Instead of trying to get Google money, I actually wish they would offer a monthly/annual/lifetime membership as the cost of not enshittifying to stay in business. And then severing ties with Google as a company.
A lot of tech companies are holding onto unsustainable business models from 10 years ago to make their products at a loss or “free,” and it’s forcing them into AI, oligarchy, or being beholden to oligarchs. End users paying a fair price to own the products they use is a better alternative than this because it puts the power back in our hands as opposed to tech bros and shareholders.
Much like electricity, lazy boards seek the path of least resistence. What’s easier, building a world-class browser and properly marketing it and maintaining profitability, or just setting your default search engine to “Google.com” and cashing the massive check?
At this point, there’s very few people even left at Mozilla that could even reverse the trend. Go back and look at their past few years. Other than some minor activity to Firefox, almost all their initiatives are little side missions that last for a few years and then are sunset.
Stuck like Pocket, Mozilla Social, Firefox Send, Firefox OS, etc. The list goes on and on. They invest heavily in some flash in the pan initiative and then ax it off a few years later.
People won’t pay for that. Or, at least, not enough people.
We literally saw this play out with media. Everyone hated cable tv. Suddenly we had netflix (2.0) where we can “pay for what I want”. Except… then everyone got in on that because apparently we want things beyond Netflix Original Pictures and whatever they could get cheap out of Korea.
And now? “Ugh, there are juts so many services. I need like twelve. I wish there was one big bundle of everything”.
Not exactly the same but a premium browser (that, again, isn’t going to make anywhere near enough money to fund development) would be dropped even faster than the guy whose patreon is still “pay one dollar per episode”
What about Wikipeida? Internet Archive? All of the products/services that live on kickstarter/patreon/gofundme/etc?
People are more than willing to pay for the things that they love, but Mozilla knows that people wouldn’t be willing to pay enough to continue floating the Executive salaries. That’s why they don’t transition.
The orgs that are heavily dependent on federal funding as well as major corporate investors? That run the websites that the vast majority of people just think is free?
Again, we’ve seen how this plays out with Patreon et al. Everyone says it is totally viable because the ridiculously popular people make bank. And as more and more celebrities flock to it, there is less and less money for the “small creators” and so forth.
Also, Firefox and Thunderbird are backed by the Mozilla Foundation which is already doing exactly that.
I feel like I’m mis-understanding your argument. Are you saying that Mozilla can’t do things that other groups are already successfully doing, because “The popular people make too much money” doing it, and “They are already getting that via the Mozilla Foundation”?
The point is that they are already doing what those orgs are doing. They are dealing with a userbase that doesn’t want to give them money by getting large amounts from special interest groups and corporations.
Which is why the Wikimedia (?) Foundation pushed REAL hard for AI until basically the entire editorbase told them to fuck off.
But hey? There is obviously infinite money so yeah, I am sure if Mozilla drops all those corporate interests and just switches to an optional patreon they would have even MORE money than they already do and would have no need to placate said special interests.
The userbase does want to give them money though. I constantly hear people say that they want to donate to Firefox, but Mozilla doesn’t let them do that.
Also, I never said that Patreon would give them more money. It would be less money, but it would be more effective, as they could finally ditch the worthless exectutives that keep draining Mozilla’s resources.
A huge problem with America’s and many other economic systems is that companies are incentivized to undercut the competition, use a monopoly growth model, acquire or push out competitors, and then screw the customer when the competitors are either gone or irrelevant.
Without guardrails, the bubble will burst and some other “affordable solution” will just show up to replace streaming, and then we’ll start all over again before it enshittifies too. But there won’t be guardrails anytime soon, and most refuse or are unable to vote with their wallets, so we’re just screwed.
I don’t know what the solution is, but as a consumer, I’m exhausted. I wish there were options to just buy products, sometimes more expensive ones to keep a steady, sustainable business model, for piece of mind that the company won’t stab me in the back someday.
In a perfect world? Yeah, I would love to just spend money and get what I want forever.
The problem is that most of these products would never exist without external funding. We all remember Microsoft getting slapped hard for bundling internet explorer and the like in the 90s. What people don’t remember is just how GOOD IE was… because it was largely subsidized by the OS et al that everyone bought because it was that damned good. Netscape was very much A Thing and anything else was more or less trash.
Same thing with the idea of “use a monopoly growth model”. What is the alternative? Actively making a product worse because everyone else is? Because that is collusion. Hell, if anything, browsers for the past few years have been exactly what we would theoretically want. Google are the de facto monopoly. They literally pumped insane amounts of cash into Mozilla et al to fund their competition so there would actually BE competition.
Same thing with the idea of “use a monopoly growth model”. What is the alternative? Actively making a product worse because everyone else is? Because that is collusion.
This question really highlights the danger of the growth-at-all-costs model in forcing every company to race to the bottom when one company does. The future of the human race may one day depend on killing technological progress and emphasizing stability over profits.
Instead of trying to get Google money, I actually wish they would offer a monthly/annual/lifetime membership as the cost of not enshittifying to stay in business. And then severing ties with Google as a company.
A lot of tech companies are holding onto unsustainable business models from 10 years ago to make their products at a loss or “free,” and it’s forcing them into AI, oligarchy, or being beholden to oligarchs. End users paying a fair price to own the products they use is a better alternative than this because it puts the power back in our hands as opposed to tech bros and shareholders.
Much like electricity, lazy boards seek the path of least resistence. What’s easier, building a world-class browser and properly marketing it and maintaining profitability, or just setting your default search engine to “Google.com” and cashing the massive check?
At this point, there’s very few people even left at Mozilla that could even reverse the trend. Go back and look at their past few years. Other than some minor activity to Firefox, almost all their initiatives are little side missions that last for a few years and then are sunset.
Stuck like Pocket, Mozilla Social, Firefox Send, Firefox OS, etc. The list goes on and on. They invest heavily in some flash in the pan initiative and then ax it off a few years later.
People won’t pay for that. Or, at least, not enough people.
We literally saw this play out with media. Everyone hated cable tv. Suddenly we had netflix (2.0) where we can “pay for what I want”. Except… then everyone got in on that because apparently we want things beyond Netflix Original Pictures and whatever they could get cheap out of Korea.
And now? “Ugh, there are juts so many services. I need like twelve. I wish there was one big bundle of everything”.
Not exactly the same but a premium browser (that, again, isn’t going to make anywhere near enough money to fund development) would be dropped even faster than the guy whose patreon is still “pay one dollar per episode”
What about Wikipeida? Internet Archive? All of the products/services that live on kickstarter/patreon/gofundme/etc?
People are more than willing to pay for the things that they love, but Mozilla knows that people wouldn’t be willing to pay enough to continue floating the Executive salaries. That’s why they don’t transition.
The orgs that are heavily dependent on federal funding as well as major corporate investors? That run the websites that the vast majority of people just think is free?
Again, we’ve seen how this plays out with Patreon et al. Everyone says it is totally viable because the ridiculously popular people make bank. And as more and more celebrities flock to it, there is less and less money for the “small creators” and so forth.
Also, Firefox and Thunderbird are backed by the Mozilla Foundation which is already doing exactly that.
I feel like I’m mis-understanding your argument. Are you saying that Mozilla can’t do things that other groups are already successfully doing, because “The popular people make too much money” doing it, and “They are already getting that via the Mozilla Foundation”?
That doesn’t make sense to me.
The point is that they are already doing what those orgs are doing. They are dealing with a userbase that doesn’t want to give them money by getting large amounts from special interest groups and corporations.
Which is why the Wikimedia (?) Foundation pushed REAL hard for AI until basically the entire editorbase told them to fuck off.
But hey? There is obviously infinite money so yeah, I am sure if Mozilla drops all those corporate interests and just switches to an optional patreon they would have even MORE money than they already do and would have no need to placate said special interests.
The userbase does want to give them money though. I constantly hear people say that they want to donate to Firefox, but Mozilla doesn’t let them do that.
Also, I never said that Patreon would give them more money. It would be less money, but it would be more effective, as they could finally ditch the worthless exectutives that keep draining Mozilla’s resources.
A huge problem with America’s and many other economic systems is that companies are incentivized to undercut the competition, use a monopoly growth model, acquire or push out competitors, and then screw the customer when the competitors are either gone or irrelevant.
Without guardrails, the bubble will burst and some other “affordable solution” will just show up to replace streaming, and then we’ll start all over again before it enshittifies too. But there won’t be guardrails anytime soon, and most refuse or are unable to vote with their wallets, so we’re just screwed.
I don’t know what the solution is, but as a consumer, I’m exhausted. I wish there were options to just buy products, sometimes more expensive ones to keep a steady, sustainable business model, for piece of mind that the company won’t stab me in the back someday.
In a perfect world? Yeah, I would love to just spend money and get what I want forever.
The problem is that most of these products would never exist without external funding. We all remember Microsoft getting slapped hard for bundling internet explorer and the like in the 90s. What people don’t remember is just how GOOD IE was… because it was largely subsidized by the OS et al that everyone bought because it was that damned good. Netscape was very much A Thing and anything else was more or less trash.
Same thing with the idea of “use a monopoly growth model”. What is the alternative? Actively making a product worse because everyone else is? Because that is collusion. Hell, if anything, browsers for the past few years have been exactly what we would theoretically want. Google are the de facto monopoly. They literally pumped insane amounts of cash into Mozilla et al to fund their competition so there would actually BE competition.
This question really highlights the danger of the growth-at-all-costs model in forcing every company to race to the bottom when one company does. The future of the human race may one day depend on killing technological progress and emphasizing stability over profits.