> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world.
That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".
I can compare it in a way when Rage Against the Machine signed with a major label conscious that the tradeoff was worth it.
>"Evil Empire" entered the Billboard charts at No. 1, which reflects the broad audience the band has built. "I personally never thought that we'd ever sell a single record," Morello recalls, but it looks as if signing with Epic has worked. "True, we are a major-label band," he concedes. "But we're using the mechanism of the record label to spread revolutionary propaganda." [1]
... one which they also made a nice little profit of. $150M in the non-voting stock they bought in 1997 turned into $550M in 2003 when they sold most of it.
On the face of it that sounds like a burn on Microsoft, wisely found by studying the finances, but... by the nature of Apple being the best performing stock in the world for multiple years isn't the same true for most companies, that they could've made more money investing in Apple than in themselves?
Heck, maybe investing hundreds of millions in Apple today would, in X years, be worth more money than spending marketing money / development budgets for new features for their own products; or worth more than investing in OpenAI and related products - but it's not exactly something anyone would suggest Microsoft should do (in terms of just becoming a shareholder, of course there could be collaborations without changing this point).
Technically yes, but not really. It’s specifically valid to observe with regards to Microsoft because Microsoft did in actual fact hold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Apple stock for a decent stretch of time. Most companies did not.
Microsoft chose to sell their Apple stock in 2003. This was entirely their choice. They didn't have to. They could have sold it in 2005 and made an additional billion dollars. They could have sold it in 2007 and made another ten billion dollars. They could have sold it today and made a hundred billion dollars.
Microsoft never gave them any lifeline. Microsoft was caught shipping stolen Apple Quicktime code and quietly settled with Apple to the tune of $150mil and shipping Apple versions of Office/IE.
"the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million."
"Intel gave this code to Microsoft as part of a joint development program called Display Control Interface."
"Canyon admitted that it had copied to Intel code developed for and assigned to Apple. In September 1994, Apple's software was distributed by Microsoft in its developer kits, and in Microsoft's Video for Windows version 1.1d."
MS buying Apple stock involved a pretty complicated deal that also involved settling a number of court disputes between the two companies, Apple agreeing to ship Internet Explorer for Mac (rather than Netscape) and MS agreeing to ship Office for at least 5 more years.
At the time and subsequently it was absolutely seen as a lifeline.
For example:
> Providing the biggest sign of hope yet for ailing Apple Computer, Microsoft today announced it was forging a new era of cooperation with its longtime rival that includes an investment of $150 million. [snip] News of the alliance sent Apple's stock up $7 a share, or 35 percent
Yes and/but there was real concern then that they'd stop supporting it which would have killed Mac use in corporate environments where specific version of office compatibility was a huge issue (As anyone who remembers the Office 2.0 vs Office 6 update on Windows will remember).
Unclear why people are disagreeing with this. It's outlined in the DoJ "finding of fact":
> Recognizing the importance of Mac Office to Apple's survival, Microsoft threatened to cancel the product unless Apple compromised on a number of outstanding issues between the companies. One of these issues was the extent to which Apple distributed and promoted Internet Explorer, as opposed to Navigator, with the Mac OS.
> At the end of June 1997, the Microsoft executive in charge of Mac Office, Ben Waldman, sent a message to Gates and Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer, Greg Maffei. The message reflected Waldman's understanding that Microsoft was threatening to cancel Mac Office:
> The pace of our discussions with Apple as well as their recent unsatisfactory response have certainly frustrated a lot of people at Microsoft. The threat to cancel Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately. I also believe that Apple is taking this threat pretty seriously
[snip]
> Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office . . . ."
Ah it was Word 2.0 vs Word 6.0 (which was roughly Office 3.0 vs Office 4.0)
Word 2.0 shipped on a lot of Windows NT computers with Office 3.0 and these were the days when there weren't forced updates and you had to pay so it hung around for ages.
When Microsoft invested a paltry $250M in Apple, Apple had already secured a line of credit of $4 Billion.
On top of that, Apple turned around a spent $100 million the same quarter to buy out PowerComputing’s Mac license. Apple lost way more than $150 million before they became profitable.
The idea is that Rust is to Firefox what C is to Unix. It is a general purpose language, but one that is specifically designed to address the kind of problem you have when writing a web browser.
It was a Mozilla side project, but with Servo, totally in line with its mission of making a good web browser. I'd even say it was a necessary long term plan. Chrome was the better, more modern browser, and Firefox needed fundamental improvements like these to compete. If anything, I think they should have spent more energy on Rust and Servo, not less.
> Software developer Graydon Hoare created Rust as a personal project while working at Mozilla Research in 2006. Mozilla officially sponsored the project in 2009
Rust is different though, because its purpose was to make Firefox more secure. So the ultimate goal was to improve the browser. Maybe there is some way this acquisition leads to a better browser, but I don't see it.
"Actively collaborating" meaning doing the bare minimum to keep Google paying while actively fighting the bad things Google does everywhere else?
This is the rich philanthropists debate all over again. Yea, sure, they got rich from participating in the system, but they're using a big chunk of that wealth to fight its consequences. Sure as hell beats the alternative, where the only people willing to fight are the ones without the resources to do it.
I'd honestly rather see Firefox development be funded by selling NFTs and mining crypto, than not funded at all. Volunteer/donation-driven FOSS is great, but it has never been able to compete with for-profit products and it sure as hell couldn't compete with Google here.
But their marketing copy has a bunch of differently colored corporate Memphis people doing happy and fun things, surely they have our best interest at heart!
> "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".
Smoke and mirrors more like it. They collaborate with Facebook and Google all the time. 80%-90% of their revenue comes from Google. Fighting the 'big guys' for real would mean shutting shop and never to be seen again.
wtf are y'all on about?? Do you really think we'd be better off with Chromium becoming the one and only web engine, with Google singlehandedly deciding what web features are implemented and how?
Has Google ever mentioned anything about privacy? (privacy from hackers doesn't count, that's security) Do you think Apple, with the joke of a browser that is Safari and basically zero stake in the web, would be able to keep Google from turning the web into its own closed little sandbox?
Who would say "if Chrome kills adblockers, switch to our browser" and be able to actually sustain it, not just keep their Chromium fork slightly out of date for as long as they can get away with?
The only reason Firefox has been able to survive this long after Chrome's launch is Mozilla's historic importance. A new player could never dream to compete with Google - even Microsoft failed! If Mozilla folds, who else do you think will be able to compete with Google? Stallman himself?? This is the real world and compromises must be made.
> Do you really think we'd be better off with Chromium becoming the one and only web engine, with Google singlehandedly deciding what web features are implemented and how?
What makes you think they're not doing that now and Mozilla's existence even matters in this case? Funny enough, they're only keeping Mozilla alive to avoid any antitrust cases.
> would be able to keep Google from turning the web into its own closed little sandbox?
Flawed argument. If Google all of a sudden stops funding Mozilla, do you think that they're going to continue development of the browser? Firefox has steadily been losing market share for years, the writing is on the walls.
The fact that Mozilla's existence itself depends on Big-Tech is one huge irony. It's like saying, “I'm against meat eating... Oh hey, my hamburger is here!”.
> Who would say "if Chrome kills adblockers, switch to our browser" and be able to actually sustain it, not just keep their Chromium fork slightly out of date for as long as they can get away with?
> What makes you think they're not doing that now and Mozilla's existence even matters in this case? Funny enough, they're only keeping Mozilla alive to avoid any antitrust cases.
Firefox developers are still in the standards organisations and their position on new proposals does have some weight on the way they're written. Google is funding Mozilla for good PR, it's not like they're in any real danger from antitrust legislation. I say take the money if they're offering and do as much good for the web as you can until it runs out. It's not like you're sacrificing anything for it, it's basically free money.
> If Google all of a sudden stops funding Mozilla, do you think that they're going to continue development of the browser?
I don't know, but even if they immediately drop Firefox when that happens, we still have it until then. If Firefox disappears now, we're fucked. But who knows what might change until then - maybe someone figures out a business model for browsers, or some other tech or policy makes it easier to compete. When/if that happens, starting from a near-monopoly is way better than a complete monopoly.
> Literally Brave
What was that about ethics again? Also, it's just a closely following Chromium fork, so they don't really have a say in how Blink develops.
We should not be talking about ethics if we're talking about Mozilla either. From shameless extension backdoors to not blocking trackers from Google on purpose, it's all over the place when it comes to ethics and privacy. At least Brave directly challenges Big Tech by making bolder decisions to block them instead of being afraid like Firefox, enabling trackers and not providing any privacy against Google.
What Brave has done with respect to privacy features, Firefox couldn't even do it in decades:
I do understand that Brave is a chromium fork and that they depend on Chromium for patches but this is still a FOSS browser that is independently funded and has better statistical chances of survival than Firefox. Brave's MAU is very good, almost doubling every year since its first release. On top of that, they're the only existing company that challenges Big Tech search engine monopoly by actually providing a great privacy focused search engine that is also independently indexed.
Firefox is a series of unfulfilled promises and failures. An untapped potential ruined by management.
> We should not be talking about ethics if we're talking about Mozilla either. From shameless extension backdoors to not blocking trackers from Google on purpose, it's all over the place when it comes to ethics and privacy. At least Brave directly challenges Big Tech by making bolder decisions to block them instead of being afraid like Firefox, enabling trackers and not providing any privacy against Google.
You mean the Brave that collected rewards revenue for websites that weren't enrolled in their program? Or the brave that literally changed the url that the users typed in the url bar?
Also, do you have any source for Mozilla not blocking googles trackers? AFAIK they do, and did, block their trackers thou they had to do it differently for google analytics as to not break some webpages. Because of that you did not see those being blocked in the UI but they were blocked.
> What Brave has done with respect to privacy features, Firefox couldn't even do it in decades:
Well, unlike Brave, Mozilla is making a whole browser.
> I do understand that Brave is a chromium fork and that they depend on Chromium for patches but this is still a FOSS browser that is independently funded
You asked earlier how long would Mozilla exist if google cut their founding. How long do you think would Brave exist if google decided to go closed source with chrome?
That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".