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Google's Shadow Over Firefox
eldavojohn writes "The Mozilla Foundation's chief executive now earns roughly half a million in pay and benefits. With $70 million in assets, the Foundation gave out less than $300,000 in grants to open source projects in 2006. And in 2006 85% of their $66 million in revenue came from Google. When these figures first came to light, people worried whether Firefox was becoming a pawn in Google's cold war with Microsoft. The Foundation addressed these fears and largely laid them to rest; but now the worry is that, even though it's clear that the community's code is what makes Firefox successful, Mozilla may be becoming dangerously reliant on Google's cash."
If they took Microsoft's cash instead? I'm sure MS would love to have more traffic pointed at their search, regardless of the source.
Okay, I admit ignorance. I have never understood how Mozilla, a purveyor of free-as-in-beer software, makes money, even if only operating capital (as opposed to profit).
What sources other than Google fund Mozilla? And why?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Better to be reliant on Google's cash, than not having any cash at all.
That's because adblocking is built into Opera, doofus.
Opera doesn't need add-ons to do everything useful. For some reason they figured they might as well integrate them.
Although if the Firefox code base remains open, and as long as extensions can be written, there is nothing to stop anyone from creating ad-blocking extensions, after all it is something that many people seem to like, moreover if there is (however unlikely it may be) a concerted effort to prevent ad-blocking technology within Firefox there is always the option of creating a fork with those countermeasures removed.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea that the Mozilla Foundation *appears* to be dependent on Google's advertising revenue, and I can see how that *could* impact decision making, but I dont see a whole lot of alternative funding streams, nor a threat that could not be overcome, that is after all why we like open standards and open code, no one person or group truly has 100% control and it is nearly impossible to take something that is free and open and turn it into something proprietary and closed..
im no zealot, but, if any misconduct happens to come in the way of firefox from google, no amount of publicity stunt, good deeds can make it up. heed the words of a developer.
Read radical news here
MoFo publishes everything, they have to. Im not sure im worried about what they do with all the cash. Its their cash. What is GOOD is that they are prooving how can opensource software interact with the new advertising-financed platforms like google.
There is a growing market for google-talking apps out ther, not just the browser. Integrating stuff from google to your collaboration infrastructure comes to mind, to your intranet portals... i dunno, a bunch of stuff could be developed for the google "platform".
I think differently from those that look at SAAS as a potential danger to software/data freedom. Sure, theyll be able to offer a great deal of services that will force you to upload data and then you will only be able to do what they expose in their apis, but thats okay, if you dont want it, then dont use it.
The fact that google has been able to mostly provide open apis so that one can work with them opens a wealth of posibilities like the one mozilla is exploiting. How about gnome integrating google stuff as a first option for several things like the remote gmail drive perhaps-- which we do have, just not "on gnome" as it is, and letting google plaster some advertising somewhere in exchange (and youd be able to opt-in for that if you want it, granma could opt-out if SHE wanted. And then some google money could flow into gnome, or kde, or both.
Good, good thing for the future.
NO SIG
Shouldn't a technology company spend more than $300,000 on Research & Development? There many bugs in Firefox, even some security bugs stay unfixed for years. And equally important memory leak bugs. I think more money could be spend on better timely responses to security bugs and also fix speed/memory problems plaguing Firefox.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
Mitchell (Mozilla's "chief lizard wrangler") wrote a fairly large blog post, not only about the numbers as published, but also saying some things on the directions Mozilla is moving.
Far more interesting reading than the fluff news.com article, let alone the random FUD spouting by the submitter.
is that they only gave out 300K to opensource? It is FAR less than what they are paying their CEO? Something is WAY wrong. As it is, most of Firefox WAS done as OSS, and the foundation would not exist with it. They should be spending a LOAD of money on OSS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First, the Firefox CPU bug you've been complaining about (Firefox consumers lots of CPU after the computer wakes up from standby or hibernate) was fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.8. If you're still having any problems with the latest release of Firefox, let developers know by filing a proper bug report, including steps to reproduce the problem.
Second, there is no sign of any "memory gobbling bug" that I can see, just a few little leaks here and there and some memory fragmentation. If you're still having any problems with the latest release of Firefox, let developers know by filing a proper bug report, including steps to reproduce the problem.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I've stopped using extensions a while ago and just use Privoxy.
Seriously, people: capital is good, that's how you pay for stuff and people, and fund projects. And it's not like Google is bribing the Firefox Foundation, the money comes from search engine integration in Firefox. Also, I can't recall Firefox being involved in any shady business where they have sided with Google against Microsoft. Furthermore, The Firefox Foundation did negotiate with Yahoo before sealing the deal with Google, so they clearly have other options than just Google. Who knows, when the contract with Google expires in 2008, maybe even MS will try to make a deal with The Firefox Foundation.
From the summary: Nowhere is this fear expresses besides in the summary. Less editorializing, please.
You are modded flamebait, but I'm not sure I disagree. The GP says that nothing in Opera blocks Google ads, but all you need to do is add *.googlesyndication.com/* to the blocker and they're gone for good. If anything, it's the GP who's wrong..
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I don't think the main issue is Google supporting Firefox, as people have already commented it's generally a plus to have a steady stream of income. The real issue here is in regards to the CEO's pay. Half a million dollars compared to $300,000 for R&D? Something's skewed there.
Whatever works I suppose,
Personally I don't mind advertising too much, if I'm looking at a site that is helpful or one I like, then I certainly don't mind, the only times where I can actually say I find it intrusive is on sites that are there purely for ad revenue, usually with content scraped from other sites, and those I can detect almost entirely (using a manual process no less) by the fact that they are infested with advertising, so in a sense gratuitous and inappropriate advertising is a deterrent all on its own, sure I am giving whoever is responsible for those sites revenue on that one instance where I come across the site, but then that's it, surely advertisers must realise that sites like that are not generally going to generate revenue anyway.
So I guess you could say I do most of my ad-blocking mentally, with an added bonus of blacklisting useless sites at the same time.
As a side note, I find it quite interesting when you compare the web in general (and the advertising therein), second life (and the commercial mess that particular sim already is and appears to be aspiring to become) and real life (I spent a moderate period of my life in Hong Kong, a place where the adverts and neon certainly add to the atmosphere) and try and figure out which advertising actually works. I seem to find that I buy things that I hear about from others, much more than what I see advertised. maybe its time for people to be able to get cash for real life referrals for any type of product (you could fill out a form to say who recommended what when you pay for your shopping....). Advertising only really seems to work when the advertiser has a novel product, that is useful or attractive *and* it is not already well known.
Oh and cold calling (telephone or in person) and junk mail (whether email or real mail) never work, If I want a credit card, I'll talk to my bank and then shop around, if I want double glazing, I'll find someone to do it.
Funny, maybe I should take my own views into account when I organise my own advertising.
Uh, wrong.
Rightclick on page with annoying flash ad -> Block Content..
Click the offending ad -> it disappears with "Content Blocked" across it
(Opera 9+)
As an outsider, it seems to me that support for Thunderbird and calender (which was always weak) has dried up. Now that I know Mozilla Foundation is driven by Google the killing off of competition with Gmail seems a bit obvious.
Thoughts?
Actually, maybe the problem is the theory that top-notch computing work can be done for free, without paying the people who do it, because they just love the fame. This was a reasonable proposition once upon a time, when programming up a Web browser was an amazing trick and could get you widely recognized, leading perhaps to an interesting (and well-paying) job. But is that true any more? Are top-quality programmers willing to work on Mozilla -- and by "work" I don't mean just program, but also manage the beast, do market research to see what the users want, fix bugs, yadda yadda -- for free, just for the glory of it? I'm thinking maybe not so much any more.
Which means Mozilla could consider a third evil and join the nasty capitalist system by figuring out exactly what value they are providing to their customers, and charging for it. Instead of trying to figure out for which rich aristrocrat (e.g. Google or MS) they want to be the bought mistress.
That seems right to me.
Mozilla Foundation stopped supporting Thunderbird development apparently because the organization got no money for it, and Google wants you to use web mail, so that you will see the ads.
Mozilla Foundation gave no adequate explanation for killing its support of Thunderbird.
With operating revenues in the billions, Google is getting a huge benefit for a very small outlay with the money flowing into the Mozilla Foundation. These days, it is less common to have a hotlink lingering around for your search engine of choice because they are so ubiquitous that they are expected to just "be there".
And if you run Firefox, the default search engine at the top corner of the screen is none-other-than Google. It is a beautiful interface that has been embraced by users (me and you), the vendor (Google), and the merchant (Mozilla). A rare win-win-win for all. You and I get easy access to search online for anything with the click of a button. Google gets a way to funnel us into their site so they can show us their advertisements. Mozilla gets money to pay their engineers to improve a world class software application.
Given this information, it is silly to think that Google would terminate their beneficial relationship with Mozilla because it would significantly hurt them where it matters most (getting users to their site).
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
There is no way that the head of an open source project should be taking half a mil in compensation. Donate the freaking money to other open source projects that have done important work for the open source community.
I'm sure the Samba and Apache crews can use a little of the love. Hell, the people who created Adblock are the reason I use Firefox... Give them some of the damn cash! Which other open source projects do you think have done the community a lot of good and deserve some of the bank?
Or configure Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> JavaScript Options -> User JavaScript files (or the appropriate opera:config page I hopefully just linked to; opera:config#UserPrefs|UserJavaScriptFile), and drop hide-objects.js in the folder you configured; flash will then be blocked until you double-click to load them.
That is why I donate to various software projects -- not much, but about as much as I would pay for an OS if I had to buy one -- that gives me more right to have an opinion on what they are doing.
If you (and I mean the general slashdot reader, not the GP) want to have more input on the decision-making process when necessary, participate in the funidng. Any software project will treat you better if you show more commitment than just downloading and using the software, and many sources of funding make the power of any one large donor smaller. Besides, it will be a better use of the slashdot community than just slashdotting websites.
Not to mention that when you have more of a stake, you can request and get things like more transparent reporting on funding and business models.
lwn.net had a story about this a while back. Worth reading at http://lwn.net/Articles/256904/. One of the comments in particular:
I think people should read this article, by Asa Dotzler, a coordinator for several Mozilla projects.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/10/firefox_finance.html
... has a free webmail service, despite having a vested interest in desktop applications and not a whole lot of interest in cross-platform compabibility. "Better to own 100% of the customers 100% of the time than let someone else muscle in on our territory by offering a key feature which we do not."
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Or use firefox and get the filterset-g extension, and it takes care of everything for you, including automatic updates to the ad server list. Blocks ads, flash or not. And doesn't block the flash that you want.
So what would happen if Google pulled out from the Mozilla deal. Would FireFox be as useful as it it now? It seems a bit dangerous to have 90% of your income coming from a single source.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
to work on open source.. that's pretty damn good.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Let's see....I'm a giant company that makes all of my money off of the Web. I can make more money by utilizing an application that costs me nothing to make. I strike a deal in which the "company" that makes that app gets money every time someone uses their app to go to my site. I haven't spent a dime, and the only money I will spend will be from the profits I make from their app.
Isn't this the way it's supposed to work? If the app in question was developed privately, would that then be okay?
Companies make deals all the time. If Google had struck the deal with Microsoft, would that be better? In IE 7, there is a slick little search bar that can be set to Google, too. I bet Google sends even more money to Microsoft for their search bar, since there are so many more users of IE. Is that better?
Revenues: $66,840,850
Expenses: $19,776,193
Expenses breakdown:
Program Services: $ 540,384
Software Development: $11,775,516
Sales and Marketing: $ 4,836,238
General & Admin: $ 2,624,055
"Profit" (or, change in net assets, since it's a non-profit): $27,893,735
Damn, it's good to be free. You'd think that the foundation would donate its money to fund other OSS projects, but as software people have discovered, the first priority of a foundation is to ensure the existence (and a lucrative existence at that) of its staff.
Google are (is?) supporting Mozilla because Google gets money for selling ads in their search results, and Mozilla uses Google as the default search engine. My guess is that Google is paying Mozilla less than half of what they're making from the deal.
Comment of the year
It's ironic that Firefox (and the rest of Mozilla) is supported primarily by dollars derived from advertising-supported content, while most of the discussions of the features Firefox has revolve around it's functionality for depriving dollars from much of the other advertising-supported content their users want to look at.
Does anybody actualy read the faqs for software they use? It explicitly says NOT to use filterset-g with ABP RIGHT IN THEIR OWN DOCUMENTATION - FILTERSET-G IS NOT OPTIMIZED FOR ABP! Just use Easylist+EasyElement and if your paranoid the ABP Tracking Filter and you have the best ad-blocking system on the planet.
From Adblock Plus FAQs:
In short, the Filterset.G extension duplicates functionality already in the Adblock Plus extension, it's slow, and it's harder to use. The filter subscriptions supplied by Adblock Plus are the recommended alternative.
We've reached a point where advertising is causing some serious social problems. For example, the marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to consumers has increased the cost of medicines and has given us entire lines of less effective drugs that come to market just because the pharmas know they can push it on unsuspecting consumers who get suckered by the ads. Perfectly fine and effective drugs are overlooked because the patents have run out and forever-growing profits must be maintained. My next-door neighbor, who's a physician, says that a majority of his patients come to his office asking for a specific drug because they saw an advertisement. Sometimes, even after he's explained to his patient that there's a more effective or just as effective generic, the patient insists on the more costly, well-advertised drug. He's had patients leave and go to other doctors when he's refused to prescribe some pill with a good commercial.
We really need to have a little pushback when it comes to marketing. It would be more effective than you may think in slowing down the complete takeover of our lives by corporate power.
Don't think for a second that there's not lobbyists trying to get adblocking software defined as malware so there can be a law passed against it. With the ready availability of consumer information, and sites like Gizmodo hawking new products, consumers no longer need advertising at all, I would suggest. It's intrusive, it's damaging, and given that we've just had 24 straight month of a negative saving rate in this country, and with consumer credit finally getting a little less free and easy (thank God), it's hurting us in a very real way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yup. Games and videos, mainly. The only time I've had flash annoy me is when it's ads.
So, I guess the danger is that google could force firefox into all of us and begin to charge us... wait. firefox is open source and not even "MS-open source", so we can always fork it even if we got dependant on it! (For a browser which does not try to add propietary extensions that sure sounded hard...
Ok, so that wasn't the problem so what the problem really is? I SEE! We should give the money to other open source projects! Yes, why should all money go to mozilla? It is unfair! ... Now that I think of it, this was money earned by firefox, then I see absolutely no reason to give this money to apache or mysql... sorry guys but that just doesn't make sense...
Ok, I can't think of any other creative reason to think there is actually any problem with this, I guess just in case we could go to opera! ... Err, wait! It is closed source, so opera is a browser that can actually lock us in! Not only that, but it is probably meant for that, and that's the reason they get money from the WII deal! Oh no, then using opera just in case is not an answer...
Then go Safari! ... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...
Then go any other open source browser! I'll just stick to firefox because: a) I like the plugins I use, b) I see absolutely no problem with this.
We could just calm down, an true-FLOSS project getting money absolutely from donations and zero charges to users, or would you prefer mozilla not to get any money? And just let firefox die?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The latest release (October one) of Live Search doesn't suck nearly as much as it used to. For all intents and purposes it's equivalent to Google now and has a substantially larger index to boot. I like the looks, too. It's about time Google saw more competition, be it through Yahoo, Microsoft or Ask. When search engines compete everyone wins. Believe me, you don't want to end up with entrenched Microsoft-style search monopoly on your hands.
If I said "Just use Internet Explorer, and all the pages will show up correctly," I'd be modded down "-1 Troll" before the page finished submitting.
Yet when somebody says something similar but recommends Firefox, they're "+4 Informative".
Firefox sucks. It leaks memory like a sieve, it's a memory hog, it's slow, it requires tons of plugins to do mundane stuff that's built into every other browser, and it's less standards compliant than Konqueror, Opera, and Safari. At this point in time, you can be sure that if somebody isn't using Firefox, it's because they've realized it sucks and they don't want to. So shut up already. You're not going to make anybody switch, and you're bothering people.
And don't get me started on how creepy it is to voluntarily let some other group of people control what content you see.
We built the search feature into Mozilla in 1999. Google has been an option in that feature since its inception. That was 5 years before there was any revenue associated with it. We made Google the default in 2002 or 2003 to replace the silly "Netscape" default which was simply a Netscape branded Google. This was years before there was any revenue associated with it.
We made these decisions because it was the right thing for users, not because it was a revenue opportunity. If we ever have to decide between doing what's right for users and a revenue opportunity, we'll put the users first every time. The nice thing about the current situation is that it's both the right thing for users and a revenue opportunity.
And this is just about the "defaults" in Firefox. If you don't like Google, switch it to Yahoo. If you don't like Yahoo, you can add any one of more than 13,000 additional search services to the Firefox search toolbar with just a click or two at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/
- A
Dude, lay off the caffeine or pop a Xanax or two.
He was talking about Adblock and not Adblock plus. They are two seperate applications.
Filterset G works just fine with Adblock.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
Hardly comparable. With television, someone decides what content to show you, and you make a decision if you want to watch it. With the auto-updating ad-block filtersets, someone decides what content you never get to see, and you don't get to review what you never get to see or make any meaningful decisions.