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US Court Rules Google a Monopoly in 'Biggest Antitrust Case of the 21st Century'.
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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this is why it's silly that people are mad at mozilla for buying a privacy friendly ad company to try and break the monopoly.
Not silly at all. It's a ship of Theseus situation, and the ship has helmsmen with bad attitudes. Bad attitudes engender bad decisionmaking.
In a healthy market new browsers need to be able to enter.. but browsers are so complex from the reckless, endless feature creep that creating a new browser securely (or at all) is unreasonable. (Luckily they are open source and can be forked but the changes are minor compared to the base. A Chromium fork is still Chromium at the end of the day).
Supporting the ad-driven internet is contrary to what is wanted by many users of Firefox/flavors and there is no alternative. It was said that they would destroy the Sith, not join them.
The thing is that there's not really a good alternative. There's real costs in running a service - servers, bandwidth, staff, etc. Either you pay for content directly (subscription services), someone else pays for you (which is the case with many Lemmy servers where admins are paying out of their own pockets), or ads cover the cost for you. People want to use the web for free, so ad-supported content is going to be around for a long time.
I would rather pay for works directly, so I prefer a browser with no ads ever.
Sure, that makes sense. A lot of people can't afford that though, especially in poorer countries.
But then advertising to them is less lucrative too.
I disliked adverts so much as a time waster of limited human life. There may not be a good alternative to dumping toxic waste into a river, for example, but I still think we shouldn't do it.
Can't speak for others but I do donate (not as much as I'd like) to Wikipedia and buy merch from some creators (if I like it for what it is).
Its seriously absurd. I hate ads, but there's realistically not a better option to profit when providing free software and services like Mozilla is doing. Investing into ads that don't violate your privacy is a great decision. I don't know what the hell people want from them.
these people are probably already using forks anyway
They want them to meet all of their impossibly high and contradictory standards at the same time. For free. What's so hard about that?? /s
People don't seem to realise that developing a browser (a real one, not Chrome with a different paint job), web rendering engine, having the top-notch security expertise that building a modern web engine requires, plus being on the board that decides web standards is expensive.
It's honestly at a similar scale and complexity to OS development now.
We're talking hundreds of millions a year to do the work that Mozilla needs to do. People who say "oh I'd chip in a dollar or two, but only if they get rid of all other funding" as if it's feasible kind of get on my nerves because they clearly don't see the big picture.
Any time Mozilla tries to diversify their income while still being broadly privacy-respecting they're branded as evil or too corporate. Any time they ask for donations they're being greedy beggars. When they take Google's money they're shills for big tech. They can't win. People want Mozilla to work for free.
Exactly. Browser's are insanely fucking complex, the codebases of Firefox and Chromium are MASSIVE. There is zero chance Mozilla could ever make enough money simply off of donations.
They should do it like Signal: accept donations. Signal is doing just fine. But Mozilla cannot legally do that as they are a for-profit company. And Mozilla Foundation won't do that either because they are funded by Mozilla and under their command.
Google pays them 400 million. You really think they're going to get anywhere close to that from donations?
You can accept donations if you're a for-profit company, there's no rule against that.
You can do crowdfunding. But general donations is illegal in the US if I understand that correctly. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/charitable-solicitation-state-requirements
You underestimate the complexity of a web browser if you compare it to instant messaging app
They're comparing the business models, not the software itself.
The problem is the business models revolve around the software. You cannot directly compare them without also comparing the complexity and manpower required to achieve it. Just take a look at W3C spec and you'll see just how many cases there are to handle when making a browser. Not to mention making it secure and performant. Also, if you want to support web push technology on your browser you also need to have infrastructure to maintain. A donation may work but you'll have to be content with slow development since the resources can be uncertain.