Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

I love Firefox but feel little pity for Mozilla which receives $400+ million a year on search placement in their browser but spends only a tiny fraction on its development. The rest is wasted on greedy management and frivolous projects to give that same management an excuse to give themselves multi-million dollar payouts.

Everyone's only in it for the money. There are no good or bad people anymore, only...unfortunates. (that last line I stole from The Equalizer 2).

Like many here, I think Mozilla has done a terrible job managing their money and they are largely to blame for the pickle they are in.

However, I don't see who picks up the reigns if Mozilla dies. Like it or not, Firefox is essential for a somewhat (increasingly less) open web, and (at least for now) Mozilla is essential to Firefox. For those who want to see Mozilla die but Firefox live on, what are the more likely outcomes in your opinion if Mozilla went down? Do you see a big corp (which it increasingly seems is the only way to keep up with the needed pace for a browser) stepping up?

Chrome should be split, Firefox or its forks (if Mozilla continues to mismanage) should be able to receive funds from Google but Chrome should not be allowed to be paid for Google search engine placement at least for the next 5-6 years.

I'm sure many other players will play top dollar to be the default on a browser that virtually commands all the market. That'll let us discover the real price of search engine defaults because the Mozilla payout is partly due to antitrust reasons.

In that case, I think we'll also see a visible decrease in "bugs" affecting Firefox on Google's properties.

Judge Mehta's reasoning is obviously correct.

> US federal and state competition authorities recently asked the court of appeals to overturn the part of Mehta’s ruling that permits these payments.

You get the "competition authorities" you pay for. Decades of government-bashing, bureaucrat-bashing, sidelining and shit pay give you this level of institutional competence.

Mozilla has been killing itself. $400mil a year and very little to show for it in the browser. I still rep Firefox but ladybird could not come sooner.

At this point I want Mozilla to fail. They're actively draining resources from people who want to protect the open internet.

for all the PR that mozilla floats about them being the guardian of free internet, i would wager that, today, most non-tech folks will have hard time configuring firefox properly. it used to be simple back in the days, now they have made it so complex to tie all of them together.

also, previously on android, when apps were cleared from desktop, the browser used to quit. now you need to go to menu->quit. otherwise it will keep opening new tabs.

a non-tech friend of mine was once complaining about their phone being very slow. i looked at their chrome and -- i kid you not -- it had 800 tabs open.

non tech folks are a goldmine for the data stealers, and firefox likely implemented that 'enhancement request' to make it easy for them, not for the user.

Mozilla should start exploring a subscription business and tout its continued support for the full uBlock Origin among other extensions. I would pay a small amount annually to support its development and I bet I'm not alone.

It may kill Mozilla, no reason to say it will kill Firefox itself. Perhaps Firefox would flourish a lot more if it is finally released from Mozilla's clutches.

Amicus brief? Wasn't that like a year ago?

Not their first foray into this case I suppose:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_b... (May 2025)

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/defendin... (Sep 2025)

My conspiracy spidey sense is that SJWism/'woke'ism/Codes of Conduct in FOSS was a poison pill dispensed by large corporate (and possibly government) interests in order to waste the resources and destroy goodwill of FOSS projects in the eyes of the public. Like how counterintelligence works on the nationstate level. Mozilla was particularly egregious with funding these advocacy campaigns. The last thing any FOSS project should do is appear too political, or else they drive away large segments of potential contributors and users. Pride flags are likely as poisonous as fascist flags in this regard. Mozilla is a web/browser company, not a political advocacy company for gender and sexual issues. I do not donate to FOSS because I don't want my money going to anything other than writing good code, or activities directly supporting writing and publishing good code. OpenBSD excepted, they seem to have kept the fad in check.

"The mafia is paying for some school kids' lunches, so please don't go after them or the kids will go hungry"

TLDR: Mozilla makes money from Google paying it to be the default search engine on Firefox. If that practice is outlawed, Mozilla will not have any income stream even close to replacing that.

Yes, I should give up my country and the rule of law to preserve firefox, Google's little bodyguard.