The DOJ wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google’s own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox — whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense — competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence.
Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla’s revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization’s for-profit arm — which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added.
Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make “significant cuts across the company,” Muhlheim testified, and warned of a “downward spiral” that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could “put Firefox out of business.” That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change.
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As a daily Firefox user and someone who generally defends them, they have known this day was coming for a very long time. If they have not been planning for it, that’s their fault.
while they have made a lot of dumb decisions, they are also in an almost impossible situation. every time they try to diversify their income they get hammered hard by the community.
Maybe they wouldn’t have needed to diversify into such predatory markets if their execs weren’t pocketing all the money.
Sure. I mean, I’m not going to stop using it, and people will make forks for eternity, but the average joe might switch… However, the average joe supports Nazis these days, so I don’t really give a shit about what the majority are doing.
Reduce exec pay to normal levels.
Funnel most of the funds to the Firefox department.Stop acting like a tech start-up and become a worker owned co-op instead.
Allow people to give to firefox directly, like they do with thunderbird.
Sue Google for damage from it’s monopoly. There’s your money right there.
I like the way you think!
'Your honor, we urge you to allow this company to continue breaking the law because our business is insolvent without the revenue we earn from crimes.’
I like Firefox, but if enforcing antitrust collapses Mozilla than so be it. How long has this car been going on? Have they not established any plans for what they’d do if this happened? They derive 75% of their whole company revenue from one source that was likely to be found illegal? They really thought that was a good idea? That’s a hell of a business model. It’s not a judge’s job to save them from that.
Yeah, they really should have allowed us to give to firefox directly a long time ago. Why they don’t is beyond me considering they do with thunderbird.
My thoughts exactly. We all knew this was coming
Every nation in the world should fund open source technologies with a large chunk of their tax revenue. The fact that this isn’t even close to happening almost everywhere says all we need to know about world governments and their corporatist nature.
How much does Firefox development cost? The Mozilla Foundation itself has a dearth of friends even among hackers. But Firefox is worth preserving. Could we get enough paying supporters to continue development?
If they allowed us to give to firefox directly, maybe. Personally we think it is likely that mozilla badly needs to become a worker owned co-op so that CEOs stop taking so much.
Wouldn’t other search engines be happy to make the same deal? Maybe they wouldn’t pay as much as google but it wouldn’t be as catastrophic as implied.
