Read on Twitter
I'm convinced that the biggest problem Mozilla had was that the business model we stumbled into (ad revenue sharing from search providers) gave us a firehose of money that was mostly disconnected from our execution no matter how you measure things.
We had tons of revenue for our size and were doing good work but there wasn't any feedback loop that rewarded or punished us for doing things right or wrong. The money just kept coming in. We knew we should diversify revenue sources instead of having 90+% come from Google.
...but we never did. It's easy to kick that can down the road when the money is still flowing freely! Now they're in a weak position to negotiate good terms with Google so the torrent of money has slowed to a trickle and they're struggling to figure out what Mozilla should be.
This story has played out at other companies. Microsoft got complacent with Windows+Office revenue and lost a lot of ground in various markets, including losing the browser wars. I wish the people left at Mozilla nothing but the best. I hope they can figure out a new path.
Thoughts coalesced after a few tweets I wrote in reply to others:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TedMielczarek/status/1293565104869474304 https://mobile.twitter.com/TedMielczarek/status/1293567848326017025
https://mobile.twitter.com/TedMielczarek/status/1293565104869474304 https://mobile.twitter.com/TedMielczarek/status/1293567848326017025
Muting this thread now so I can actually use Twitter again.
