Firefox Closing Down? Company Now Asking For Donations?

[steven36]

Firefox has broken up with the tech giant Google and the future of its survival is in question since the majority of revenue it earned came from Google.

Mozilla the organisation behind Firefox featured Google as its default search engine for which Google provided it revenue. Firefox however ended its deal last year with Google to gain more independence since it believes in encouraging competition and providing consumers with more choices.

Mozilla has now moved to regional deals with different search engine companies that Yahoo in United States, Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia according to CNET.

Mozilla seems to be heading no where with its efforts to take on the smart phone market. The Firefox OS which was originally aimed at low cost devices in developing markets failed to make a impression. Android users now have the option to use Firefox OS as a app that is available for download besides the option of replacing the Android with it. The company now targets enthusiasts for its operating system because it has recognised its failure to make any dent in the smart phone market.

Mozilla launched its iOS app on Apple App Store early in November reports ArsTechnia. The Firefox web browser is now available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, though it uses the same core browser technology as Safari. Due to restrictions imposed by Apple, Firefox uses Apple’s Webkit instead of it’s Gecko package same as Google did with its Chrome on iOS. Firefox has a lot of ground to cover since it is just too late to the party which is dominated by Safari and Chrome.

Mozilla is asking people to donate $3 to them for keeping the company operational for one more year. The situation for Firefox is short of insecure as it is almost irrelevant in the smart phone market which has now become the future of internet. And besides it doesn’t seem to be doing well in desktop browsing either with 15 percent market share same as Internet Explorer. Google Chrome is on the top with 50 percent of the market and Apple Safari at about 5 percent and Opera at 2 percent according to Engadget.

The search engines such as Yahoo and Baidu are too irrelevant since search has become a synonym with Google. The future for Firefox looks bleak so the possibility of Mozilla going bankrupt isn’t too unreal. However Mozilla has $270 million in cash and cash equivalents so its not going anywhere anytime soon.

Source

[948bennett]

Not Good :(

[Holmes]

Ill be happy to donate to them I use firefox all the time and I really like it when I format and install Im not installing opera again and Im thinking about not installing google chrome.

[Cerberus]

I will send a donation to keep it alive for sure. Thanks for sharing that info steven.

[steven36]

Everyone using Cyberfox , Waterfox and other forks should switch back to Firefox and give them you’re support I already have started back using Firefox as default .Because without Mozilla most of these forks would become outdated and not safe.

[Karlston]

This is definitely not good. Will be donating as well.

Moving my decade plus Firefox setup to an alternative like Chrome is too horrible to contemplate.

Hopefully Mozilla will get financial support from a benevolent third-party.

Firefox is open source, so if Mozilla folds, hopefully someone else can pick up the development.15% of a huge market is no small thing. Would have to be a sizeable company though.

[steven36]

This is definitely not good. Will be donating as well.

Moving my decade plus Firefox setup to an alternative like Chrome is too horrible to contemplate.

Hopefully Mozilla will get financial support from a benevolent third-party.

Firefox is open source, so if Mozilla folds, hopefully someone else can pick up the development.15% of a huge market is no small thing. Would have to be a sizeable company though.

I want be doing this when I use anything Chromium it will be a different one than Google . The difference Google Chrome vs Firefox is all Gecko forks draws its code from Mozilla. Google Chrome draws its code from Chromium so its very easy to fork off from.

[straycat19]

I can forgo a couple bottles of JD to help them out. Probably drink too much anyways.

[Onixra]

what a bunch of bull. Mozilla is non-profit, it doesn't need that $3 to be "operational for one more year". Where did the OP get your news from? Diamond city radio?

[Mikeypr]

what a bunch of bull. Mozilla is non-profit, it doesn't need that $3 to be "operational for one more year". Where did the OP get your news from? Diamond city radio?

Non profit does not mean it does not cost anything to run. People still need to live. Bills, and server costs still need to be paid.

[knowledge-Spammer]

no Firefox

then no internet for me

i just use firefox we are here for firefox and will help best we can

[A.lemane]

no Firefox

then no internet for me

i just use firefox we are here for firefox and will help best we can

why would someone even touch cyber-fox when he has the one on fire ;)

[steven36]

no Firefox

then no internet for me

i just use firefox we are here for firefox and will help best we can

why would someone even touch cyber-fox when he has the one on fire ;)

The reason I used Cyberfox is because it had more privacy settings and the gui could be skinned . But you can install add-ons in Firefox and fix this yourself . Once you use and open source O/S you start realizing how much a asset Firefox really is . No other browser on the market can beat it on Linux and I don’t care what no Google fan boy says . Chrome is inferior to Firefox on Linux in reality .

[anakin206]

no Firefox

then no internet for me

i just use firefox we are here for firefox and will help best we can

why would someone even touch cyber-fox when he has the one on fire ;)

And the Pale on the Moon (?)

[steven36]

no Firefox

then no internet for me

i just use firefox we are here for firefox and will help best we can

why would someone even touch cyber-fox when he has the one on fire ;)

And the Pale on the Moon (?)

Palemoon is forever lost in yesteryear and there still powered by Mozilla

http://www.palemoon.org/

look at the bottom of the page there like Yahoo who is powered by Microsoft Bing. All Palemoon is a old legacy version of a re-brandied Firefox that still gets support from Mozilla In Linux there's many re-branded version of it.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/powered-by/

[smallhagrid]

From what has happened over the years it seems that browser market share is determined NOT by quality - but by eyeball counts.

The big G has taken the world by storm, unfortunately - and too many folks don't even know they are using a browser - they just 'google' everything including domains/URLs.

Also sadly - the tech world THRIVES upon simple ignorance - the more folks who think that google is the same as good is the same as internet and are happy with a brain dead thing like chrome - the more $$$ there is in it for the big G.

Plain & simple as can be here is another sad fact:

As much as I've enjoyed FF since the very beginning - their crew has screwed the pooch by trying to make it into a chrome clone.

So why will folks stick with it when they can just do the chrome thing directly ??

Anyone who has new enough h/w & s/w and who does NOT find the GUI of chrome to be painful will simply use chrome.

Why bother with a wannabe like whatever opera has become, or the dumbed-down FF when you can get dumbed-down directly ??

I refuse to use chrome or any of its clones; they are painfully dumb, hard on me olde eyes & trying to somehow theme the GUI to be like a classic windows app is an exercise in futility - also - all the extensions I favour are ONLY made for FF.

Speaking ONLY for myself here:

Do I want a bloated browser to start with that I then must tweak the hell out of to make it resemble what I need in a browser ?!?

Been there, done that - besides wasting hours on the effort what I got was even more hoggy and not great at all.

I do use an open source OS, and:

...Once you use and open source O/S you start realizing how much a asset Firefox really is . No other browser on the market can beat it on Linux and I don’t care what no Google fan boy says . Chrome is inferior to Firefox on Linux in reality .

Whether it is XP in a VM with FF portable or a native version of FF under Linux - when ALL there is left to use is the chrome-ized krap I will simply move my browsing to Android and use pretty much whatever there is that I can tolerate under that.

I am deeply saddened by what I have seen happening - and would be delighted for it to reverse - BUT:

The FF folks got too big for their own britches and did some very stupid things which are hurting their market share.

Failure is like that.

Example:

Yahoo searches by default ??

Why bother even searching at all ?!?

(Sure I can change that in 2 minutes - and always have changed it away from the big G as default - but it is just stupid - yahoo is a shell entity controlled by mikr0$0ft - this stinks like when AO-ILL bought netscrape just to kill it off...hello ?!? Anybody watching ?!?)

I've watched as things have gotten dumber and dumber and dumber in the tech world; there's no use resisting:

Resistance is futile - you WILL be ass-imilated.

(Too bad folks cannot be shown that they are becoming Borg drones...!)

[steven36]

From what has happened over the years it seems that browser market share is determined NOT by quality - but by eyeball counts.

The big G has taken the world by storm, unfortunately - and too many folks don't even know they are using a browser - they just 'google' everything including domains/URLs.

Also sadly - the tech world THRIVES upon simple ignorance - the more folks who think that google is the same as good is the same as internet and are happy with a brain dead thing like chrome - the more $$$ there is in it for the big G.

Plain & simple as can be here is another sad fact:

As much as I've enjoyed FF since the very beginning - their crew has screwed the pooch by trying to make it into a chrome clone.

So why will folks stick with it when they can just do the chrome thing directly ??

Anyone who has new enough h/w & s/w and who does NOT find the GUI of chrome to be painful will simply use chrome.

Why bother with a wannabe like whatever opera has become, or the dumbed-down FF when you can get dumbed-down directly ??

I refuse to use chrome or any of its clones; they are painfully dumb, hard on me olde eyes & trying to somehow theme the GUI to be like a classic windows app is an exercise in futility - also - all the extensions I favour are ONLY made for FF.

Speaking ONLY for myself here:

Do I want a bloated browser to start with that I then must tweak the hell out of to make it resemble what I need in a browser ?!?

Been there, done that - besides wasting hours on the effort what I got was even more hoggy and not great at all.

I do use an open source OS, and:

...Once you use and open source O/S you start realizing how much a asset Firefox really is . No other browser on the market can beat it on Linux and I don’t care what no Google fan boy says . Chrome is inferior to Firefox on Linux in reality .

Whether it is XP in a VM with FF portable or a native version of FF under Linux - when ALL there is left to use is the chrome-ized krap I will simply move my browsing to Android and use pretty much whatever there is that I can tolerate under that.

I am deeply saddened by what I have seen happening - and would be delighted for it to reverse - BUT:

The FF folks got too big for their own britches and did some very stupid things which are hurting their market share.

Failure is like that.

Example:

Yahoo searches by default ??

Why bother even searching at all ?!?

(Sure I can change that in 2 minutes - and always have changed it away from the big G as default - but it is just stupid - yahoo is a shell entity controlled by mikr0$0ft - this stinks like when AO-ILL bought netscrape just to kill it off...hello ?!? Anybody watching ?!?)

I've watched as things have gotten dumber and dumber and dumber in the tech world; there's no use resisting:

Resistance is futile - you WILL be ass-imilated.

(Too bad folks cannot be shown that they are becoming Borg drones...!)

Chrome is a windows browser that i don’t even use in windows only i keep Silmjet as a backup . If you stream videos and such on Linux Chrome don’t compile hardware acceleration in there Linux or mac flavours. Only they compile it for windows and Chrome O/S . Every since Firefox version 40 they optimized there browser for Linux. As far as XP beginning next year you want even able to update chrome at all on xp , vista and some older versions of Linux. ;)

[smallhagrid]

S'OK:

As far as XP beginning next year you want even able to update chrome at all on xp , vista and some older versions of Linux. ;)

Like I said above:

...when ALL there is left to use is the chrome-ized krap I will simply move my browsing to Android and use pretty much whatever there is that I can tolerate under that.

Gotta just go with the flow.

There's no use in trying to move the world - and stupidity is the most abundant element (Thanks Frank Z. !!).

[steven36]

S'OK:

As far as XP beginning next year you want even able to update chrome at all on xp , vista and some older versions of Linux. ;)

Like I said above:

...when ALL there is left to use is the chrome-ized krap I will simply move my browsing to Android and use pretty much whatever there is that I can tolerate under that.

Gotta just go with the flow.

There's no use in trying to move the world - and stupidity is the most abundant element (Thanks Frank Z. !!).

So you think there will only be Chrome left ? There's many other browser i can use in Linux or windows . I’ve used Firefox or a fork of Firefox since 2006 as my default browser . Before that I used IE .I’ve never made Chrome my default and never will Id use and outdated version of Firefox and just change my user agent before Id use chrome . :lol:

[DKT27]

While I understand steven36 is trying to spread the information, this article is a bit of a click-bait.

Firefox is not going anywhere, if one understand it's principals, it will stay here even if it has 1-2% market share.

Reasons is simple, Firefox is asking for donations from one year now, not from now, just Googling Firefox donation will lead you to many articles of such made a year ago. This was done, if I'm correct, as soon as the Google-Firefox deal was completed. If I remember correctly someone even went on to say that we do not need Google anymore, we will do fine with deals with other search engines and with user donations. So I have no idea where did the idea of Firefox closing came just by it asking for donations from a year now.

The problem with Firefox is that with Google, their revenue was not rising that much but expenses were. But that was last year's revenue, we can get a better idea when this year's revenue is shown. If that does not seem to be same or more than before, only then we can understand what's happening. Thing is, all the money that Mozilla earns, lot of it goes into the development of the web and Firefox, which makes it necessary to make big profit.

what a bunch of bull. Mozilla is non-profit, it doesn't need that $3 to be "operational for one more year". Where did the OP get your news from? Diamond city radio?

Thing is, Mozilla Foundation, which owns Mozilla Corporation, is non-profit. But Mozilla Corporation, which makes Firefox is for profit. Yes, they earn profit. Lot of the profit goes into making Firefox and lot of it goes into improving the web and such.

[smallhagrid]

Nope:

So you think there will only be Chrome left ?

I just see too many browsers turning into chrome wannabees - that is what I meant.

Sure, there's quite a few others - like maybe Otter...someday.

Lots of Linux native browsers too.

I had to do a secure log in just lately & tested a bunch of browsers to see which would work - most failed.

Just so happens I also tried out FF 40-something to see how obnoxious it had become - and that one worked.

Bleah.

[steven36]

While I understand steven36 is trying to spread the information, this article is a bit of a click-bait.

Firefox is not going anywhere, if one understand it's principals, it will stay here even if it has 1-2% market share.

Reasons is simple, Firefox is asking for donations from one year now, not from now, just Googling Firefox donation will lead you to many articles of such made a year ago. This was done, if I'm correct, as soon as the Google-Firefox deal was completed. If I remember correctly someone even went on to say that we do not need Google anymore, we will do fine with deals with other search engines and with user donations. So I have no idea where did the idea of Firefox closing came just by it asking for donations from a year now.

The problem with Firefox is that with Google, their revenue was not rising that much but expenses were. But that was last year's revenue, we can get a better idea when this year's revenue is shown. If that does not seem to be same or more than before, only then we can understand what's happening. Thing is, all the money that Mozilla earns, lot of it goes into the development of the web and Firefox, which makes it necessary to make big profit.

what a bunch of bull. Mozilla is non-profit, it doesn't need that $3 to be "operational for one more year". Where did the OP get your news from? Diamond city radio?

Thing is, Mozilla Foundation, which owns Mozilla Corporation, is non-profit. But Mozilla Corporation, which makes Firefox is for profit. Yes, they earn profit. Lot of the profit goes into making Firefox and lot of it goes into improving the web and such.

Mozilla has $270 million

This came out in there 2014 report they got this money when they were sponsored by Google the report just came out days ago the report on 2015 wont be out tell a year from now witch will have details about the funds they receive by being sponsored by Yahoo . No one much uses Yahoo any more If they were making money from Yahoo they would not ask for donations . As far as there fund raiser to help the web that’s totally different.

They do a fund raiser every year to help the web last year they got $12.6 million in donations for this. :)

Other measurement firms portray a smaller slide, but a slide nonetheless, in Yahoo's share of the search space over the past months

A year after Yahoo struck a deal with Mozilla to make its search engine the default in Firefox in the U.S., Yahoo's share of search usage share has fallen to levels lower than before the partnership was inked, according to one Web measurement.

What you need to know about Windows 10's new upgrade

In the last five months, Yahoo's U.S. search share as tracked by Irish metrics vendor StatCounter has has been under the 8.9% recorded in November 2014, the month when Yahoo and Mozilla announced the deal. For October, Yahoo's usage share was 7.6%, a new low. By StatCounter's tally, Yahoo's top mark in the past 12 months was the 10.2% in January 2015.

Other measurements also showed a decline in Yahoo's U.S. search share, albeit with much smaller losses. comScore, for example, put Yahoo's share at 12.5% for October, up from the 10.2% in November 2014, but down from the January 2015 peak of 13%.

Like StatCounter, comScore's data showed that Yahoo's U.S. search share slipped the last two months after holding steady from May through July.

Mozilla changed the default search from Google to Yahoo when it released Firefox 34 on Dec. 1, 2014. The Mozilla-Yahoo deal was a result of the former not renewing its long-standing partnership with Google, which in 2013 generated approximately $275 million in revenue for Firefox's developer.

Google continues to place a plea for U.S. Firefox users to return to the fold when they execute a search on google.com. "Get to Google faster. Switch your default search engine to Google," the on-screen message stated after a Firefox search.

It's not surprising that Yahoo's search strength in the U.S. has recently declined: Firefox's user share -- a proxy for the number of desktop and notebook personal computers that use the browser as tracked by analytics company Net Applications -- has slipped in the last two months.

Firefox's global 11.3% user share of October was down from August's 11.7%, a four-tenths of a percentage point decline that represented a 3.4% reduction. In the last 12 months, Firefox has lost 2.6 percentage points in user share, a slide of 19%.

The Yahoo-Mozilla contract will expire near the end of 2018.

Data: StatCounter

Thanks to the Firefox deal, Yahoo's U.S. search share climbed at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. But the troubled company has recently seen its domestic usage share slump as Bing replaced it in the second spot, far behind the No. 1 Google.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3007284/search/yahoo-surrenders-all-search-share-gains-from-firefox-deal.html

The foundation's largest revenue now comes from Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu

The Mozilla Foundation is getting most of its revenue from Yahoo, Yandex and Baidu after the end of its large deal with Google last year.

The nonprofit behind the Firefox browser and other software reported its financial results on Wednesday for 2014, the last year for which the lucrative Google deal contributed.

The foundation's total revenue for 2014 was US$329.5 million, close to $15 million more than a year prior.

The Google deal accounted for for 88 percent of its revenue in 2013, or about $275 million. It likely also helped Mozilla's modest growth in 2014.

But since that arrangement ended, Mozilla has made deals with other search providers to be the default engine in its browsers. The largest deals are with Yahoo, Yandex and Baidu, with others including Amazon, eBay and Bing. It also receives donations and grants.

"We will continue to invest in these and other partnerships that allow us to expand our impact on the world," Mozilla said in a FAQ.

The financial impact of those deals won't be evident until Mozilla next reports its finances in November 2016. The foundation said it wouldn't provide "specific projections" for the growth of its products this year.

Mozilla's Firefox browser was a darling of the Web for many years after it debuted in 2002 when there were fewer alternatives.

Its market share on the desktop, however, eroded after Google launched its Chrome browser.

As Internet browsing has increased on mobile devices, Mozilla has moved into mobile and has browsers for Android and iOS. It also developed a Linux-based mobile operating system, Firefox OS, for tablets and smartphones, but that has proved to be a tough market to crack.

Over the next year, the foundation said it would focus on improving the mobile OS as well as the Firefox browser for iOS and Android.

http://www.itworld.com/article/3008846/post-google-mozillas-new-search-deals-to-make-up-revenue.html

What has changed is not only there 3rd in the marketshare now there sponsors have a low marketshare as well.

Soon I see the bottom falling out of the IE market though as M$ forces everyone to migrate to IE11 . Google is going be like Windows O/S is and dominate the browser world . Google has so much money from harvesting you’re data that they pay people to to hack there browser and find bugs so they can try to patch them . :P

Among people who care about privacy Firefox is the most trusted its the only one TOR puts there software in. All the people who uses Google Browser no wonder it was so easy for them to adopt windows 10 75% of the world don’t care about privacy any more.

http://www.techworm.net/2015/10/mozillas-firefox-emerges-as-most-trusted-browser-among-users-in-a-survey.html

The fact is if Firefox , Google or Microsoft just deepened on donations they would go broke .