Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
The Mozilla Corporation announced today it was laying off approximately 250 staff members in a move to shore up the organization's financial future.
The layoffs were publicly announced in a blog post today. Employees were notified hours before, earlier this morning, via an email [PDF] sent by Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation CEO and Mozilla Foundation Chairwoman.
Baker's message cited the organization's need to adapt its finances to a post-COVID-19 world and re-focus the organization on new commercial services.
[...] In 2018, the Mozilla Corporation said it had around 1,000 full-time employees worldwide. Mozilla previously laid off 70 employees in January. Several sources have told ZDNet that the recent layoffs accounted for nearly a quarter of the organization's workforce.
Main casualties of today's layoffs were the developers working on the company's experimental Servo browser engine and Mozilla's threat management security team. The latter is the security team that investigates security reports and performs incident response. The security team that fixes bugs in Mozilla products is still in place, according to sources and a Mozilla spokesperson.
Changing World, Changing Mozilla
Also at TechCrunch and The Verge.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:39AM
They just renewed their deal with Google to put Google search as the default browser for another 3 years. Google probably tossed them the bone just to avoid antitrust issues. So, if you're going to get paid despite declining market share, why not lay off most of the developers - your REAL customer - Google - doesn't give a shit if you put it into maintenance mode. They'll still pay you to give the illusion of competition.
Too bad the developers of lynx are links can't get some of that bs pseudo-antitrust cash.
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