Most of Mozilla’s money of course comes from Google to make them the default search engine on Firefox. And of course its a way for Google to ensure there’s at least one alternative browser engine. Reading about how Texeira was recently fired and how executives have been pushing for AI features for a long time, Mozilla certainly loves chasing trends and then forgetting them, like how Google kills lots of products. It seems like the company can’t stand on its own two feet without Google’s funding and is poorly run.
What happened to Mozilla over the years? How much effort did they put in to trying to be a successful tech company? because it hasn’t been until the past few that I really started following Firefox and Mozilla news.
I wonder if Mozilla could’ve been Proton, years before Proton AG existed, making their own comprehensive suite of privacy-friendly tools, since Mozilla makes privacy their brand. And they were late to the smartphone game with Firefox OS. If they were smart, they would’ve ensured their long term survival with an actual business, to continue funding development of their privacy and FOSS software like Firefox, without large funding sources like Google.
I think you’re missing a key area here. The original Mozilla product was Netscape- a commercial combined web browser and email client. There used to be a number of commercial competitors in the space, e.g. Opera, Eudora, etc. Microsoft killed that market in the 1990’s.
I struggle to see how any organisation could make money out of giving away a product that costs money to produce and promote. You’ve suggested they could have been Proton but that’s a completely different sector. We could just as easily have suggested they could have been Twitter, WhatsApp or Instagram.