Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'
250 'true Mozillians' laid off, Taiwan office completely shuttered
Firefox maker Mozilla has axed 250 employees, or a quarter of its workforce, claiming the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is to blame after hitting it in the wallet. The organization will also "ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams."
“Economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue,” Mozilla Corp CEO Mitchell Baker said in a public statement today. “As a result, our pre-COVID plan was no longer workable.”
Mozilla gets the vast, vast majority of its funding from Google, Yandex, and Baidu, who pay to be the default search engine in Firefox in their regions. In 2018, Moz had a $451m cash pile, 95 per cent of which, some $430m, was provided by these web giants. Those deals will expire [PDF, p25] in November 2020 unless renewed or renegotiated.
Seeking alternative funding sources, the open-source browser developer planned to roll out paid-for services to bring in more dosh. According to Baker, "our pre-COVID plan for 2020 included a great deal of change already: building a better internet by creating new kinds of value in Firefox; investing in innovation and creating new products; and adjusting our finances to ensure stability over the long term." These efforts have not done, or are unlikely to do, the trick, apparently.
In her memo [PDF] to staff, Baker said Mozilla has shut down its operations in Taiwan, some 60 or so employees will be expected to change teams, and 25 per cent of the workforce will be cut.
"The people who are included in the reduction are both true Mozillians, and professionals with high degrees of skill and expertise and commitment," she said. "This action is not in any way – not, not, not – a reflection on personal or professional qualities. Indeed, to the contrary, the contributions of this set of people are valuable and important and are a part of Mozilla that we cherish."
Mozilla has offered to continue paying former staff their full salary until the end of the year as severance. Some people will also receive bonus payments based on their prior work performances.
“In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team,” the memo stated.
Those products include Moz's app Pocket that allows netizens to compile a list of saved articles to read later, its virtual social meeting rooms Hubs, and its $4.99-a-month VPN subscription service. Mozilla also said it’s creating new teams to focus on design and machine learning.
"We are organizing a new product organization outside of Firefox that will both ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams," Baker said in her memo.
Google Chrome continues to dominate the browser market – desktop and mobile – though there are suggestions that Firefox's extensive use of anti-tracking technology hurts its ranking among usage monitors. Net Marketshare pegged Chrome at 71 per cent and Firefox on seven per cent on the desktop, and Chrome on 63 per cent on mobile, and Firefox less than one per cent.
"Today we announced a significant restructuring of Mozilla Corporation. This will strengthen our ability to build and invest in products and services that will give people alternatives to conventional Big Tech," Baker insisted. ®
“Economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue,” Mozilla Corp CEO Mitchell Baker said in a public statement today. “As a result, our pre-COVID plan was no longer workable.”
Mozilla gets the vast, vast majority of its funding from Google, Yandex, and Baidu, who pay to be the default search engine in Firefox in their regions. In 2018, Moz had a $451m cash pile, 95 per cent of which, some $430m, was provided by these web giants. Those deals will expire [PDF, p25] in November 2020 unless renewed or renegotiated.
Seeking alternative funding sources, the open-source browser developer planned to roll out paid-for services to bring in more dosh. According to Baker, "our pre-COVID plan for 2020 included a great deal of change already: building a better internet by creating new kinds of value in Firefox; investing in innovation and creating new products; and adjusting our finances to ensure stability over the long term." These efforts have not done, or are unlikely to do, the trick, apparently.
In her memo [PDF] to staff, Baker said Mozilla has shut down its operations in Taiwan, some 60 or so employees will be expected to change teams, and 25 per cent of the workforce will be cut.
"The people who are included in the reduction are both true Mozillians, and professionals with high degrees of skill and expertise and commitment," she said. "This action is not in any way – not, not, not – a reflection on personal or professional qualities. Indeed, to the contrary, the contributions of this set of people are valuable and important and are a part of Mozilla that we cherish."
Mozilla has offered to continue paying former staff their full salary until the end of the year as severance. Some people will also receive bonus payments based on their prior work performances.
“In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team,” the memo stated.
Those products include Moz's app Pocket that allows netizens to compile a list of saved articles to read later, its virtual social meeting rooms Hubs, and its $4.99-a-month VPN subscription service. Mozilla also said it’s creating new teams to focus on design and machine learning.
"We are organizing a new product organization outside of Firefox that will both ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams," Baker said in her memo.
Google Chrome continues to dominate the browser market – desktop and mobile – though there are suggestions that Firefox's extensive use of anti-tracking technology hurts its ranking among usage monitors. Net Marketshare pegged Chrome at 71 per cent and Firefox on seven per cent on the desktop, and Chrome on 63 per cent on mobile, and Firefox less than one per cent.
"Today we announced a significant restructuring of Mozilla Corporation. This will strengthen our ability to build and invest in products and services that will give people alternatives to conventional Big Tech," Baker insisted. ®
Mozilla doubles down on anti-tracking tech: It'll be tougher for wily ad-biz cookie monsters to track Firefox
Apple still leading in anti-cookie diet, Google – predictably – in the rearguard
A week after Firefox 79 debuted, Mozilla says that it plans to start rolling out version 2.0 of its Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) scheme to prevent redirect tracking on the web.
On the web there's a distinction between first-party cookies – files stored in your browser by a visited web application or site – and third-party cookies that report to other domains that have some affiliation with the visited site.
Last year, Firefox implemented ETP 1.0 to block online tracking schemes by default from using cookies set in a third-party context, while allowing first-party cookies. That's because blocking first-party cookies would break many websites.
"Redirect trackers work by forcing you to make an imperceptible and momentary stopover to their website as part of that journey," said Steven Englehardt, senior privacy engineer at Mozilla in a blog post on Tuesday. "So instead of navigating directly from the review website to the retailer, you end up navigating to the redirect tracker first rather than to the retailer."But ad tech companies have been slow to accept that internet users don't want to be tracked from website to website and have been relying on a technique called redirect tracking, also called bounce tracking, to bypass third-party cookie blocking.
A redirect tracker involves web page code that intercepts the click and takes the user to the tracking domain, so its cookie can be loaded in a first-party context before sending the internet user onward to the intended destination website.
The tracker's code can link the website the user is coming from and the website the user is going to, thereby developing a dataset about the user's movements across the web.
This doesn't do much against unknown, covert trackers, but Mozilla chose not to clear all cookies because doing so would inconvenience people by logging them out of all websites. That would mean more authentication challenges and CAPTCHA puzzles would be presented because websites wouldn't recognize return visitors.
Mozilla is not the first to do this. Back in 2018, Apple's WebKit team shipped redirect tracking protection, which they refer to as bounce tracking, in Intelligent Tracking Protection 2.0.
Firefox's implementation differs in a few ways. ITP has its own rules-based domain classification scheme to identify trackers while Firefox relies on its tracking protection list. Also, Firefox won't clear data from a domain if there's been first-party interaction within 45 days, whereas WebKit has a 30-day interaction window, with a slightly different definition of what "interaction" means.
In March, Apple implemented full third-party cookie blocking in Safari and Google has said it aims to phase out third-party cookies in 2020, even as it works on a set of supposedly privacy-respecting alternatives. ®
On the web there's a distinction between first-party cookies – files stored in your browser by a visited web application or site – and third-party cookies that report to other domains that have some affiliation with the visited site.
Last year, Firefox implemented ETP 1.0 to block online tracking schemes by default from using cookies set in a third-party context, while allowing first-party cookies. That's because blocking first-party cookies would break many websites.
"Redirect trackers work by forcing you to make an imperceptible and momentary stopover to their website as part of that journey," said Steven Englehardt, senior privacy engineer at Mozilla in a blog post on Tuesday. "So instead of navigating directly from the review website to the retailer, you end up navigating to the redirect tracker first rather than to the retailer."But ad tech companies have been slow to accept that internet users don't want to be tracked from website to website and have been relying on a technique called redirect tracking, also called bounce tracking, to bypass third-party cookie blocking.
A redirect tracker involves web page code that intercepts the click and takes the user to the tracking domain, so its cookie can be loaded in a first-party context before sending the internet user onward to the intended destination website.
The tracker's code can link the website the user is coming from and the website the user is going to, thereby developing a dataset about the user's movements across the web.
No more
ETP 2.0, which will be activated in Firefox browsers over the next few weeks, addresses redirect tracking by clearing cookies and site data set by known trackers every 24 hours.This doesn't do much against unknown, covert trackers, but Mozilla chose not to clear all cookies because doing so would inconvenience people by logging them out of all websites. That would mean more authentication challenges and CAPTCHA puzzles would be presented because websites wouldn't recognize return visitors.
Mozilla is not the first to do this. Back in 2018, Apple's WebKit team shipped redirect tracking protection, which they refer to as bounce tracking, in Intelligent Tracking Protection 2.0.
Firefox's implementation differs in a few ways. ITP has its own rules-based domain classification scheme to identify trackers while Firefox relies on its tracking protection list. Also, Firefox won't clear data from a domain if there's been first-party interaction within 45 days, whereas WebKit has a 30-day interaction window, with a slightly different definition of what "interaction" means.
In March, Apple implemented full third-party cookie blocking in Safari and Google has said it aims to phase out third-party cookies in 2020, even as it works on a set of supposedly privacy-respecting alternatives. ®
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