Pretty interesting analysis from TechAltar about Mozilla usage and revenue trends, which aren’t as dire as they’re often made out to be, but how the search placement deal with Google is indeed endangered, which may be pushing them to their recent embrace of adtech as a new revenue source
As someone who is severely allergic to ads, I really don’t like this transition, but I understand why they’re doing it.
Mozilla seems to be facing a tough problem. How do you make money when your core audience isn’t enough to support the company, but you can’t realistically pivot to a new audience without kicking out all of the old users. Would it be better if Mozilla just faded into irrelevancy and focussed on developing Thunderbird instead? The FOSS community would have to continue to support Firefox, which would slow down development to such an extent that it probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest of the web.
I found it very odd how little they emphasize donations. Wikipedia, for example, has been quite successful with their pledge drive model, and like Wikipedia, Firefox has a natural platform to ask people to donate. I guess they are afraid of people switching to a browser that doesn’t ask them to donate, where with Wikipedia, there is no real alternative
Oh, that’s a very good point. Makes me wonder why Mozilla doesn’t talk about donations very much. Must be a strategic decision or something.
I think it would be best for Firefox to be given greater autonomy, like Thunderbird has been. Thunderbird asks for donations and I’m happy to provide! I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Thunderbird started to thrive after being greater independence. Major new initiatives in user interface, mobile client after years of stagnation. Something at Mozilla central is deeply rotten.