[Waterluvian]

I think I mostly agree. But let me play Satan’s Lawyer for a moment:

Google wants to avoid resembling a monopoly on browsers. But they also don’t want competition. Keeping Mozilla on palliative care may actually be worse than letting it collapse, the monopoly becoming obvious, and regulatory bodies forcing corrections of the situation.

(but who am I kidding, that won’t happen… maybe in Europe)

[heather45879]

It’s actually in Google’s best interest to help keep Mozilla alive. Mozilla is an innovator and helps push the envelope with technologies like Rust and WASM. Friendly competition helps prevent stagnation and encourages innovation on both sides.

[PartiallyTyped]

Mozilla may have been an innovator, but the servo team was fired, and so was a security team, while the CEO's salary roared and the market share dropped further[1].

Maybe things have changed, idk.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865, contains all the links.

[heather45879]

To me it sounds like they reached a point where servo met their needs for R&D and to bolster Firefox. Having a team dedicated to that in the long term can certain run multi-millions—but after hitting that milestone it’s then up to the community to move it forward with some maintenance dollars on the Firefox side perhaps.

Can’t speak about the CEO salary but if they can generate more revenue than the servo team I suppose that’s a potential win?

Going back to main idea though: Google indirectly funded Servo and rust development by supporting a competitor.

It always helps to work together :)

[0x6c6f6c]

Re: Salary increase

Their reasoning, whether or not you care to accept it, was that the executive level salary was nowhere near competitive in the market to hire or retain someone talented in that role.

[plaguepilled]

Not an argument really.

The CEOs compensation was ALREADY huge and this just ballooned it.

The Servo team was objectively more important than the CEO feeling fairly paid when their expectations are so warped to begin with.

[kaba0]

It was never intended to be a full replacement for the whole browser, that would be a bad decision - they incorporated the parts they planned on and that’s it.

[yoasif_]

The Twitter post your link references has been deleted.

[PartiallyTyped]

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/changing-world-changing-...

... laying off 250 staff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mozilla-cutting-250-jobs...

[yoasif_]

From CNET:

>Mozilla restructured its security functions "to better ensure the security of Mozilla and its users," Mozilla said of the cut. "Some positions were eliminated as a result of this effort, but the teams responsible for the security of the Firefox browser and Firefox services were not been impacted."

Seems relevant.

[yakubin]

Safari has a bigger influence when it comes to stopping Google from total dominance. Firefox is irrelevant market share-wise, however much I like its developer tools.

[soperj]

This is pretty much what they said about Microsoft w/r to Apple in the 90s no?