Why Firefox's Future Lies In Google's Hands

Barence writes "Firefox has just turned five, and it now accounts for 25% of the global market, according to figures from Net Applications. Its success has forced rivals to raise their game, and the past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly. Google is the default homepage when Firefox first opens, and the default search engine when users type something into the 'awesome bar.' The deal, which runs until 2011, was worth $66 million to Mozilla in 2007, accounting for 88% of the foundation's revenues that year (the last year for which it had published accounts). But now that Google is a competitor as well as a partner, is it really wise for Mozilla to be so dependent on Google?"

Comments

Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[elrous0]

This issue has been discussed on /. many times before. Mozilla needs a sponsor. Their revenues are the only thing that lets them stand out from most of the rest of the OSS crowd as a truly professional piece of software. Lose those revenues and it will eventually deteriorate into yet another lame piece of poorly-documented, poorly-maintained piece of abandonware on SourceForge. So, what options does Mozilla have? Well, they could stay with Google or they could defect to Yahoo or Bing. But MS is even more of a browser competitor than Google. And Yahoo isn't in a financial position to be sponsoring anyone right now. Sure, you could maybe come up with some other more complicated solutions, but $66 million worth? Not many companies, or even groups of companies, have that kind of money to throw around for a little advertisement. There just aren't a lot of alternatives.

So, SHOULD they break away from Google? Probably. CAN they break away from them (and maintain their quality)? Probably not. So, like a bad marriage of convenience, Mozilla is probably stuck with Google until the day (possibly) comes when Google themselves decide to break it off.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their revenues are the only thing that lets them stand out from most of the rest of the OSS crowd as a truly professional piece of software. Lose those revenues and it will eventually deteriorate into yet another lame piece of poorly-documented, poorly-maintained piece of abandonware on SourceForge.

No! It's F/OSS - all the Mozilla developers can go and offer paid support, write books, do some TV reality shows, and they'll make plenty of money! That's the whole business model of F/OSS, isn't it?

Or is that Mozilla is a perfect example of how the F/OSS business model isn't viable unless a project has a sugar-daddy like the big Linux distros?

I think we're starting to see the F/OSS model isn't sustainable.

Time will tell.

My captcha is 'discord' - irony?

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[jmyers]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years. Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers and a decent amount of overhead and never spend a dime of principal and never need additional sponsorship and strings that go with it.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[ZorbaTHut]

And the fact that the source is, you know, open. I feel that's kind of a major point.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[HerculesMO]

Couldn't agree more. I love Firefox, I use it daily and the support around it is what makes it great. But Google is making Chrome, which is a faster browser, sandboxed, etc. IE is obviously going down a similar path, and Apple is always out of the running because they don't care about open source unless they can rename it and sell it for profit.

I see a bad future for Mozilla, and for Firefox... it's a great example of WHY open source works, but also an example of what does not work. Look at Chrome -- other than the community support, Firefox pales in comparison to almost everything Chrome does. It's slower, less secure (technically), and not as extensible (Gears and Google APIs). But the community around Firefox developed things like Adblock, Xmarks, Firebug, etc. I live on those things, and love them.

But sadly, Firefox is not necessary in order for me to use those extensions any more. While I still find great utility in the addons Firefox has, I realize more and more than open source does *not* evolve very quickly, or very well. Sure it's open source and you can do whatever you want with it. Great. But as a whole application, Firefox is slowing down while others are speeding ahead (namely Chrome). I worry for its future, but at the same time.... I've never been an O/S proponent more than if it does the job, I'll use it.

When Firefox no longer does the job, or no longer does it best -- I'll move on. Unfortunately for the O/S community, you can't justify the use of O/S just BECAUSE it's O/S. It has to be better, and it has to evolve faster. I simply am not seeing it any more.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[grasshoppa]

I would argue that it is not a "truly professional piece of software". How do I manage it on a network? If I wanted to lock down the color settings, how might I do that? How about updating the software, and plugins? How is that achieved in a corporate environment?

Unless you meant for the home environment, in which case sure, it does have that market.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Sir_Lewk]

Well, Opera seems to be doing decently, selling mobile browsers or whatever they do (I don't use Opera browsers, I'm somewhat unfamilar with their products), but in this case I agree with you. No business model can save you if your product is crap people won't buy.

Right now Mozilla's product is users, which they are selling to google. I believe trying to make their browser the product would be a terrible move, regardless of how they do it.

All of this said, calling F/OSS business models bust because one particular company wouldn't be able to do it is particularly stupid. Business models are not "one size fits all".

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[recoiledsnake]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years. Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers and a decent amount of overhead and never spend a dime of principal and never need additional sponsorship and strings that go with it.

The money goes to salaries of the executives. A cool half million dollars or more for the CEO to be exact. I wonder how productive should they be to justify such salaries? That money can easily go to hire 5 top notch C++ coders for an entire year to hunt down memory leaks and make the code more efficient. The only reason to give such money should be as a bonus if-and-only-if the executives figure out how to reduce their dependence on Google, it's been 5 years and nothing's being done about it.

Disclaimer: I've seen my university students scrounge their last savings money to pay for the Firefox ad in the NYT 4 years ago, so maybe that makes me sick to the stomach to see Mozilla wasting so much money on administration.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[businessnerd]

So, SHOULD they break away from Google? Probably. CAN they break away from them (and maintain their quality)? Probably not. So, like a bad marriage of convenience, Mozilla is probably stuck with Google until the day (possibly) comes when Google themselves decide to break it off.

Seriously? Mozilla gets $66M from Google every year and you think they should break away from them? I think you let the article irrationally scare you. The issue is not that they have a deal with Google, it's that they may have all of their eggs in one basket. Google is Mozilla's cash cow, and yes, if Google were to decide to change their deal or pull the plug all together, then Mozilla is out $66M in opportunity costs. But until that day comes, Mozilla should milk that cash cow for all its worth, yet be prepared for that day by diversifying their revenue now. It's not about being partners or not being partners with Google, it's about being partners with JUST Google or having multiple partners. The response from Mozilla was that, yes, they do have other partners and other deals, so Google is not their only source of revenue. Partners listed included eBay, Amazon and Canonical. They even stated that they are currently working on more deals. But the concern is still relevent because Google still makes up a vast majority of the revenue.

The article is a little dumb because it is asking a question that has already been asked and answered by Mozilla. No company's business model should rely solely on one single partner and Mozilla already knows that. Mozilla is still dependant on Google, but they are working on changing that.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Gerald]

No! It's F/OSS - all the Mozilla developers can go and offer paid support, write books, do some TV reality shows, and they'll make plenty of money! That's the whole business model of F/OSS, isn't it?

Not if you're Snort, Asterisk, or Wireshark.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years.

The money goes to salaries of the executives. A cool half million dollars or more for the CEO to be exact. I wonder how productive should they be to justify such salaries? That money can easily go to hire 5 top notch C++ coders...

Did the CEO help broker deals that generated the $66 million, or did the coders? If the executives were able to talk Google into a deal that brings in $66mil, surely they are worth $.5mil

Welcome to reality, where paying executives and paying coders is not an either/or proposition. In any substantive organization you need people creating the product and you need people monetizing the product. Take away either aspect and you have a poorly-funded organization that, let's face it, won't be able to churn out as much cool stuff because the coders will have to spend most of their time working at jobs to pay for their hobby time.

I know this is rare on /., but a sports comparison: Tiger Woods' endorsement deals pay him about $100mil a year. Sounds obscene compared to what "associates" in the retail locations are making or *gasp* the $6/month (or whatever the number is) that little Asians are getting paid. However, according to this paper (sorry it's a PDF), his indiscretions have cost $5-12bil in wealth. (The numbers are in line with another report that stated Nike's estimated Tiger-driven revenues are roughly 10 times what they pay him, but I couldn't find that link today.) So he gets paid a high amount, but generates much more revenue than that and that revenue is fairly directly attributed to his association.

So... let's say Mozilla pays their CEO $200k, which is a good salary in most parts of the country. And this lesser-paid, potentially lesser-connected CEO can't bring in a fat Google deal. Yay! You saved one third or a million dollars but it cost you tens of millions. Is that a good deal?

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a decade where failed CEOs get up to $10 million a year (plus bonuses and fancy retirement packages when they leave after five years), and failed bank management gets half a million a year in bonuses... seeing a CEO get paid half a million for being successful doesn't seem bad. I mean, developers that are actually good get paid $80k-$100k, managers that are actually good get paid $100k-$200k per year, and they're worth that. A CEO is both a manager of managers AND a businessman, so doing both successfully really is worth somewhere in the $300k-$600k range. It's in the same pay range that is actually attainable through 'honest hard work', where good doctors and small business owners and public college presidents end up, and I don't think many would begrudge the pay when the position was earned through many long years of somehow doing what everything thought was impossible before then (not only survive, but gain substantial market share vs Microsoft? Do you realize how rare that is?)

IMO, there's a reason why that pay range is the boundary beyond which we tend to think people are jerks and/or totally and permanently detached from reality. Without getting too ranty: the faster a job can get you so much money that you can live well in perpetuity off the savings, the... more different kind of character the position will attract. Whereas while $300k-$600 seems like a lot, and it is a lot, it still takes a decade or more of constant success to hit self sufficiency if you do everything right. It's high enough to attract talent, low enough that the talent has to seriously work towards the long term success of the company.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[IICV]

1) it isn't any of your business how much they make

Seriously, this sort of attitude is part of what makes America so divided. It isn't any of my business how much someone else makes? Then how am I supposed to make a rational decision about my line of work? All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B. I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.

2) if they didn't deserve it the board wouldn't be giving it

You know why they deserve it? Because CEO 1 is on the board of company 2, so he says that CEO 2 should have a ridiculous salary. CEO 2 is on the board of company 1, so he says that CEO 1 should have a ridiculous salary.

3) if they grab more than they earn the company dies and the code base is free so no real loss

No real loss, except for the opportunity cost of all that extra money going into improving the CEO's bankroll instead of into improving the company.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[recoiledsnake]

Did the CEO help broker deals that generated the $66 million, or did the coders? If the executives were able to talk Google into a deal that brings in $66mil, surely they are worth $.5mil

Welcome to reality, where paying executives and paying coders is not an either/or proposition.

What's up with people drumming up this 'fact'? Opera (while sitting all way the across in the Land of the Midnight Sun') was able to broker a deal with Google for pay-per-search. And their CEO gets paid the equivalent of 26K in 2010!

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=11669499&capId=532001&previousCapId=532001&previousTitle=OPERA%20SOFTWARE%20ASA

And what did the Mozilla CEOs do in the meantime apart from inking search deals? Thunderbird is a failure, Fennec is too little, too late. There's absolutely nothing of significance fro Mozilla in 5 years apart from Firefox which the community made a success of, not as much Mozilla which just piggy backed on the popularity to sign on search deals. Bugzilla is the only success to a limited extent. They dropped the ball on LIGHTNING and SUNBIRD too which could've easily supplanted Exchange by now if the funds were properly utilized, but still the executive keep getting paid exorbitant salaries for underperforming.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[pclminion]

I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.

You do realize that you CAN see this information, don't you? Go to, for instance, Google finance. Type in a ticker symbol. Scroll down to the "Officers and directors" section. Click on somebody's name. See that "Bio and compensation" link? Click that.

This crap is all required to be reported by the SEC for exactly the reason you are conjuring up here. Chill out. As for anybody who isn't an officer or director of a publicly traded corporation, no, you do NOT have any business knowing that person's compensation level. If you think otherwise, why don't you start the ball rolling by posting your full name and salary in response to this comment?

Re:Lone Wolf

[richlv]

opera has a surprisingly large market share on various embedded devices (as you mentioned) and in included on very large share of mobile devices.

what i found funny in the summary - "past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly".

if anything, firefox has mighe have been closing the feature gap with opera, which had absolute majority of the features first.

disclaimer - opera user for many years here.

ehh .. feature gap?

[Jesus_Corpse]

Its success has forced rivals to raise their game, and the past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly.

When you look at it with a bird's eye view, I think FireFox has closed the gap, feature-wise.
True, add-ons never became really successful in Opera, but it was mostly complete already before firefox gained popularity

Bias Posting

[Anonymous Coward]

"[Firefox] the past two years have seen ... Opera close the features gap significantly." Are we re-writing documented history? Opera is the longest running GUI Web browser, first to use tabs, sessions, customizable skins, ACID 2 & 3 compliant, download management panel, widget support, and a whole host of other features Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have taken and continue to take from Opera ASA. I suppose when your non-Opera Web browser lacks the security track record Opera possesses, delusive jealousy becomes a factor.

Re:Lone Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to realize that most of the Firefox community is under 20 years old.

That means they were, at most, 4 or 5 years old when the Internet really started taking off. So they missed using older browsers like Mosaic, Lynx, Netscape Navigator, Netscape Communicator, IE before version 7, and Opera.

When they did get interested in using the Internet, which would have been around 2004 or 2005, Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was the most-hyped browser. So it's not surprising that they started using it then, and quickly became fanatics.

Not knowing much about this history of web browsers, coupled with a near-religious fanaticism for Firefox, leads to absolutely fucking stupid comments like we see in the summary.

Re:someone

[slyborg]

LOL,this AC has posted about 10 times in this thread.

Opera is an excellent browser overall, and they are way ahead of Mozilla specifically on small footprint devices like consoles and handsets. This was a good strategic move and while I haven't used Fennec, I suspect that Opera will rise as the smartphone market continues to develop. On Nokia devices, Opera is my default browser.

That said, their fanbois are massive fail. One reason Opera has issues with mindshare is that it seems that most of its users' approach to promoting their platform is:

"Your browser does x? Pah, Opera did that back in 1978 on punch card, you're a LOSER for not using the Pioneer Of All Things Browser". My feeling then is, 'Gee, if I start using Opera, I might also turn into a massive message board tool...back to Firefox!'

Also, if legacy counted for anything, Firefox is the heir of Netscape, which antedates Opera and thus Opera is just a johnny-come-lately to this whole WWW thing.
Killer apps? NoScript + AdBlock Plus. Deliver that functionality with the same ease of use in a browser that doesn't come from the New Evil Empire, and I'll consider switching. So far, Opera is still no go there, those two apps on FF are still superior.

Firefox Going Away Soon

[BitHive]

Firefox used to be the lightweight alternative. Now when everyone else is focusing on speed and usability, Firefox will take longer to start than any other browser, and do all sorts of things that you probably didn't have in mind when you clicked the Firefox icon (Please wait while we update your extensions....Oops, I couldn't update this extension. Please restart Firefox because I updated this other one. Do you want me to reopen all your old tabs? What about next time? Oh, please update your Firefox! No? Please tell us why! Here, fill out this survey web page which is embedded in this 320x240 pixel window for no reason, and tell us what we can do to improve Firefox.

Give me a break. I only ever use it for Firebug anymore and even that's becoming more rare as the tools for Safari and Chrome improve. Firefox will be irrelevant within 3 years, and still wondering where they went wrong.

Re:Lone Wolf

[ZombieRoboNinja]

>>Not knowing much about this history of web browsers, coupled with a near-religious fanaticism for Firefox, leads to absolutely fucking stupid comments like we see in the summary.

Well, maybe they know just enough history to remember back to 2005 when Opera was neither free-as-in-Braveheart nor free-as-in-beer, and Firefox was both.

Re:Lone Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. I was on the Net before Berners-Lee came up with the whole URL concept, I've used Spyglass, Mosaic, Lynx (still do at times), Netscape from v1 onwards, IE, Opera, FF, Safari, Chrome and some of the crap that comes with mobile devices.

I have used Chrome for a while, but as I could never quite see what it was doing (Google "free" means "we're taking something from you that you won't notice") and as FF plugins give me the control I need I switched to FF again, and I'll stick with it. On Windows, on Linux and if I buy a Mac on Mac too.

Re:Yahoo is the only logical choice.

[sznupi]

Yahoo is just a user of MS search technology.

Re:What ?

[rubicelli]

Firefox had one critical feature a year before Opera did: It was free. For years, Opera had been "that browser you had to pay for (or get advertising with)". That kind of stigma stays with you.

Re:Lone Wolf

[FlyingBishop]

Eh? Anyone 20-25 had Netscape navigator in their middle school computer lab, and consequently remembers when IE was crap, and the transition where IE became king of the hill on up to the present.

I switched to Firefox... 2004 maybe? I don't know. Even then I think Firefox had more mindshare than Opera. It's not mindless fanboyism.

Re:Choices? Really?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Seriously, who should be the default search provider, payments or not? If I've got a choice, I'm heading to google, not because of some sort of "I love google" sort of thing, but because they have the best search. If firefox defaults to "Bing!" or "aunt martha's internet search and lemon pies", it won't matter as long as I can set it to Google.

It's the ability to choose that I want to protect, not what the default is.

It would be annoying if they switched to a different default, because that would be one more customization step every time I install Firefox.

Sheldon

It does matter. Sure, you can control your own settings, but the aggregate behavior of the masses who leave their settings at default does have an impact.

1. If the search engine profits from its users, then the default search engine makes a great deal of difference. If traffic goes down, the search engine has less income, and therefore less capital to re-invest into innovation.
2. If the search engine decides to skew its search results, a vast majority of users who don't change their default might not ever see whatever it is that the default search engine doesn't want them to see. Imagine if Google censored search engine results according to the whim of some bad government.
3. If you want to collaborate with anyone else, you'll have to take into account when they do a search, their results page will be different from yours, since you're not using the default.
4. Anytime you're using a computer that is not your own, you're going to have to deal with the default search engine, which isn't your preferred one. Sure, you can just browse to google and search from their homepage, but it's an extra step.

Is there a reason for Google to shaft Mozilla?

[qazwart]

I don't see any reason why Google would try to harm Firefox. Granted Google has a browser called Chrome, but what Google really wants is for people to use Google as their search engine. With Firefox the most popular engine after IE (and Microsoft wouldn't do anything, but make Bing IE's default search engine), I don't see why Google wouldn't simply extend their deal with FIrefox. They certainly wouldn't want Firefox to move over to Yahoo or Bing.

The only thing I can see is Google would use their leverage over Firefox to get Firefox to switch from the Gecko to WebKit. That would give Google a unified JavaScript/Web browser engine to run their applications against.

It's not usually a good thing to have another entity control your future like this, but Firefox really doesn't have a choice now.

Re:Is there a reason for Google to shaft Mozilla?

[tokul]

The only thing I can see is Google would use their leverage over Firefox to get Firefox to switch from the Gecko to WebKit. That would give Google a unified JavaScript/Web browser engine to run their applications against.

1. using same rendering library in all browsers is dangerous. Bigger user base is vulnerable to same exploits.
2. Presto, Trident, Tasman and other browsers. If you replace Gecko with Webkit, you won't get unified rendering engine.

Re:Lone Wolf

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I don't think it's a generational thing. The reality is that most Firefox users are those who migrated from IE; mostly likely IE6 and IE7, both woefully stagnant examples of a browser. Firefox was a big step up and most Firefox users have seen little reason to change, believing that Firefox represents the pinnacle of web browser innovation. And to be fair, up to 18 months ago, there weren't a lot of core features on other browsers compelling enough to get Firefox users to switch.

It's true that Firefox has typically been playing catch up throughout its lifespan. However, in the last 18 months, it has been seriously lagging behind other browsers (IE aside). Process separation, general speed, stability, memory fragmentation, etc. Their stance on self signed certs is also, frankly, backward; putting the brakes on a more secure web for each and every one of their users. And while extensions are all well and good, I personally find that Mozilla have been offloading much needed innovations in their UI and feature-set to third party add-ons (Tab-Mix Plus anyone?); Bare-bones Firefox leaves a lot to be desired. Now we're not likely to see Firefox 4.0 until the end of this year, if that.

I personally think Firefox is going to end up losing a substantial fraction of its userbase over the coming year as competitors--especially Google--keep continually releasing new features and widgets. Killer extensions are not going to save it if the core feature set falls behind.

Then again, there's always the Adblock factor.

Re:Lone Wolf

[AndGodSed]

+1 for lynx, absolutely killer for testing a website from remote servers via ssh if you are to lazy to telnet to :80 and call up the page source from there...

Re:Lone Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree with you here. What is with people that can spend $100 a bar night constantly, but cant spend $20-30 on software they use all the time?

It's like this..

[mweather]

Google just wants to be the default search engine. So long as Firefox has significant marketshare, Google will sponsor them. If Google drops their sponsorship, Microsoft or Yahoo or any number or regional search engines will step in.

Re:Lone Wolf

[travisco_nabisco]

In 2000 they released a free Opera, but it was ad-supported, which I for one would never tolerate in a web browser.

You do realize that Firefox is ad-supported as well. There is a reason Google it the default search provider, and why the Google toolbar is distributed with Firefox. You may not like a visible ad, but you certainly have bought into an ad supported browser.