Although thats probably not whats going to happen if google gets broken up but I‘ll still happily pay for firefox just for the sake of breaking up google.
Death to megacorporations.
Comment on Google dropping ublock origin represents a flawless David vs Goliath victory for its developer
Auli@lemmy.ca 2 months agoWhich we’ll soon be a paid browser if the US breaks up Google and they can’t send any money to Firefox anymore.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 months ago
JonnyRobbie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
honestly? Id pay for it
BobGnarley@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Eh, I would think that if they’re under fire for being a monopoly any non monopolistic actions like funding their rivals will be pretty well received.
odium@programming.dev 2 months ago
They’re paying Firefox to make google search default. That is a monopolistic practice.
The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
How is that monopolistic if we are able to change our default search engine?
Maven@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
This isn’t the first time that something being the default was considered part of a monopoly case. Most notably internet explorer in the Microsoft monopoly case.
The big thing is that even if there are other options… A lot of people won’t ever bother to change it.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The same way one is able to change the default browser on any OS? Because a lot of people claim that FF downfall is exclusively due “other browsers” being the default.
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s anti-competitive to other search engines.
rickdg@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This might be a best case scenario. It won’t happen, Mozilla has been turned into a corporate funds receiver for years. That CEO compensation doesn’t pay for itself. Imagine paying for actual software engineering work.
olicvb@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
worst case scenario, I download a pirated copy ¯_(ツ)_/¯ (though before that i’ll prob. just switch to LibreWolf)
jasep@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You may want to educate yourself before spreading unnecessary FUD. Firefox is free and open source, and always has been. There’s no danger in Firefox becoming a paid browser because even if they tried, it would just be forked and maintained by another community or group.
Mozilla does have a for-profit arm called the Mozilla Corporation, and they manage the money received from Google and others. But that doesn’t mean Firefox is going to become paid even if Google gets broken up by the antitrust efforts of the US government.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Maintaining a web browser in the 2020s is an expensive thing to do. You need full time employees who specialise in all the systems that make up a browser, and can’t leave security-critical parts like ensuring the integrity of the JavaScript sandbox to volunteer hobbyists. It’s far from the only thing Mozilla spend money on, so if they need to mage cost savings, it won’t necessarily stop them being able to maintain Firefox, but another organisation picking it up if they do stop isn’t likely.
SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
You are not totally wrong, but I think if you were totally right, the internet as a world-changing technology would have never come to be in the first place. An internet operated by a single company is basically just a cable service. I think right now there certainly is apathy in the public consciousness towards the value add of keeping the internet decentralized, because it is taken for granted. But I think this is temporary, human society has always been reactionary in that way, we let things back slide, until it gets bad, and we only do something about it when we feel the pain.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When the internet was becoming a world-changing technology, there weren’t thirty years of websites to keep working and malware to protect from, web standards were far simpler, and a much higher proportion of users were enthusiasts who were excited by anything they could get and didn’t mind if things were rough around the edges. Similarly, two brothers could make the world’s first aircraft that flew under its own power, and yet with the combined might of everyone working for Boeing, people are worried about airliner doors falling off and an eight-day space trip has become an eight-month one. Mature technologies need a lot more effort to build and maintain than emerging ones.
jasep@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There are already other open source forks of Firefox that are community driven and maintained without employees or a for profit organization behind them. The obvious example is LibreWolf which describes itself as “a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom”. There’s no argument that maintaining a web browser is currently complex and needs to make security first decisions, but LibreWolf as an example shows us that it is not only possible but I argue proves it will continue even if Firefox as we know it goes away.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Those forks aren’t maintaining Firefox itself, just their own modifications. If a bug is found in Firefox, the LibreWolf team don’t have to fix it themselves, they can wait for Mozilla to do it, and incorporate the fix once it materialises. There are forks that diverge further, but they either get quickly abandoned after their creator realises how much of a headache maintenance will be, or they’re left with gaping security holes.