https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/mo ... ter-place/
Pass. I've never seen anything like what they are talking about go well. They always start by saying that the free tier will remain the same, but pretty quickly you're missing out on stuff that would have been added to the free product or service had it remained that way for everyone, but now are only added to the premium tier. A bit further down the road, they actually do start cutting out things that used to be free. I've seen companies do this time and time again.Firefox is free, but you might pay Mozilla for something else: membership. This new option could increase Mozilla’s sales while changing what you expect the organization will deliver to you.
“You’d pay money to be a member because you’d get real value from the service or products,” says Denelle Dixon, Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer.
She won’t commit to pricing or perks yet, but some options could be recommending online content Mozilla members might want to see, hosting events and establishing forums for discussion, she says.
Beard mentioned other possibilities, too, like Mozilla negotiating discounted pricing on behalf of its members. Mozilla won’t say what that might cover, but think of something like cloud storage services from a company that respects your privacy. Mozilla also could offer online services at a discount since it’s a nonprofit — likely services tied to Mozilla-focused concerns such as privacy, security and control over your data.
Also, this type of service always winds up being advertised obtrusively. I wound suspect that Firefox users can look forward to occasional pop-up nags urging people to upgrade to premium membership, it being heavily touted all over their website and the what's new in Firefox version x.x area, a menu option build in, something on the new tab page, and/or even a square in the corner of the browser with a click to upgrade to premium thing.
I mean, its not like Firefox hasn't tried to integrate ads for actually other companies into its browser three separate times, right? Oh wait, they did.
Also, I can say that occasionally in the Android version of their browser, they do pop-ups on the sort of equivalent of a home area to advertise Mozilla's principles or this or that with an unwanted link already. I hate it, but its so occasional that I deal because it beats ads on every site on Chrome.
I don't like the way the Firefox train is headed. I've been off that train on Windows for years and years. Currently with Vivaldi, the third browser I've used since (Pale Moon as a backup). No problem with alternatives on that platform.
If Firefox on Android, which I do use, goes to pot, though, I think I'm in trouble. All the major alternatives have significant issues for me. Chrome doesn't allow add-ons, for example, so no UBlock Origin (Firefox does and I use that extension for it). And many fewer credible browsers exist for that platform than for Windows.
Mozilla is doing a good thing on Android that they just need to advertise better, but I see this whole Firefox as a service paid membership stuff on top of their Windows decline and just think, how long will it remain that way?
And if they are making tons of money, which they brag about in the article, even touting upcoming financials that they say will surprise people, why do they need to become the only browser to charge people for membership? They make a big deal of being a non-profit (Which is only half true, they are now operated by both a non-profit and a for-profit in conjunction with each other), and then they have these huge profits they make, and its not enough, they want all of us to pay them a monthly bill to when the big bad corporate alternatives are free.
What is wrong with them? Do they not understand how this is perceived?
Also, they heavily advertise their privacy, but have Google analytics on their builtin add-ons display that the new Web Extension API will keep Ublock from being able to block, and the article talks about how they backed down on an anti-tracking project. I understand that the browser I use on desktop is based on Chromium and thus probably not the best privacy browser, but it doesn't claim to be.
Mozilla makes a big deal of being private, but it isn't. It makes a big deal out of being non-profit, but its not, and may actually wind up having a membership fee thing. They rose to prominence in part because of ad-blockers and keep moving to integrate ads into their product until the user backlash forces them to back off for a while until it dies down and they try again.
I wish Mozilla actually was what it said it was. That'd be a great organization and browser. But its not. And the sheer hypocracy of it makes it more grating than of Google or Microsoft tried the same things, because Microsoft and Google don't pretend to be things they aren't.