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posted by Fnord666 on Friday January 17 2020, @08:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the Have-to-turn-a-profit dept.

Mozilla Lays Off 70 People as Non-search Revenue Fails to Materialize

Mozilla lays off 70 people as non-search revenue fails to materialize:

Mozilla has laid off 70 people, TechCrunch reports. It's a significant move for an organization that employs around 1,000 people worldwide.

"You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of search," wrote Mozilla interim CEO Mitchell Baker in a memo to staff obtained by TechCrunch. "This did not happen."

Baker said Mozilla had decided not to shelve Mozilla's $43 million innovation fund, which focuses on creating new Mozilla products. She said Mozilla would provide "generous exit packages and outplacement support" to those who were let go.

Mozilla Lays Off 70 Employees

Mozilla lays off 70 employees:

Mozilla laid off about 70 employees Wednesday as part of an effort to preserve funding for its top new priorities like protecting privacy and fighting surveillance online. The nonprofit is best known for creating the Firefox web browser, but it also is expanding into new areas including password management, file sharing and private network connections while doubling down on its longstanding push to improve online privacy.

"We're making a significant investment to fund innovation. In order to do that responsibly, we've also had to make some difficult choices which led to the elimination of roles at Mozilla which we announced internally today," Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker said of the layoffs in a blog post.

And Mozilla is being more cautious with revenue and expenses. "We are taking a more conservative approach to our finances. This will enable us to pivot as needed to respond to market threats to internet health, and champion user privacy and agency," Mozilla said in a statement.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday January 17 2020, @01:11PM (6 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Friday January 17 2020, @01:11PM (#944511) Journal

    "The [non-specific opaque shadowy frequently deceptive telemetry loving] nonprofit is best known for creating the Firefox web browser, but it also is expanding into new areas including password management, file sharing and private network connections while doubling down on its longstanding push to improve online privacy."

    Headline 2021: 'Sorry, this saturday morning 12:00 UTC we forgot to renew a cert and so the secure link to your password management cloud, file sharing and vpn was lost and all of your traffic will be sent in the clear with several unique identifiers and no add ons until you set automatic updates to random mode.'

    Top comment at mozillla.org: "Why is everyone so butthurt, it's a simple mistake, happens to everybody. All you have to do is go to settings and turn on automatic updates randomness feature and its just fixed, stop whining, it's a free product."

    Top comment at mozillawhistelblower.org: 404 HTTP ERROR

    Erik Brooks: https://archive.is/2MFbn [archive.is]

    Time keeps on slipping, into the future....

    thesesystemsarefailing.net (i mean especially the one where one or more billionaires wants to enslave us/fuck us over/whateveryouwannacallit and so he/she/they/it hires 10 millionaires to run 20 proxy companies to hire 10,000 people to build a mountain of bullshit and throw it on the people trying to actual make things work)

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday January 17 2020, @03:02PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday January 17 2020, @03:02PM (#944541) Journal

    Check this out lol:

    Why You Shouldn’t Use Firefox Forks Like Waterfox, Pale Moon, or Basilisk [howtogeek.com]

    TL;DR: Trust Mozilla to do the right thing forward, and use Firefox or Chrome because they will get security updates faster.

    That article is the second GOOG search result for "mozilla privacy fork".

    thesesystemsarefailing.net (i mean especially the one where one or more billionaires wants to enslave us/fuck us over/whateveryouwannacallit and so he/she/they/it hires 10 millionaires to run 20 proxy companies to hire 10,000 people to build a mountain of bullshit and throw it on the people trying to actual make things work)

    Are these systems failing or succeeding?

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @03:52PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @03:52PM (#944564)

      Why You Shouldn’t Use Firefox Forks Like Waterfox, Pale Moon, or Basilisk

      The first major version of Pale Moon was based on Firefox 24 ESR, due to a disagreement about where Firefox was headed. But the developer eventually had to switch to Firefox 38 ESR to get more modern features. Now, the developer is doing the same thing again, basing this new version largely on the pre-Quantum Firefox code. We don’t see the point of resisting new features only to make a major leap to them every few years anyway.

      Perhaps you'll excuse me if I ignore this guy's opinion (pretty much entirely "but muh securitay!"), since he apparently doesn't even understand why Pale Moon exists in the first place.

    • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:17PM

      by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:17PM (#945024) Journal

      Howto geek is far from canon for me on matters of security. Far.

      I can understand how 'getting updates' can 'make you more secure' but it also cannot, see microsoft update tuesday fiascos.

      I think a company that needs automatic updates on is one who does not understand security and is making a product so complex they cannot be sure it functions when shipped.

      That is a defective product. That is people who have no confidence in their product. That is also a slimy lateral control move, now they can push whatever updates they want and most people won't check. Now they can jigger with settings, which we know they have done.

      The fact we are even having this discussion in 2020 means everything is broken, we can't agree on what a browser is and what a web server is. Pale moon folk seem to have that down, chrome and firefox do not, and at the same time want to take on other projects when their primary one is not even close to being done.

      If you let advertisers have a seat at the browser and webserver and privacy discussion, you will neither get a browser, webserver or privacy, are you still sure you want to ride that horse? From a site that relies on adds and is part of a larger add network?

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:24AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:24AM (#944932)

    Top comment at mozillla.org: "Why is everyone so butthurt, it's a simple mistake, happens to everybody. All you have to do is go to settings and turn on automatic updates randomness feature and its just fixed, stop whining, it's a free product."

    You jest, but it was worse than that: last time their "solution" was for users to turn on a security hole user-snooping "feature" they'd already abused for advertising purposes once before, so they could use it in a way that directly contravened the procedures they put in place after the earlier incident!.

    That was the day I walked away from Firefox, after using it since the days of Phoenix 0.2.

    • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:25PM

      by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:25PM (#945028) Journal

      Thank you for chiming in, sometimes it feels alone out here, standing up for things I saw with my own eyes in a world where this sort of confidence is being gradually outlawed.