| I think this is huge. It reminds me of the early days of Firefox (back then still known as Phoenix) in a world where IE6 and pop-up ads dominated. At launch IE6 was really the best and most innovative browser of it's time (IMHO). But after IE6 had beaten Netscape, Microsoft stopped putting money in IE development and the situation got worse over time. It was Phoenix with, among other things, a pop-up blocker that was on by default that brought down Internet Explorers hegemony. Today, with Chrome being dominant the situation is different because Google is still innovating Chrome at light speed. The one and only Achilles heel to beat this giant is by attacking their business model, which is to enable ad blocking by default. I expect this is something people want, just like pop-up blockers back in the days. Google will never be able to lead, or even follow in this direction without changing their business model. Unfortunately, Mozilla’s own business model also heavily relies on selling ads, albeit indirectly. According to this statement from an independent audit report[1]: "Note 10 - Concentrations of Risk: Mozilla has entered into contracts with search engine providers for royalties which expire through November 2020. Approximately 93% and 94% of Mozilla’s royalty revenues were derived from these contracts for 2017 and 2016, respectively, with receivables from these contracts representing approximately 75% and 79% of the December 31, 2017 and 2016 outstanding receivables." In other words, $539 Million, which is 93% of their total revenue, comes from companies that have selling ads as their business model (Baidu, Google, Yahoo and Yandex [2]). I really hope Mozilla will be able to change this revenue stream to better align with their mission[3]. They have been trying to diversify their revenue since 2014 [4] and although they might not be as dependent on Google as they once were, they're still almost fully dependent on ads. Oh, and yeah, of course simply making a better browser than Chrome would also help ;) Background: * https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/ * https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-2017-fo... [1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201... [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Global_Search_Strategy_Status [3] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ "An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent." [4] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish... |
Firefox has an opportunity.