[glenstein]

>which is mostly around privacy and not being Google.

I don't understand why you're framing this as though those were mutually exclusive. They did the privacy stuff, and they did the side bets at the same time.

The side bets didn't come at the expense of privacy despite repeated breathless attempts to imply otherwise, mostly here in the backwaters of hn comment sections. That whole argument has been vibes all the way down and it's depressing to see so many people repeating it.

[michaelcampbell]

> > which is mostly around privacy and not being Google.

> I don't understand why you're framing this as though those were mutually exclusive.

They... didn't? If you frame it "mostly around (privacy and not being Google)" and not "(mostly around privacy) and (not being Google)". But even the "and" doesn't seem exclusive to me.

[glenstein]

That's not the thing I'm referring to as mutually exclusive. I'm talking about (1) side bets and (2) commitments to privacy and not being Google.

I'm juxtaposing one and two, but you seem to think I'm juxtaposing the two elements within two.

[do_not_redeem]

What about their side bet of buying an adtech company?

https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...

[glenstein]

A much more valid argument! But also a change of subject.

The previously mentioned side bets, e.g. VPNs, Pocket, Relay, Fakespot -- there's been a narrative attempting to imply that those involved a trade-off from, well, sometimes the argument was quality of the core browser experience, but in this particular variation it's suggesting that these side bets were a reason they couldn't maintain commitments to privacy.

The adtech purchases absolutely do raise an eyebrow, but they have nothing to do with this narrative that attempted to tie the side bets to compromises on privacy. If anything, I want to encourage them to do more of these, precisely because they don't involve any of those compromises and everyone seems to want them to diversify their sources of revenue in non-adtech directions.

[eadmund]

All those distractions cost money, and wanting more money is the reason that they are not maintaining their commitment to privacy.

If they had instead invested that money sensibly, they could have used it over time to do the only thing that the world wants from Mozilla: pay for developers to work on Firefox.

[glenstein]

>All those distractions cost money

It's like a never-ending horde of zombies that keep coming and repeating the same argument. So as ever, my reply is going to be the same. Sure, they cost money, but they cost more or less, and they either do or don't cost engineering resources, and they cost more or less of those as well. Nobody can articulate what the missing browser feature is, that's not there because of this bet on side bets. No one can articulate the relative scale of the investment on side bets and what the impact is on engineering resources and no one can draw a connection between that and market share (if anything, it's the relatively inexpensive resource demand that probably made them attractive strategic options to begin with). And none of this is responsive to actual macro-level forces that drive market share, which is Google leveraging its footprint in the search space, in Android, and over Chromebooks to drive up its own market share.

And those are the things you would have to think through in order for any of that argument to work, not just hand-wave toward their possibility. The ability to trace cause and effect, the ability to assess the relative scale of different investments, these are all like the 101 level things that would sanity check the argument.

[laweijfmvo]

  > Nobody can articulate what the missing browser feature is, that's not there because of this bet on side bets.

The promise to never sell our data.

[ImPostingOnHN]

The option I don't see listed in your post is for the developers to do nothing except for maintain, fix bugs, fix CVEs, maybe comply with new standards, maybe find ways to make it faster.

[mmooss]

> A much more valid argument!

No it's not. Read the article linked: The adtech company is developing advertising solutions that preserve privacy, with the goal of changing the ad industry. It fits directly with Mozilla's core mission and also a long-time project they've pursued internally.

[glenstein]

I want to stress that "more" is relatively speaking. I think squaring the circle on "privacy preserving" ads involves sliding definitions of privacy that I'm not super comfortable with. Certainly a move in the right direction, but, unlike with all the other side bets, if someone is pointing to the adtech stuff I feel less comfortable dismissing them as uninformed.

[mmooss]

> I think squaring the circle on "privacy preserving" ads involves sliding definitions of privacy that I'm not super comfortable with.

What is the definition they use?

I suspect you might be, paradoxically, doing the same as everyone else; piling on based on rumor or impression.

[glenstein]

>What is the definition they use?

The notion of 'privacy preserving' ads, or that the data they are selling is not in some sense 'about you.'

I talk about this in a couple of other comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=43212048

https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=43212010

[mmooss]

They bought an adtech company that is developing privacy-preserving advertising, a long-time - and very valuable - goal of Mozilla.

Why don't you (and others) bother to read the link and find out the story. Why go out of your way to say stuff you don't know to bring down Mozilla?