LAURA CHAMBERS, CEO, MOZILLA CORPORATION As Mark shared in his blog, Mozilla is going to be more active in digital advertising. Our hypothesis is that we n
It’s either that, a subscription model of some sort, going to pay to install models, or something else to fund themselves. I’d suggest going to a donation based model, but I doubt there’s enough Firefox users willing to pay to even be able to keep it alive more than a year or two tops.
I would happily pay to download Firefox if they removed telemetry, ads, analytics. Security updates could be free, feature updates could have a small fee. Something similar.
There is a way to fund Firefox without user data and ads. Will it be as profitable, who knows, because quite simply, the vast majority do not want to make it a reality and loose what profit, control, or power they currently hold onto.
I think the ad model is fine as long as adblockers work. Only a small percent uses them and the normies without can watch the ads so the service stays free. Perhaps a bit egoistical but works for me! 😅
Actually, I do. I have a YouTube Premium subscription and subscriptions for two news sites. And on top of that a ton of Patreon subscriptions and offline memberships. I am the one who knocks pays.
Even of they reduced everything down to just Firefox, Thunderbird, and all in infra to run those products (Mozilla accounts, addons stores, hosting, dev/build services…), as well as continuing to pay for dev time on open source they use/contribute to, and the time their employees put into w3c and other foundation/standards/steering initiatives, I don’t think you’d want to see the cost of a monthly subscription.
This stuff costs way more than people think it does, and behind the scenes Mozilla does a lot of work (with google, Microsoft, apple) on web standards, and trust me, you want them still involved seeing as each other browser group involved is well… You know… Much worse for privacy generally.
YouTube premium and kagi aren’t even remotely in the same league for comparison when it comes to the cost and value a “Firefox” or “Mozilla” subscription would be.
Right, I think people forget that Opera used to be funded by a subscription. But they had to move away from it because it just didn’t work. I think the golden age of Opera was shortly after they dropped that. And I dearly miss Opera as they were before they switched over to Chromium.
I think the history of early to mid Opera is the perfect example of actually wise and interesting and innovative software choices. They were in very early on things like browser extensions, and they had incredible innovations like Opera Unite, Opera Turbo, and all kinds of incredible customization. But I suppose in some ways they’re also a chilling tale of what could happen, because I’m pretty sure they sold to a Chinese company, switched to developing on Chromium, and seem to have abandoned the ethos of innovating. I know that some of the original developers from Opera went on to create Vivaldi but that too is based on Chromium.
Was never much of an opera user, but I have enjoyed vivaldi quite a bit. I don’t see myself using vivaldi due to the chromium aspect. I used to keep it around for the random chrome-only sites but that’s way too uncommom nowadays.
Lately safari/gnome web (i.e. WebKit engine) have gotten good enough to be my pwa installer browser depending on my OS, though i really hope firefox re-implements PWA support sooner than later.
What if we could have a world that wasn’t powered by ads? I’d like to get past this “only one way to run the internet” train of thought.
I’m just so tired of ads, commercials and advertising in general. It’s exhausting.
It’s either that, a subscription model of some sort, going to pay to install models, or something else to fund themselves. I’d suggest going to a donation based model, but I doubt there’s enough Firefox users willing to pay to even be able to keep it alive more than a year or two tops.
I would happily pay to download Firefox if they removed telemetry, ads, analytics. Security updates could be free, feature updates could have a small fee. Something similar.
There is a way to fund Firefox without user data and ads. Will it be as profitable, who knows, because quite simply, the vast majority do not want to make it a reality and loose what profit, control, or power they currently hold onto.
Universal Basic Income, ala star trek, is an option, then just let everybody make cool shit.
Star Trek has no Universal Basic Income. It has replicators for all your basic needs.
Replicators, which are universal and basic.
I think the ad model is fine as long as adblockers work. Only a small percent uses them and the normies without can watch the ads so the service stays free. Perhaps a bit egoistical but works for me! 😅
Well, do you subscribe to news sites, YouTube Premium, Kagi? The world you dream of is available to you today
I subscribe to Nebula because f*ck Google, and I’d pay for Kagi if I could just simply pay $X for Y searches with no subscription BS.
Actually, I do. I have a YouTube Premium subscription and subscriptions for two news sites. And on top of that a ton of Patreon subscriptions and offline memberships. I am the one who
knockspays.Even of they reduced everything down to just Firefox, Thunderbird, and all in infra to run those products (Mozilla accounts, addons stores, hosting, dev/build services…), as well as continuing to pay for dev time on open source they use/contribute to, and the time their employees put into w3c and other foundation/standards/steering initiatives, I don’t think you’d want to see the cost of a monthly subscription.
This stuff costs way more than people think it does, and behind the scenes Mozilla does a lot of work (with google, Microsoft, apple) on web standards, and trust me, you want them still involved seeing as each other browser group involved is well… You know… Much worse for privacy generally.
YouTube premium and kagi aren’t even remotely in the same league for comparison when it comes to the cost and value a “Firefox” or “Mozilla” subscription would be.
Right, I think people forget that Opera used to be funded by a subscription. But they had to move away from it because it just didn’t work. I think the golden age of Opera was shortly after they dropped that. And I dearly miss Opera as they were before they switched over to Chromium.
I think the history of early to mid Opera is the perfect example of actually wise and interesting and innovative software choices. They were in very early on things like browser extensions, and they had incredible innovations like Opera Unite, Opera Turbo, and all kinds of incredible customization. But I suppose in some ways they’re also a chilling tale of what could happen, because I’m pretty sure they sold to a Chinese company, switched to developing on Chromium, and seem to have abandoned the ethos of innovating. I know that some of the original developers from Opera went on to create Vivaldi but that too is based on Chromium.
Was never much of an opera user, but I have enjoyed vivaldi quite a bit. I don’t see myself using vivaldi due to the chromium aspect. I used to keep it around for the random chrome-only sites but that’s way too uncommom nowadays.
Lately safari/gnome web (i.e. WebKit engine) have gotten good enough to be my pwa installer browser depending on my OS, though i really hope firefox re-implements PWA support sooner than later.