Google is Mozilla’s biggest source of income, and google developers have actively contributed code to the Firefox engine.
So you decide for yourself what level of independence you assign to it.
Comment on Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative
venoft@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Funny how in the video the guy say that all other browsers are based on Google’s code. But Firefox is also independent right?
viking@infosec.pub 4 months ago
shortwavesurfer@monero.town 4 months ago
Firefox gets tons of funding from Google, and their code is quite frankly humongous. From what I understand, it’s extremely hard to get the gecko web view engine to work. In another browser, unless it’s a fork of Firefox, unlike Chromium where you can just redesign an entire browser around it.
AProfessional@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Neither Chromium nor Gecko have a stable public API. Companies are just willing to spend money rebasing every Chromium update.
decivex@yiffit.net 4 months ago
It doesn’t help that there’s basically no documentation for how to use the Gecko engine either.
infeeeee@lemm.ee 4 months ago
He says “powered by or funded by Google”. Firefox depends on Google financially, most of the income of Mozilla comes from Google paying for being the default search engine.
They try to diversify their income (Firefox VPN, email alias service, etc.), but anything they try gets a huge backlash from the community, and still small compared to the the money from google.
maxinstuff@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Is this their way of asking Google for money?
Bali@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I think google need firefox exist to avoid anti trust, and Mozilla need google to keep the the six figures payroll for the CEO. So yes.