this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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The actual numbers are $510MM/y from Google out of $593MM/y total revenue. So 86% if my math is correct. It's bonkers how dependent on a single deal they are.
Are they dependent?
All I see is Google throwing a fuck tonne of money at them, and Mozilla spaffing it on pointless crap. They could probably raise more if Google went away, but they could also reduce spend significantly if they didn't have stupid money get thrown at them.
Its like giving your kids $100 a day. Sure they could blow it on pay to win games, but what would happen if you reduced it to $10 a day? Probably nothing of note, just less spending on crap.
I'm interested in how you think Mozilla would raise more than half a billion dollars if they didn't take any money from Alphabet/Google. Genuinely. In what ways could Mozilla raise money that they're not doing right now?
Fire their overpriced C-Suite for starters
That's not what I said. Their fundraising is dead because they don't need to raise any more cash.
They literally throw cash away each month. Without Googles dump truck money I am sure they could increase fundraising to raise what they actually need to operate. Not that they could increase fundraising to match Googles current contributions.
I think it's fair to think that they could refocus their efforts on the browser if they didn't have that large slush fund from Google. I don't think "hey we don't take Google money anymore" is going to lead to a lot of new donations, however.
Completely agree that it will require effort. But considering there is literally no way for me to donate, the bar for improvement is stupidly low.
What would be nice is that having a better feedback loop could encourage community engagement. Having proper profiles would be my request.
As I understand, their fundraising is dead / not used for Firefox, because covering costs with them is not considered viable.
More specifically, they currently have around 200 million active users, according to this: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
So, even if they somehow cut costs, they'll still basically need all users to donate $2 per year. Or 1% of users to donate $200 per year. That's just more than realistically comes in through donations...
I can't say if they are completely dependent without seeing where the other ~$80MM comes from. If they come from products that require significant staff and server cost, then yes they are fully dependant. If the $$ comes from something they can keep going for much less than ~$80MM, then they are not.