Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for readability doesn't align with their new direction.

I'd probably be applauding the decision to shut this down if I thought they were doing it to free up resources to increase their focus on the browser, but Mozilla seems to be institutionally committed to chasing its own demise, so I'm sure they will instead focus on AI integration and other stuff that nobody asked for.

Meanwhile, Firefox is still missing proper support for a bunch of modern web features like view transitions and CSS anchor points that are available in every other browser.

Mozilla is more occupied this days paying multi milionary bonus to its executives and begging users for money they waste on useless projects.

Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.

Their reckoning day is coming when Google stops paying them $500m+ a year to be the default search engine. That payment alone account for 80% of Mozilla's budget, and has made them fat, wasteful, and directionless. It's really upsetting to me personally, I gave a lot (time, code, and money) to Mozilla in the early days when they were really struggling.

As I understand it, Google pay for the searches passed on by the browser. So as long as they have users, they’ll get paid.

The DoJ is arguing in court that Google should be barred from paying off Mozilla because of Google's search monopoly

https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-r...

That's so hilariously backwards.

Google should be split into several business units [1], should be forced to give up Chrome [2], and should be forced to invest several billion of its war chest into competitors.

That's what the DOJ would do if it still had balls.

The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox is insane. It's absolutely bonkers. There is so much value in it, yet everybody's favorite mega monopoly is pouring value into commoditizing everything to keep eyeballs and attention and dollars and a taxation regime the size of a medium-sized country in its gravitational singularity.

Google is an invasive species in every market. We need the EU/DOJ/BRICS equivalent of Chicxulub-level regulation to end its throat-grip predation on everyone.

[1] Six "Baby Bells", or "Tiny Googs": Search, Android, Deepmind, Cloud, YouTube, Ads. Shuffle everything else into another bin or spin it off independently. Waymo, etc.

[2] You could put Google with the Ads business as there is (1) no synergy between Chrome<->Android<->Search anymore, and (2) if Ads fucks it up, it doesn't kill the broader browser market or web ecosystem.

BRICS is a cancer on par with Google.

I won't argue on this as it's orthogonal.

Sovereignty of your country's smaller businesses over monopolies, and sovereignty over data and data privacy is paramount.

Every country should be trying to tear Google apart. It isn't just too big, it's a black hole that is eviscerating competition.

The US, Canada, all of the members of the EU, India, and even our geopolitical rivals should be trying to regulate and/or break up Google.