Current headcount of 1,070 and they really only have one product on the market that they're developing: Firefox. Their VPN is just a rebranded Mullvad and Pocket is barely more than an extension. I've lost track of whether Thunderbird is Mozilla supported or not at this point.
I have been a loyal Firefox user since the early 2000s and am just disappointed that this is where Mozilla ended up. I feel like there is some business development path where certain businesses de-emphasize their product in favor of caring more about their internal culture.
They're trying to expand towards some privacy-focused offering. I enjoy having Firefox Relay to hide my real email address when subscribing on a website. I hope they'll keep increading their paid services to become sustainable.
I feel like lock-in is an understatement. If Relay shuts down or you opt to stop paying, your online presence is basically halted without a LOT of work to change your email everywhere.
I have no information to back up this claim but my guess is that nearly all of the users of Mozilla's non-Firefox products also use Firefox (e.g. all Relay users are Firefox users). If this is true, they still need a best-in-class browser to attract users to their paid services.
Moreover, if a majority of their income is from Google from being their default search engine, then it behooves Mozilla to increase their browser's market share.
> it behooves Mozilla to increase their browser's market share.
i would imagine quite the opposite. Google's funding is implicitly a mechanism for google to _prevent_ firefox from gaining a large enough marketshare to threaten chrome, whilst it remain a "viable alternative" to give to regulators.
It might be that google is on paper paying for search engine traffic, but i think it's plain as day to anyone, that if firefox's market share grows significantly higher than chrome, google would actually stop paying firefox in an attempt to prevent chrome from being dethroned. I think the firefox executives know this - and therefore, never actually attempt to focus firefox's market share but instead, focus on peripheral features.
After all, their lavish pay (despite apparently being below market for the same position elsewhere) depends on google.
I have been a loyal Firefox user since the early 2000s and am just disappointed that this is where Mozilla ended up. I feel like there is some business development path where certain businesses de-emphasize their product in favor of caring more about their internal culture.