• fireshell@lemmy.ml
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    13 hours ago

    independent browsers that exist due to agreements with search engines.

    How independent are you if you take money from Google? Don’t take money from Google and then maybe you’ll become independent. But now you’re looking at a kind of second-fresh independence. Maybe if it becomes the first, you will start attracting users instead of only repelling them and slamming doors. Because you got hooked on the needle of Google money and eventually lost all your users.

    They fired a bunch of programmers. I sincerely wish them to go bankrupt and go to McDuck as waiters for 1.5 dollars an hour.

    • Leaflet@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 hours ago

      Mozilla is independent. All the search deal really is is that Mozilla sets a default option to point to Google’s URL and not another. In exchange, Mozilla gets millions of dollars.

      The reality is that the majority of users would choose Google even if it wasn’t the default. So Mozilla is both providing the most popular option as the default and benefitting from it.

      Anyone who doesn’t trust Google, such as me and presumably you, have the freedom to change the default.

      • porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
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        8 hours ago

        Mozilla is independent.

        Firefox fund the development of their browsers mainly through search revenue––they require this revenue to survive

        One company continuing to exist entirely at the whim of their direct competitor seems like the definition of dependency to me. Mozilla’s current business model requires them to function as a de facto subsidiary of Google.

    • ahal@lemmy.ca
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      12 hours ago

      Not taking money from Google means Firefox dies. Straight up. There’s absolutely no amount of “focusing on the basics” or cutting executive salaries that would make up the deficit, not even close.

      We all wish that wasn’t the case, me especially. But that’s the reality.