Mozilla Reponds - We Call the Shots, Not Google. 222
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I was like that too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was like that too (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I was like that too (Score:4, Informative)
Assuming the Windows of Firefox:
You're looking for fault in something that works perfectly fine.
Re:I was like that too (Score:5, Informative)
> Yahoo payout like Google does if they switched the default
> search engines, homepage, etc to yahoo's servers?
We already do have a financial relationship with Yahoo and they pay Mozilla for the traffic Firefox sends them. It's just not as much because they're used by fewer Firefox users (both because they're not default, and because users prefer Google.)
> 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.
Any company, including Microsoft, that depends on traffic would pay to have 130 million users visiting their services regularly. Google is the best right now so we chose them as the default. Yahoo is still a favorite of some people, and so it's included in Firefox as an alternative. Some countries have other popular search services and we include those -- even defaulting to them in some cases, when it makes sense for the users.
This isn't about money, really. Mozilla could get as much or more money by selling off search or other services to the highest bidder but that's not how we operate. Google is the default because it's the best. If some other search overtakes Google, then that will probably soon be the default.
- A
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I was like that too (Score:5, Informative)
People forget where Firefox came from. It was not focus grouped (or even planned, really) by Mozilla. At the time, Mozilla was still almost exclusively funded by AOL, and their primary focus was the Mozilla Suite [wikipedia.org] - a browser/email client/HTML editor/IRC client monolith that had lots of promising features, but was too complex and geek oriented to catch on with the general public.
Firefox exists because in 2002 Blake Ross [blakeross.com] (along with Dave Hyatt [wikipedia.org]) got fed up with the code bloat and designed-by-committee UI of the old Suite, and decided to start a skunkworks [wikipedia.org]-style OSS project to create the anti-Suite: a lean, fast, browser-and-nothing-else tool using the core Mozilla code but jettisoning most of the complexity that had arisen in the Suite over time.
Back then it was called "Phoenix" (as in, rising from the ashes of Mozilla). The search bar showed up very early in Phoenix's life: Phoenix 0.2 [mozilla.com], to be exact, released in October 2002. And when the search bar landed, it used Google as its engine.
Because Phoenix was Ross' and Hyatt's personal project, design decisions in those days basically came down to whatever they thought was best. They chose Google for the search engine because in 2002 Google was waaaaaay ahead of the competition in search. Heck, back in those days Yahoo licensed Google Search rather than rolling their own! [wikipedia.org]
This was literally years before Google offered Mozilla a red cent for search traffic. In 2002 Google was still 2 years away from going public and had nothing like the cash mountain it has today. They certainly weren't running around throwing tens of millions at browser programmers' side projects.
In other words: Ross and Hyatt chose Google because at the time the decision was a no brainer. Every other search engine was so much worse than Google at returning relevant results that choosing any of them would have been putting the user's needs second, which was contrary to the whole point of Phoenix/Firefox.
Of course, today the quality of competing engines has mostly caught up, so if they were making the decision today maybe they'd have chosen differently, who knows. But it's a mistake to project the conditions of the world today back upon decisions made five years ago. The tech landscape was very different then.
Re:I was like that too (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I realise that's not going to happen, and some people may say that Google should be default on the basis that it's considered the best search engine (although if another smaller engine surpassed Google in
Re:I was like that too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I was like that too (Score:4, Funny)
Unless they're married.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And here's at least one case where Mozilla did not, in fact, call the shots: Bug 364297 [diveintomark.org]. (I'd link directly to Bugzilla but they don't accept links from /.)
Quote from the bug:
(Emphasis above is mine. "CJKT locales"
Re:I was like that too (Score:5, Interesting)
A good bit of caution is wise, but let's not look a $56 million/year gift to the OSS community in the mouth overmuch.
Re: (Score:2)
We already have quite a lot of forks: Flock, GNU IceWeasel, Portable Edition, Netscape 9, Swiftfox, Swiftweasel, Miro, Songbird, XeroBank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceWeasel [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I was like that too (Score:4, Informative)
- A
Re:I was like that too (Score:4, Informative)
Source license:
* Mozilla Public License, version 1.1 or later
* GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later
* GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 or later
(Emphasis mine)
Binary license:
A SOURCE CODE VERSION OF CERTAIN FIREFOX BROWSER FUNCTIONALITY THAT YOU MAY USE, MODIFY AND DISTRIBUTE IS AVAILABLE TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE FROM WWW.MOZILLA.ORG UNDER THE MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE and other open source software licenses.
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Well, a lot of the contributors to Firefox are already paid by someone else, but that aside I bet both Microsoft and Yahoo would happily bid for the default search position and a whole lot of companies/portals would bid on being the default home page. Aside from that source of income, a lot of companies have a vested interest in there being a full-featured Web browser not controlled by Microsoft. I bet Sun, Adobe, and IBM would all provide either funding or developers if the need arose.
My final point is
Re: (Score:2)
Were you registered as a non-profit organization like Mozilla? If so, it would be illegal for your dad to tell you what to do with the money he gave you. That said he just got the right to use the money he gave you as a big tax write off.
Sure Google could
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>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.
apologies to Mr. Manilow (Score:4, Funny)
Not only that, they write the songs that make the whole world sing.
so who gets the money? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:so who gets the money? (Score:5, Informative)
- A
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
- A
Re:so who gets the money? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt that personnel and infrastructure come close to making a dent in $74 million, so you're still not answering the question of what the remaining tens of millions are going to be used for. Are volunteer devs going to get paid? Are you going to fund other OSS projects? How do you decide which volunteers get money?
From http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6715 [zdnet.com]
In any case, Mozillas expenses in 2006 were just shy of $20 million at $19.77 million. The bulk of these expenses were for 90 people working full or part-time on Mozilla. Employees were 70 percent of expenses.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
oil companies and politicians (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One thing to consider (Score:2)
Sometimes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 "n
Glad that's resolved (Score:4, Funny)
OK, then make MSN the default search (Score:2)
Let the dissembling begin...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
First, I reckon Google specifically pays for the "service" of being the default page and search engine. Mozilla calling the shots on development has nothing to do with contractual conditions on what amounts to "product placement".
Second, I doubt MSN search is actually better than Google, and I certainly can't see the point in making the Opera download page the default home page. That's simply a waste of the users' time.
I dont mind google funding Mozilla (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can the users demand fixes now? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
Then they don't get any money from you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, no more than individual users of large commercial software packages that are contributing by actually paying licensing fees can "demand" changes and compel a positive response. They can, of course, request changes, and they can, if they aren't satisfied with the response, stop supporting Mozilla with their use of Firefox or
Re: (Score:2)
No, no more than individual users of large commercial software packages that are contributing by actually paying licensing fees can "demand" changes and compel a positive response. They can, of course, request changes, and they can, if they aren't satisfied with the response, stop supporting Mozilla with their use of Firefox or otherwise.
What you said is true, but then why do people who even request fixes and changes get a ton of +5 insightful 'if you don't like it, for it' replies here on Slashdot? Is that a reasonable response to someone who's asking to fix bugs and leaks?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) Because slashdot moderation is fairly meaningless. There are lots of + reasons, and very few - reasons, and concepts that are 180-degrees opposed, on the same thread, will get modded up to +5 because different segments of the community approve for different reasons.
(2) Because Slashdot isn't the place to request a fix, and "if you don't like
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>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?
Donations to this program happened before there was any seri
Re: (Score:2)
Now I undestand what happened to Thunderbird. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Now I undestand what happened to Thunderbird. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Free IMAP on Gmail [slashdot.org] slashdot article. And I believe they already have POP3 support(I could be wrong, or maybe it's inwards only).
Re:Now I undestand what happened to Thunderbird. (Score:4, Informative)
>explain why Mozilla separated Thunderbird. Google
>doesn't want you to use POP3 or IMAP. They want
>you to use the web. It just might just have been
>one of the reasons that were considered when
>making the decision.
It wasn't. Google doesn't have any say in what we do beyond the code and services they contribute. They absolutely don't have any involvement or influence in Thunderbird where they don't contribute anything at all.
- A
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure I buy that. If they really didn't want you to use it, they'd either not allow it, or do what their competitors Hotmail and Yahoo do -- allow it for a price. My guess is they they do want you not to need to use it, but through good design and features.
I pop my gmail into Thunderbird -- mainly because in the early part of beta gmail wasn't always accessible, there were more glitches than there have been for a few years.
No, sorry, but I suspect the
watch the pretty birdie (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is the default search engine, and supplier of many of the browser's features (anti-phishing, anti-malware, incorrect URL resolution)
...which is the real issue here, to me...though absurd compensation for the CEO and very lopsided revenue from google are others (NO organization should rely on ONE source for its money. Diversification is the name of the game.) Google's services are heavily bundled AND set as the default where there is choice. Does this sound familiar, anyone?
Now, the question is: if Yahoo, Altavisa, Microsoft, Excite, or Ask (was Teoma), or anyone else for that matter, offers similar services to Firefox for free- will they be allowed to get their foot in the door (via a GOOD user interface to allow selection- modifying about:config params doesn't count) or bundled in (ie, included in the official distribution)?
Re:watch the pretty birdie (Score:5, Interesting)
> or Ask (was Teoma), or anyone else for that matter, offers
> similar services to Firefox for free- will they be allowed
> to get their foot in the door (via a GOOD user interface to
> allow selection- modifying about:config params doesn't count)
> or bundled in (ie, included in the official distribution)?
I take it you've never used Firefox. We include other search services. We've even defaulted to other search services in some geographic locales. The interface for switching among the included services is super easy and even adding services that are not included are easy to add with a click or two (and there are over 13,000 of them available at mycroft.mozdev.org)
Not only that, any of these companies could (and some do) distribute a custom version of Firefox with their features as the default.
- A
Prove it. Strike a deal with Yahoo. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Clusty is better. Results are just about the same quality as Google, and it does a great job of automatically categorizing them, so you can easily narrow down expansive subjects... eg. searching for "putty" could be a nightmare on google, depending on whether the "putty" you're looking for is the more popular one searched for.
What bothers me, though, isn't that it's not the default, but
Oh, certainly! (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth will be known as soon as conflicting interests have to be resolved.
Google simply is best. (Score:2)
Duh, Google is smart... (Score:2)
Microsoft owns IE, and would love to screw Google up - imagine the patc
interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
now imagine the outcry if firefox came with live.com as default search and microsoft paud mozilla oh i dunno 120 big ones?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
- A
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
i see, they are leading by example then with 50million+ a year income...
Re: (Score:2)
Wait until there is someting to haggle about. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck Mozilla (Score:2, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't want, initially, to use shitty non-standards compliant (ie Netscape) software, but it's got more compliant over time. Presumably Google are in favour of standards as Google users won't only be using Firefox, so frankly Mozilla can either 1) do what Google want, or 2) risk Google going alone with their own browser based on Firefox code.
Mozilla Reponds (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Mozilla Reponds (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Presto! [konqueror.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's not cross-platform.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just because it runs on multiple chipsets doesn't mean it's compatible with multiple OS platforms.
Sure - you can run it anywhere that X11 runs... but that requires quite a lot of 'other' stuff
Re:Do they? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Firefox is not bloated (Score:5, Insightful)
I use it for several reasons, but latency is an issue that should be given some thought.
Re:Google and Mozilla detest (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows the root of reponds is pond, which is a body of water, often man-made, smaller than a lake.
We also know that bodies of water reflect light off their surface, and further, we know that to reflect means to consider.
To pond is to consider.
A ponder is one who considers.
To repond is to reconsider.
Reponds means reconsiders.
Perhaps you'd like to repond your assumption that reponds is not a perfectly cromulent word?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why doesn't Firefox delete cookies by default? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Try this: Click "Tools" -> "Remove tin foil hat"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> by tracing cookies sent to your browser, why in the
> hell doesn't a browser default to delete cookies if
> you tell it to "clear PRIVATE data"???
Because users freak out when they say "clear cookies" and all their username logins disappear. For those of you who want to also clear that, it's right there with the tick of a box. I, for one, would rather manually manage my cookies so I can keep all my logins saved.
- A
Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
No, but I guarantee you that NBC won't let a Nissan spontaneously explode on their show. NBC got sued for showing someone get injured by a garbage disposal last season, and part of the settlement had NBC agreeing to not show the disposal in a negative light again, and that disposal wasn't even a sponsor! In fact, Emerson is a competitor of the owner of NBC, General Electric.
If you buy t
Re:Remove the defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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:Remove the defaults (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm glad you do, too. Getting my parents up and running with Firefox was a matter of installing the package, having Firefox take over as the default browser in XP and telling the folks not to click the blue "e" anymore. Since her first week with it, my mom hasn't had a single Firefox-related problem. If she has to install it again on another PC, she knows right where to go and will be up and running in minutes, but if she had to sit down and configure it she would just use IE until I had a chance to set it up - if she told me in the first place. So, thanks for not requiring configuration.
Re:Prove it. (Score:5, Informative)
We did. And users didn't like it at all. We put Yahoo in for CJKT builds because they had a larger presence in those markets. Users were unhappy.
- A
Re:56 MILLION?!?!?! For what? (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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: (Score:3, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
At least, that's the question...