rubbish.

The truth will be known as soon as conflicting interests have to be resolved.

Re:Remove the defaults

[asa]

> Grey out the search box until the user chooses the search
> engine they want to use. Randomly choose the order of the
> search engines in the drop down box (once). Replace the
> home page with a selection page, and include a type-in box.

Yeah. Everything should be an option. Sounds like you want SeaMonkey and not Firefox. Firefox ships with a set of defaults that we believe are best for the most users. Right now, and for the last five or six years, Google has been the best possible search for most of our users. Where it isn't, we'll change it (like we did for a year in Japan, China, and Korea with Yahoo as the default.)

You're suggesting we optimize for the minority case and that's a cop-out that all too many software programs opt for. Most users don't want to have to configure their browser before they start using it. They want it to "just work" and that's what we aim to deliver.

> That way Mozilla won't be giving Google any special treatment
> and when the users choose Google to be the preferred search
> and home page anyway you can claim that you weren't doing
> anything wrong in the first place.

That way, we can make all of our users suffer an extra flaming hoop to jump through to satisfy a few people who are already quite capable of switching to whatever services they want. Sounds like a great plan.

- A

Re:Prove it. Strike a deal with Yahoo.

[luserSPAZ]

Yeah, except most people *want* to use Google, which is why it wound up as the default in the first place. The money came later. It's nice that it now pays good money, but it started out as the default because it's just the most useful tool. Maybe we can have this discussion again when there's a more useful search engine out there, when it's actually a concern.

Re:56 MILLION?!?!?! For what?

[asa]

> What exactly is that money for? Where does it
> go? Developers? Advertising?

If you read the financial statements that all this is based on, you'd see exactly and precisely where it goes. the bulk of it goes to paying about 100 full-time people and maintaining one of the largest and most capable infrastructures on the planet. Lots also goes into savings/investments for the future.

> Does it REALLY take 56 Million to develop a web
> browser? Starting from scratch, I'm sure I could
> do it for about 250-500k. And that's with salaries,
> rent and benefits.

You go ahead and do that. I'm sure it'll be a huge success. Send me an email with a link when it's shipping to 130 million users.

- A

Re:56 MILLION?!?!?! For what?

[Dirk Pitt]

Does it REALLY take 56 Million to develop a web browser?

No. [mozillazine.org]

Roughly $20 million a year in operating cost - 70% of which paid 90 employees. That's 155k (salary and benes) an employee - pretty average for a tech operation I'd imagine.

The rest they've accrued into $70+ million in assets.

Mozilla Foundation does much more than just develop Firefox - RTFA.
 
 

I'm sure I could do it for about 250-500k

Wow, you could develop, test, and host downloads for a software product with a multi-million user-base for 250k? You, sir, are fresh out of college or full of shit.

Re:Support = Control

[asa]

>It is a simple fact that once an entity provides
>a majority of the support for an activity it
>controls it.

So if I buy 85% of advertising from your newspaper, that means I have an editorial say in what you publish? Bogus.

There's a simple relationship here that may don't seem to (don't want to?) get. Google and Mozilla have a search relationship. Google pays Mozilla for Firefox users that use Google's search services. Other search services also pay Mozilla for Firefox users that use their services. Google is the default because it's the best available search service and the default gets most of the usage so it results in most of the revenue associated with usage. That's the extent of the relationship. They don't have any say outside of that nor do they seem to want any say outside of that (and wouldn't get it if they did). It's not like there aren't a handful of other search services that wouldn't gladly pay for more traffic from Firefox users.

- A

Wait until there is someting to haggle about.

[miffo.swe]

I really do not understand the constant need some people have to paint Google in a bad manner. Up until this very day Google has been a good netizen and last i checked they wasnt involved in any criminal acts like some other unnamed company. Mozilla does a great job on Firefox and nothing is really worth complaining about. If Google is twisting Mozilla.orgs arm they dont get much for all that money thats for sure. The damn browser is free, both as in beer and freedom. Just fork it or shut up. I do have a fealing that much of the complaints against Google are coordinated attempts to blacken its very good reputation. Maybe from some other company that do not have a, should we say, excellent track record in behaiving nicely. As a very satisfied Firefox "customer" i want to say, thanks Google and Mozilla!

Re:interesting

[wwmedia]

be an advocate for the non-commercial aspects of the Web

i see, they are leading by example then with 50million+ a year income...

Re:I was like that too

[mrdarreng]

Google is the default because it's the best.

How do you define best? How do you make it a non-subjective? Do you determine they're best because they're the most preferred by users?

Re:I was like that too

[rtb61]

Oddly enough when it comes to business relationships between google and yahoo, I have come across sites with google adwords advertised in yahoo supplied advertising. So google obviously considers it worth while to pay yahoo to provide advertising services.

When it comes to default search in Firefox, you can't really say google is the default as changing that is simply a matter of clicking the pull down to provide immediate access to a range of other search engines, and the last one used becomes the default on next use, so defaults really also includes wikipedia etc (I can't remember the others that turn up on an initial install).

So while it would be sensible for M$ to pay Firefox for default listing, they will not, simply because their management style reflects childish immaturity and tantrums, the billy goat is as the billy goat does. For Ballmer making sensible business decisions takes second place to drunken rants and ego driven rages.

So while google as the main customer of the .com as the main customer they have no greater input into the .org, and it really wont be all that far off until a lot of the other old world media companies realize the benefit of branding their own version of the Mozilla browser.

Fuck Mozilla

[TFGeditor]

I have used Firefox for, lo, these many years. It (Mozilla) has yet to address the memory leak and resourcece (cpu time) issues related to Firefox. Why?

I love the verasitility of Firefox and its functionailty. But I hate that it fucks up/freezs my machine when left open.

If Firefox wants to be taken seriously, fix these goddamned problems.

Re:Do they?

[ozmanjusri]

Firefox is already slower and more bloated than Mozilla ever was

The first Firefox ever released, version 0.8, was a very light 6MB download. I remember all the excitement about this "fast, lean new browser" .

Today, after five years of continuous bloat, Firefox 2.0.0.9 requires a bandwidth-busting 6MB download before you can install it to your groaning hard drive.

Cut the astroturf already, ok?

Re:I was like that too

[BootNinja]

Your suggestion defeats the entire point of google paying for default placement. The purpose of paying to be default search is to get people who ordinarily would use another search engine to use Google instead. If you really want to use Yahoo! instead of Google, then you will change the search bar, but most people will leave it set to Google, thus Google gets x more people looking at their ads. If you take away that automatic default, you are taking away the product that Google is paying for.

Firefox is not bloated

[Locklin]

Bloated is the wrong word. Konqueror has an order of magnitude more features than Firefox, but works much faste. I'm sure Konqueror and it's dependencies are also much much more than 6 Mb. However, something to do with the architecture of Firefox is seriously flawed: not only does it leak memory like a siv, the UI and page rendering has slowed with each release (I know, I use it on a 600 Mhz coppermine processor with 128 Mb ram). Additionally, one page with a lot of (poor) javascript can lock up the whole browser for several minutes - why isn't each tab it's own thread?

I use it for several reasons, but latency is an issue that should be given some thought.

Re:so who gets the money?

[xhrit]

"Yes the first thing I do after installing Linux is to search for "Internet Explorer" in Google to download and install it. Now because of your brilliant idea, people like me would install Firefox instead."

The sad thing is... it is funny because it is true. I am a web developer. One ov the first applications on my stack is ies4linux.

Re:I was like that too

[DanJ_UK]

Perhaps Mozilla could give you the option to set the default search engine when you install it. Then Google would pay for Google installations, Yahoo for theirs, Microsoft for theirs, etc. Users win, the search engine company wins, Mozilla wins. More importantly, Mozilla becomes more independent. And then maybe Microsoft could rent a clue about that. I for one would love to see Google pay Microsoft for the benefit of being the default search engine in Internet Explorer. People who pick Google as a SE mean no revenue to Microsoft in that sense, anyway. And that would also mean more choice for IE users.

To be fair, having google as the default search provider in IE still wouldn't make me use it.