[jart]

Folks, Google just saved Mozilla. For nearly two decades, Google dumped limitless resources into Chrome and gave it all away to gain maximal adoption. That would be considered anti-competitive behavior in any other context. By acting more competitively, Google is giving the competition an opportunity to finally compete. Firefox was so close to hitting that red line in terms of market share. Now Firefox is going to not only survive, but thrive, and so will other newer browsers like Brave and Ladybird too.

[shiroiushi]

How exactly do you think Mozilla is going to get funding to continue Firefox development with Google now unable to pay them billions to keep Google Search the #1 default?

This Google breakup is only going to destroy Mozilla entirely. Brave will survive as long as it can piggyback on Chrome development, and by getting bribed/paid by advertisers to have their ads shown instead of blocked. Ladybird can survive because it's all-volunteer, but it's not even close to being a viable browser for regular use, and with the limited development resources it has, it's questionable it will ever be really usable for general users.

The real winners of this "antitrust" action will be Microsoft (who can then dedicate more resources to Edge and make that the new IE6.0) and Apple. There will only be two browsers you can use in the future: Edge (Windows-only) and Safari (Mac/iOS-only). Other browsers will wither and die since you won't be able to use them for your internet banking and various other tasks. You'll just get a message like we did back in 2002, saying "this browser not supported, please install Microsoft Edge or Apple Safari to continue".

[eesmith]

Have they even tried getting funding via national digital sovereignty efforts?

The justification seems easy - "fund us so your citizens don't need to depend on foreign ad companies and US-based tracking to access local and national services."

Make sure any parts which are dependent on Mozilla infrastructure can be re-hosted by other providers.

Have releases which are fully free software, with reproducible builds, which can be audited to ensure privacy protections.

And commit to legal agreements to preserve those protections.

The countries in turn can require that services in those countries must support Firefox, or perhaps specifically ESR versions of Firefox.

[shiroiushi]

That sounds great in theory, but I'm extremely skeptical of it working in reality. Do we have any good examples of governments backing significant open-source projects like this, and even worse, in a manner collaborating with other governments? Basically you're asking for the EU to become the main funding source of Mozilla, because it's hard to envision anyone else joining this effort.

[eesmith]

I know the German Sovereign Tech Fund is funding some FreeBSD development.

I know Schleswig-Holstein is moving to LibreOffice and believe some of that includes funding.

That I don't know of more is besides the point, which is have they tried?

[shiroiushi]

>That I don't know of more is besides the point, which is have they tried?

They haven't lost their funding from Google yet, and the case ruling was only what? a week ago? Did you expect them to see into the future and predict this turn of events or something? I imagine they're very busy talking about this stuff right now, but 6 months ago they probably weren't too worried about suddenly losing their Google funding because of government action.

[eesmith]

They've been talking about finding alternatives to being dependent on Google revenue for like a decade or so.

[troyvit]

> The countries in turn can require that services in those countries must support Firefox, or perhaps specifically ESR versions of Firefox.

The countries can also trade that support for features that might not be in the best interest of its users, such as introducing closed blobs to the code, "benign" trackers that allow government oversight of surfing, breakage when using VPNs, etc.

People could fork those browsers if the code is still open, but look at how many people use Floorp, or Vivaldi.

I feel it's akin to government support of journalism.

[eesmith]

Firefox can decline that money.

Firefox can be bound to enough different sovereign funds which explicit reject it, so they can't be controlled that way.

By "fully free software" I deliberately meant to exclude closed blobs.

I also deliberately did not say mandate use of that browser, only that use of that browser is acceptable.

I mean, Naenara, a Firefox fork, shows your dread is easily possible by even a third-world country. It doesn't take all of the EU to pull it off.

The US already has government support for journalism, both with special legal protections, and in some cases with direct funding, as with NPR and PBS.

[troyvit]

Those are good points. If FF can diversify the sovereign funds its tied to then it can cancel out some of the problems.

I knew where you were coming from re: fully free software. My concern was more how its sovereign donors could influence that.

I didn't know about Naenara. Checking it out.

And yeah I agree about gov't support for journalism, but in the case of NPR (I work for one of their member stations), when large entities like X decide to label them "Government Sponsored" or whatever it indicates that there are some who see a conflict of interest. That could carry over to browsers.

[eesmith]

NPR is government funded in that lots of different governments, including university radio stations, decided to buy their news feed instead of (or in addition to) CBC and/or BBC.

If that's a conflict of issue, then having a paltry 40 sovereign funds would also be an issue.

It's also blowing smoke, as a single man, Murdoch, owns hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets, but the single owner of an entity which is too small to be considered a DMA gateway doesn't care about the details.