[close04]

When someone says that all money a company pays is "money from their main segment", that's intentionally misrepresenting. In this case what's important is what the money is for, not from. Calling it "Firefox had ad-money coming in" can only be bad faith, the usual social media rage bait.

Now everyone comes out of the woodwork with "well akshully" because there's an interpretation where they can plausibly claim "technically I'm right" despite knowing they are sending the wrong message.

Basketball player LeBron James made more money from endorsements than sports, gas stations make more money from selling coffee and food than gas, and fast-food giant McDonald's makes more money from rent than from fast-food. If you called a gas station "a grocery store" you'd be technically right but also practically and pointlessly wrong.

[sshine]

It's a completely fair point.

You could say Google has two purposes of funding Firefox:

One is to inject search engine and ad distribution dominance into every known browser.

The other is to prop up Firefox as an alternative browser to avoid monopoly lawsuits.

They're not sponsoring Firefox out of goodness.

Which is why I don't like to be charitable with the interpretation.

[tomnipotent]

Without the ads, there would be no payments to Mozilla. It's absolutely 100% unequivocably ad money.