i wonder why mozilla hasn't tried a premium pricing model? the premium version of firefox could have a yearly subscription of, say, $24. it would have all privacy features turned on, the best privacy addons installed, and all analytics/telemetry turned off, by default.
The brand risk of having firefox associated with the free version would be horrendous.
To have a premium product, you need to have a non-premium product, and given that most users would use the non-premium product, firefox would quickly become associated with a browser that has the actually desirable features turned off...
Which would probably be even worse than their low market take up at the moment (and I am typing this on firefox).
I agree. Maybe they could differentiate the two versions with a badge or some adornment in the UI which appears grayed out in the “free” edition. I guess it’s the same as asking for donations but maybe not as blatant. Also not sure why they stopped selling merch. I would buy some right now.
Because if they suggest anything to remove the whales then their paymasters will veto it?
The people who would pay for a subscription are surely some of the most valuable for advertising to, and FF in its current form exists because of advertising.
i would even pay a whole $3/month for that! =D