Mozilla Warns DOJ's Google Remedies Risk 'Death of Open Web' (mozilla.org)
- Reference: 0176704209
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/13/1716227/mozilla-warns-dojs-google-remedies-risk-death-of-open-web
- Source link: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/proposed-remedies-browsers/
"These proposed remedies prohibiting search payments to small and independent browsers miss the bigger picture -- and the people who will suffer most are everyday internet users," said Mark Surman, President of Mozilla. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, which generate revenue from hardware and operating systems, Mozilla relies primarily on search revenue to fund browser development. Mozilla argues that cutting these payments would not solve search dominance but would instead strengthen the position of tech giants.
Mozilla also warned that the proposal threatens its ability to maintain Gecko, one of only three major browser engines alongside Google's Chromium and Apple's WebKit. "If we lose our ability to maintain Gecko, it's game over for an open, independent web," Surman said, noting that even Microsoft abandoned its browser engine in 2019. "If Mozilla is unable to sustain our browser engine, it would severely impact browser engine competition and mean the death of the open web as we know it -- essentially, creating a web where dominant players like Google and Apple, have even more control, not less."
Firefox serves 27 million monthly active users in the U.S. and nearly 205 million globally.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/proposed-remedies-browsers/
Independant? (Score:1)
From the sidelines it sure looks like Apple is the only leg of this stool that does not tilt Alphabet's way.
Mozilla's actions over the past 5 to 10 years sure look well aligned to whatever their ad-tech partner would like to see.
Re: (Score:1)
You need some better binoculars and actually watching the right game!
dumbfucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozilla COULD have squirreled away that Google cash for the future day that the cash firehose would be turned off, but no they wasted it on empire-building and living a lavish lifestyle. The great Internet charities built 20-30 years ago are starting to collapse out of short-sighted narcissism, Internet Archive is next.
Re: (Score:2)
DEI is just anti-discrimination. They didn't preemptively cut out part of their potential workforce, you say, so they're about to fail. Bonkers.
Meanwhile, they're spending money on advertising platforms and AI and other things nobody asked for. Things that take away from their core business and cost a lot of money.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
> "DEI is just anti-discrimination."
Well, no. Primarily because "DEI" is based almost completely on immutable characteristics that shouldn't matter (like sex, race, sexual preference, age, religion, etc). It is not an effort to have diversity or inclusion of *thought*. It is, in most ways the complete opposite of meritocracy. If you are recruiting/admitting/rewarding based on immutable characteristics, that is a bad form of discrimination- rewarding people for WHAT they are, rather than WHO they are.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla's job was to provide a counter weight to proprietary or at least corporate-captive web browser offerings.
Once Google got in the browser business that should have been seen as fundamental conflict and they should have gone looking for other revenue streams. That is what they should have been doing on the self preservation front.
I don't agree they should have been piling up some war chest, they were not setup to be an endowment fund. That money should have gone into Gecko or a successor and ensuring t
Re: (Score:2)
> Mozilla's job was to provide a counter weight to proprietary or at least corporate-captive web browser offerings.
> Once Google got in the browser business that should have been seen as fundamental conflict and they should have gone looking for other revenue streams. That is what they should have been doing on the self preservation front.
Um... you're complaining that Mozilla isn't attempting to diversify while simultaneously dumping upon their attempts to diversify.
How much was that again? (Score:1)
How many billions did Google prop up Mozilla with?
and now Mozilla thinks they are a "real boy"?
Re: (Score:2)
It took a lot of money for mozilla to alienate their users and drive most of them away. It might suck if mozilla.org evaporated, but on the other hand one of the real independent open source projects out there might take off in that case... Here's a thought: go after funding from the EU? Handing the web back to Europe has a certain symmetry to it.
Re: (Score:2)
> How many billions did Google prop up Mozilla with?
> and now Mozilla thinks they are a "real boy"?
IMHO Mozilla cannot claim Firefox is an "independent browser" while also claiming it relies on Google financing the project for it to be viable.
If Mozilla needs Google's money to survive, Google has Mozilla in their pockets already.
Re: (Score:2)
Free shit needs alot of money to make
Pay them outside US (Score:3)
The US DOJ can only set the rules in the US so simply fund a browser development company in Canada or Europe. They can then employ people anywhere around the globe and the problem is solved since no payment happened under US jurisdiction. That's one of the major problem with international companies - they can generally do whatever any one country decides is legal.
Re: (Score:2)
> Mozilla is terrified firefox will have to compete in a marketplace
Uh, what marketplace is this exactly?
(hint: when the "price" of every option is capped at $0, you're the product, not the customer)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Score:2)
Said a company who is paid by Google and therefore is absolutely objective and can be taken seriously. Get lost.
Servo (Score:2)
I'm hoping that Servo (https://servo.org/) becomes viable as a general-purpose browser engine within a few years. It is managed by the Linux Foundation Europe (https://linuxfoundation.eu/).
No strings penalty (Score:2)
The problem is that it is TOO LATE now for any simple correction. All other browsers are now semi-owned/controlled by Google. Yes, Google certainly is an illegal monopoly in many spaces. Yes, Google used their huge power to take over almost the entire browser space. Yes, this is extremely bad and dangerous in so many ways. Had this been stopped 10+ years ago, before all non-Firefox browsers dropped their code and just based their browsers on Chromium, things would have been much better.
I am not sure what wo
Distraction (Score:2)
In the 90's Windows and Office needed to be broken up so the DoJ decided that unbunding Internet Explorer was "good enough".
Today Google and YouTube need to not depend on and tie each other so they're making Google spin off Chrome. And this is after the Covid debacle killed millions because YouTube censored origins, prevention, and treatment.
Killed millions.
Don't fall for the same trick twice.
Except there is no "open web".... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except there is no "open web" anymore and it's entirely Googles fault...according to it's founders. Here's what Sergey and Larry told us would happen if search engines were funded by advertising:
"For this type of reason and historical experience with other media we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." [source: [1]https://research.google/pubs/t... [research.google]
Nowadays advertisers have a marketing platform called Google and there simply isn't a consumer facing search engine capable of meeting the needs of the users. These guys didn't just break the internet, they knew they were going to break the internet, told us they were going to break the internet and then they made billions of dollars breaking the internet.
These crooks are a cartel and that's why Firefox is sticking up for their competitor. These guys are pure villains and none of this was by accident or unforeseeable.
America needs public options for tech. The algorithms that make google work were publicly funded and open-source, the parts that turn it into a predatory scam-machine are closed source and no one needs 'em. The FTC should fine the hell out of google and use the money to fund a public option for search.
[1] https://research.google/pubs/the-anatomy-of-a-large-scale-hypertextual-web-search-engine/%5D
Re: (Score:2)
> America needs public options for tech. The algorithms that make google work were publicly funded and open-source
I fully agree on this as this is a distorted market so intervention is justified. It's not really possible to be productive in the world today and not interact through a web browser at some point so while the choice of browser is technically there the choice of whether to use one at all is decided for us already so we should have a "public" alternative of sorts.
In a case like this my idea is that something like Firefox/Gecko should be able to receive Federal grants to continue it's maintenance on condition
Re: (Score:1)
> America needs public options for tech. The algorithms that make google work were publicly funded and open-source, the parts that turn it into a predatory scam-machine are closed source and no one needs 'em. The FTC should fine the hell out of google and use the money to fund a public option for search.
Agreed. Search is now an essential service; it's basically infrastructure and/or part of the common, and it should be rolled out, regulated, and treated the same way as public libraries, schools, and the like.
And realistically, browsers should be treated in a similar fashion. Sure, let tech companies try to get people to use their proprietary, spying crap. But the government should fund the process of taking Mozilla's code base and turning it back into a usable browser, free for anyone who wants it. Then th
Re: (Score:3)
> Here's what Sergey and Larry told us would happen if search engines were funded by advertising:
What exactly were AltaVista, Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves if not advertising-funded search engines? If advertising funding search was going to break the web, then it was doomed long before Google came around. They might have accelerated it though by becoming a 1-stop shop.
Re: (Score:2)
Your link doesn't work.
Re: (Score:2)
Well it's probably the most famous white paper in the history of white papers so I don't think anyone who cares enough to find it will have any trouble. It's called "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine".