Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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!!!
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.
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.
You're kidding, right?
Everyone I know using Firefox on the Mac has the same problem. Reproducible? Perhaps the foundation could just buy a Mac for testing.
In the six months since I switched, the system has been rock solid and every other application has been fine, only Firefox needs to be repeatedly restarted due to ballooning memory use.
Right now, after just two hours of light usage since Firefox last slowed my entire system to such a crawl that it had to be restart, one window and three tabs open (Gmail, Google reader, slashdot), Activity Monitor shows Firefox at 322MB real memory, 824MB virtual and growing. I don't actually know how high it goes before becoming completely unusable (haven't bothered looking) but it must be pretty high - I have 4GB of memory installed in this laptop and, usually, no other apps running.
That is with the most recent FF, 2.0.0.9 - there is, absolutely, a problem; perhaps if the foundation were not in such a rosy financial situation they would have an incentive to fix problems that affect a significantly large minority of their users.