Exclusive: Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy
fortune.com
Laura Chambers will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found.

Mozilla Corp., which manages the open-source Firefox browser, announced today that Mitchell Baker is stepping down as CEO to focus on AI and internet safety as chair of the nonprofit foundation. Laura Chambers, a Mozilla board member and entrepreneur with experience at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay, will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found.

https://archive.is/rmMEb

Official Blog Post: A New Chapter for Mozilla: Focused Execution and an Expanded Role in Charting the Internet’s Future

  • Caravaggio@feddit.nl
    1341·
    9 months ago

    “Mozilla now makes most of its almost $600 million in annual revenue from promoting Chrome as the default search engine on its home page.”

    Proofreading FTW.

  • ferralcat@monyet.cc
    918·
    9 months ago

    Reading this new CEOs job history on linkedin is kinda infuriating. She goes from intern to head of consumer products at Skype in less than a year. Just… Frustrating to read that while I am and manage really good people who struggle for decades in the trenches to get even paltry job opportunities.

    But she got her MBA from Stanford so nepotism ahoy I guess.

    • anar@lemmy.ml
      76·
      9 months ago

      Yeah. “Airbnb, Paypal, and ebay” doesn’t inspire confidance either

    • Joker@discuss.tchncs.de
      359·
      9 months ago

      How is getting an MBA from Stanford nepotism? She probably worked her ass off not only to earn the degree but to be accepted to the university in the first place. Without knowing anything about her, I’m going to assume she’s a total rockstar until there’s a good reason to believe otherwise.

        • Snapz@lemmy.world
          15·
          9 months ago

          Biggest predictor of future success is the zip code you’re born into.

          To your specific point, the preponderance of PERCEIVED hard work in the nepotism community is definitely worth mentioning. Hard work, as an objective measure, would be the exception in this camp.

        • abbenm@lemmy.ml
          4·
          9 months ago

          okay but still where is the nepotism? You’ve commented on the general hypothetical possibility of nepotism not having been dis-proven.

          Being at Stanford in and of itself is not nepotism so it’s a pretty fair question to those of us who want words to mean things.

        • Joker@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          9 months ago

          Where is the evidence of nepotism? The person I replied to mentioned the Stanford degree and immediately jumped to the conclusion that it all comes down to nepotism. Frankly, it sounds like jealousy and taking cheap shots at someone who is doing well. I don’t understand it. Why knock someone else down? She’s successful so good for her. My own success will only come from me. What someone else did or did not achieve or how they did it is irrelevant to what I achieve.

      • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
        91·
        9 months ago

        Buddy, if you told me you had an MBA from Stanford, I would give you a box of crayons and take bets on how long you could go without eating them.

        • ditty@lemm.ee
          7·
          9 months ago

          The MBA would immediately toss 5 crayons from the box and announce they’re only going to color with the remaining 10, collect a bonus, and then take a vacation after a hard days work.

      • Iapar@feddit.de
        61·
        9 months ago

        Without knowing anything about her you shouldn’t assume anything about her.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      That…can’t be accurate, surely? I’ve never known someone go from an internship to a senior IC role in less than a year, let alone leadership - unless the Skype head roles are glorified management roles?

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
    624·
    9 months ago

    They should focus more on their mobile browser. At this point the desktop browser is on par with Chrome. People who use Chrome does it because they don’t care enough about privacy, but on mobile there is a noticeable difference between their performances.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
      211·
      9 months ago

      Apple needs to allow 3rd party browser engines.

      • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml
        201·
        9 months ago

        They will in the EU. Hopefully it’s easy to game the system and sideload a non-safari browser in the future.

        • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          9 months ago

          This would still force Mozilla to support two browsers on iOS, one for Europe and another for the rest of the world.

          • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml
            11·
            9 months ago

            Mozilla has 0 browsers for iOS except a skin over Safari.

            So really it would just be a browser for the EU and nothing for everyone else.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      13·
      9 months ago

      I think they need to integrate better with their paid offerings to build additional revenue streams. For example, Mozilla VPN works with Container Tabs, but I had to look for it; that’s a pretty killer feature IMO. Make it work on mobile too and a lot of people would be interested. Maybe they could white label a password manager (Bitwarden?) as an alternative to their built-in PW manager service, and make the experience really good. Throw in Relay as well.

      There’s a lot they could do with opt-in, privacy-centric features that I would be totally interested in.

      • kewjo@lemmy.world
        4·
        9 months ago

        Maybe they could white label a password manager (Bitwarden?)

        not sure starting at which version, but in android you can set bitwarden as a default password manager system wide which integrates pretty seamlessly with firefox and other apps. only place i know bitwarden doesn’t really integrate well with firefox is on Linux but that seems more due to bitwardens lack of interest to implement freedesktop apis.

        i agree though with additional revenue streams, they need to break dependence on Google search engine revenue. maybe spend research on alternative monitization to ads and sponsored content that could be implemented at a browser level and split revenue between browser and websites.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          41·
          9 months ago

          split revenue between browser and websites

          Yeah, I was super stoked when Brave announced that, but it went nowhere.

          I have ideas here as well. Basically, Firefox would integrate some kind of micro-transaction system where you could load up some amount of money, then you pay per view for a given website and it deducts from that balance, and in exchange you get no paywall or ads. Or if you don’t pay, you’ll see privacy-respecting ads served by Mozilla, and Mozilla would make monthly payments to the website with MTX and ad revenue to preserve privacy.

          This would be opt-in by website of course, and hopefully they can get enough websites to opt in to matter. I would be happy to spend like $10/month or whatever to not have any more paywalls and not have to make accounts everywhere.

          But yeah, there are a ton of privacy-respecting monetization options, so hopefully the new interim CEO has some ideas. A good model here could attract new users while also securing Mozilla’s revenue for the future.

          • whats_all_this_then@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            I’m no cryptography expert but I don’t see how they could implement this with true anonymity or without it being spoofed in other browsers. There is currently no way to know with absolute certainty what browser/client web traffic is actually coming from and game anti-cheat devs will probably tell you it’s a nightmare of a problem.

            The way I see this working is making it a Mozilla account thing and not a Firefox thing through some sort of stateless cross-origin cookie the sites agree to support. But then, you’re giving up at least some privacy because even if the sites you visit don’t know who you are, you’ll still have to trust that Mozilla is logging anonymized visit counts and that some CEO 5 years from now isn’t going to change that for a quick buck.

            Maybe I’m just out of my depth here and someone’s gonna correct me (please do if I’m wrong).

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              9 months ago

              Here’s the way I see it working:

              1. Mozilla sends sites a key that can be used to verify a signed client token
              2. You register w/ Mozilla, and Mozilla sends you a signed token with your payment authorization (includes an expiration time and random ID)
              3. Your web client sends your token as a header to the site in question with your signed payment auth token
              4. Sites verify your token’s signature and respond w/ an acceptance, and keep their own log of transactions
              5. Your browser logs the transaction and updates your balance
              6. Periodically, Mozilla compares their transactions with news sites to catch anyone using tokens incorrectly

              Each week (or more often), you get a new signed token with no reference to the old signed token. In the event that you use more than your agreed-on balance, you must pay the difference or you won’t get a new token. So here’s the information each party needs to know:

              • Mozilla - some stable id between you and Mozilla w/ links to generated tokens and your balance
              • sites - random auth token, signed by Mozilla, with a transaction log for that token
              • your browser - payment details, transaction log (includes websites visited), your stable id, etc

              The only way Mozilla could know your identity is by sending data from your browser that links id info (i.e. Mozilla account details) with that stable payment id. Mozilla could even move the stable id and token generation to a separate legal entity entirely (say, an extension) with publicly audited data transfers w/ Mozilla, and Mozilla just gets a summary from each client (unrelated to the payment id, signed by the extension) so they know which sites were visited with what frequency. They would get a bill from sites based on usage, which they’d compare with the data collected from individual browsers to sort out payment.

              In terms of user experience, you’d just get a prompt from the extension asking whether you’d like to see ads and the cost, and if you choose ads, the header would include that info as well (i.e. process this payment token as ads or cash) and Firefox would serve privacy-respecting ads from Mozilla’s domain.

              I haven’t fully ironed out the details, but I think this proves feasibility.

        • Delusion6903@discuss.onlineEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I’m on Linux and have used Bitwarden for years. If it is better on some other os, I don’t know how. I’m certainly not feeling a need for improvement.

          • kewjo@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            main difference is auto fill support and detection based on domain and/or application. mainly saves a few clicks and also prevents passwords from leaking through clipboards.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      822·
      9 months ago

      Honestly I think its the opposite. The UI on desktop look awful and is clunky. The mobile version is nice and pleasant.

      • Mike D.@lemm.ee
        17·
        9 months ago

        I use FF and the desktop and don’t care about the look of the UI. I’m happy FF is fast and doesn’t have memory leaks.

        Making the mobile experience better will go further with helping Mozilla in general than making the desktop UI look pretty.

      • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        9 months ago

        There is no tablet UI (yet, they seem to be finally working on it after years of users waiting). Firefox for Android is clearly languishing, and being lapped by various Chromium-based browsers.

        • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          9 months ago

          Google and Mozilla in unison, reminded that some crazy people buy tablets: “oh yeah, huh”

          Though mobile FF is miles ahead imo, since you can’t have extensions on mobile chrome, it’s not even in the running. FF just launched a few hundred more add-ons for mobile like two months ago, but there have been a dozen+ ones for a few years now. uBO > no uBO, full stop, no question. And Privacy Possum, and Dark Reader, and CleanURLs, and…

          E: oh and forks of FF having about:config access is just chefs kiss

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I’ve never used it on a tablet. On my phone it is a way better experience for me compared to something like Cromite. It just is much simpler in terms of UI. (I actually use Mull but it is the same in most regards)

      • machinaeZER0@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Check out Lepton on GitHub - it’s amazing. Very easy to install, open source and makes Firefox look fucking gorgeous.

  • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    472·
    9 months ago

    I am a big fan of Firefox+Thunderbird and subscribe to Pocket, Mozilla VPN and Firefox Relay. I don’t think she was the right CEO for the job, coming into the job because she was needed after the Eich debacle, not because she was the best choice. When I listened or read interviews with her I sensed a lack of focus, which I think came through with the lack of focus and commitment I sense in Firefox’s products. She seems like a better fit for chair of the foundation, pursuing pie in the sky ideas rather than in the trenches trying to rebuild Mozilla’s presence and diversify their revenues. Pocket has stagnated under their care, and actually grown less useful to the point I am considering switching. The Android browser is stuck in time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Thunderbird has flourished after pursuing a semi-independent structure: they finally had people who actually cared about the product calling the shots.

    • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      The Corporation dropped Thunderbird before Eich left, before he made the infamous donation in fact. It floundered until the right people found it, and to be fair the foundation didn’t exactly prioritize that either.

      It’s not independent though, it is a fully owned commercial subsidiary of the foundation just like the Corporation is.

      • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        In terms of UI, yes. The addons are years delayed. I am not criticizing the browser in itself, which I enjoy and use daily. But it is lacking in investment, meaning they can’t add features at a competitive rate

      • Fudoshin ️🏳️‍🌈@feddit.uk
        3·
        9 months ago

        +1 for Raindrop. Not sure why it gets a low-ish rating cos I find it A* best ever bookmarkign plugin and I’ve been using various ones since early Delicious and Diigo.

        • MashedTech@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          Honestly, I have everything organized in there and the search is top tier. I collect a lot of resources I need to reference later and find. My other favourite extension is Unlimited History. It’s so useful when I need to find something.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    262·
    9 months ago

    Congratulations to Mozilla Corp on escaping its CEO. Another one will inevitably move in, but perhaps it will be someone easier to bear.

        • Tyfud@lemmy.world
          271·
          9 months ago

          Yes. People got to eat.

          They’re legit companies, but they do not operate with the goal of profit. Profit is something they may make, and in many cases it’s good so they can survive losses of funding or the like.

          It also means they get certain tax advantages because they are not solely focused on profit

        • Kilgore Trout@feddit.it
          9·
          9 months ago

          Yesm It is weird, but it would be impossible for a foundation to develop complex software like a Web browser. Engineers cost.

            • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
              5·
              9 months ago

              They are skins over someone else’s browser.

              KDE’s Konqueror uses Qt WebEngine, which is developed by the Qt Company and is based on Google:s Chromium.

              GNOME’s Epiphany uses WebKit, developed by Apple.

              Trisquel’s Abrowser is a rebranded Mozilla Firefox.

              • darkpanda@lemmy.ca
                4·
                9 months ago

                Ironically, all of these things except Abrowser are based on Konqueror’s original engine, KHTML, so Konqueror was actually the OG engine. KHTML was forked to WebKit, which was forked to Blink, which became the underpinnings of Qt WebEngine, which Konqueror now uses.

                This is also why KHTML still appears in the user agent strings for all of these engines, but back in the day the Gecko engine used in Mozilla products was already a thing and KHTML was the alternative to that, hence “KHTML, like Gecko”.

              • ben_dover@lemmy.world
                2·
                9 months ago

                webkit is not developed by apple, they’re just using it for safari and contributing surprisingly little to the actual project

                • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  If you look on the Github page of the project, most of the recent commits are submitted by Apple employees.

          • gordoooo_z@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            The idea was to try to diversify funding in an attempt to deal with the 500 million dollar existential crisis that is the Google deal, which provides the majority of their funding. What that means is that they want to be a self sustaining tech company with annual revenue of $500 million. What that means is inevitably, fuck the mission, the browser, and the users; make money.

            Firefox as it stands now is on its last legs, never to return. The only way it could possibly have a real future as a browser with a market share of over 3% is if somebody without a half a billion dollar boat anchor tied to their waste forked it, and that fork managed to amass a sizeable enough team of contributors to actually maintain and iterate on a modern, secure, feature complete web browser that could keep up with Chromium and friends.

            I really wish that didn’t seem nearly as unlikely to me as it does.

            (imho but I’m just some guy on the internet)

    • s_s@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      9 months ago

      They have a for-profit subsidiary, for tax purposes.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      In recent years they had focused toward providing features to sync between Mozilla services. I don’t know if that was a primary focus or not, but their branding has been “we’re privacy focused” for a while anyway…

  • pyre@lemmy.world
    52·
    9 months ago

    hi new CEO, any plans to update Thunderbird to look like it was made within the last decade?