[sdrinf]

Mozilla is sooo fucked here. On one hand, it would take them approx ~1 sentence of blog to say "We won't sell your input info to anyone" and this drama goes away.

OTOH: if the currently pending court case on anti-monopoly bars google from making payments to mozilla (which is about ~90%++ of their revenue), mozilla truly, and well is fucked. Meaning -they need to diversify, and they know it; they can't sell browsers, related services are heavily competed for, so ads & selling user data is broadly the only viable strat that can underwrite their existence.

Of course, the community won't have it. And therein lies the rub: by going with google's bribe, on this long term, they wrote themselves into a corner they can't exit.

[crote]

> On one hand, it would take them approx ~1 sentence of blog to say "We won't sell your input info to anyone" and this drama goes away.

I wouldn't count on it.

A pinky promise isn't legally binding, but the contract terms are. Too many companies have screwed over their customers in the past. It's 2025, nobody is going to trust any "promise" a company makes. If you give them a finger, it's all but guaranteed they are going to try taking your hand.

[_bent]

They could've just bagged Google's money and spend only as much as necessary on the browser and kept the rest for the future. If Google won't be allowed to pay them for Google Search anymore they'd still have enough money to maintain Firefox for another decade+. Mozilla trying to diversify with services nobody wants is the root of the issue, not the remedy.

[Tostino]

They've had a decade and a half now to invest and diversify. I've been incredibly disappointed in every attempt.

Honestly, just investing the good portion of the revenue from Google in an index fund and treating it like an endowment would probably have done better than they ended up.

[ycombinatrix]

100% agree. there have been posts here investigating Mozilla's budget - they have clearly squandered the money they received from Google.