It seems like the whole modern connected infrastructure we rely on relies on money from the ad industry. Google, webmail services, free websites, all of them rely on a small subset of companies that buy eyeballs. From an outsider, it certainly seems like Mozilla is the only company in the space that's trying to make the Internet better, rather than making the browser a path into their own ecosystem of services (and consequently ads).
Firefox was created to be a browser in which the developers and the community can have a voice, rather than having all decisions made by the enterprise. I know there are many heroic stories and tales, but after all those are the two goals.
Why are there laundromat, 99 cent store, Deli place and a bus stop next to a street full of homes? Next to a college campus you'd find Deli and street food vendors? Of course one can give out free food and you can always choose to work from home so you never have to deal with pedestrian jam or the smoke coming from the grill. For example I can skip WSJ paywall by not registering any account and not reading any WSJ online articles. That's fine and the anology of this is finding a suburban home. The public Internet is like New York City, so many people, so many business, so much to navigate (but of course as a NY resident I can get tired of the city myself). If you want no ads, you have to lobby a group of politicians (actually companies) and convenience them your plan is better and is more profitable. The thing is that once there is a collation of business opportunity, uniting that knot is very difficult because everyone has a piece in it. Few people want to bet on new plan.
> Firefox was created to be a browser in which the developers and the community can have a voice, rather than having all decisions made by the enterprise. I know there are many heroic stories and tales, but after all those are the two goals.
While I like these ideas, this isn't quite accurate. That may describe Mozilla Application Suite (now Seamonkey) to some extent, but not Firefox. Mozilla's mission is to promote the open Internet, as opposed to the proprietary one (originally represented by IE's market dominance):