People won’t pay for that. Or, at least, not enough people.
Comment on Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery
MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days agoInstead of trying to get Google money, I actually wish they would offer a monthly/annual/lifetime membership as the cost of not enshittifying to stay in business. And then severing ties with Google as a company.
A lot of tech companies are holding onto unsustainable business models from 10 years ago, and it’s forcing them into AI now. End users paying a fair price for the products they use is a better alternative than this because it puts the power back in our hands as opposed to tech bros and shareholders.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
A huge problem with America’s and many other economic systems is that companies are incentivized to undercut the competition, use a monopoly growth model, acquire or push out competitors, and then screw the customer when the competitors are gone.
Without guardrails, some other “affordable solution” will just show up to replace streaming, and then we’ll start all over again.
I don’t know what the solution is, but as a consumer, I’m exhausted. I wish there were options to just buy products, sometimes more expensive ones, for piece of mind that the company won’t stab me in the back someday.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
In a perfect world? Yeah, I would love to just spend money and get what I want forever.
The problem is that most of these products would never exist without external funding. We all remember Microsoft getting slapped hard for bundling internet explorer and the like in the 90s. What people don’t remember is just how GOOD IE was… because it was largely subsidized by the OS et al that everyone bought because it was that damned good.
Same thing with the idea of “use a monopoly growth model”. What is the alternative? Actively making a product worse because everyone else is? Because that is collusion. Hell, if anything, browsers for the past few years have been exactly what we would theoretically want. Google are the de facto monopoly. They literally pumped insane amounts of cash into Mozilla et al to fund their competition so there would actually BE competition.
MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Same thing with the idea of “use a monopoly growth model”. What is the alternative? Actively making a product worse because everyone else is? Because that is collusion.
This question really highlights the danger of the growth-at-all-costs model in forcing every company to race to the bottom when one company does. The future of the human race may one day depend on killing progress.
piefood@feddit.online 5 days ago
What about Wikipeida? Internet Archive? All of the products/services that live on kickstarter/patreon/gofundme/etc?
People are more than willing to pay for the things that they love, but Mozilla knows that people wouldn't be willing to pay enough to continue floating the Executive salaries. That's why they don't transition.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
The orgs that are heavily dependent on federal funding as well as major corporate investors? That run the websites that the vast majority of people just think is free?
Again, we’ve seen how this plays out with Patreon et al. Everyone says it is totally viable because the ridiculously popular people make bank. And as more and more celebrities flock to it, there is less and less money for the “small creators” and so forth.
piefood@feddit.online 5 days ago
I feel like I'm mis-understanding your argument. Are you saying that Mozilla can't do things that other groups are already successfully doing, because "The popular people make too much money" doing it, and "They are already getting that via the Mozilla Foundation"?
That doesn't make sense to me.
Auli@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
One a lifetime membership is not a sustainable business model . Two people so not want to pay for stuff a small percentage might but the vast majority won’t escpically when there is Chrome which is free.
The problem is everyone wants shit got free or 99 cents one time payment for life time upgrades. These are not sustainable business models. Then we complain why are their ads or whatever, well do you work for free? People have to make enough to live.
yarr@feddit.nl 5 days ago
Much like electricity, lazy boards seek the path of least resistence. What’s easier, building a world-class browser and properly marketing it and maintaining profitability, or just setting your default search engine to “Google.com” and cashing the massive check?
At this point, there’s very few people even left at Mozilla that could even reverse the trend. Go back and look at their past few years. Other than some minor activity to Firefox, almost all their initiatives are little side missions that last for a few years and then are sunset.
Stuck like Pocket, Mozilla Social, Firefox Send, Firefox OS, etc. The list goes on and on. They invest heavily in some flash in the pan initiative and then ax it off a few years later.
Auli@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Like the cheap bastards people are they refuse to pay what software costs and here we are. People well not pay for stuff, or expect a one time fee for lifetime support. Software was better when we had released every x years and we just bought that. Want support and new features but new version.
yarr@feddit.nl 4 days ago
I’ve never paid for a browser in my life.