Im one of those die hard firefox users and have been using it for over a decade.
It’s quite worrying that it relies on Google to exist. This article details the finances behind it, and it’s an interesting read.
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Mozilla have tons of money, and the donations are tiny in comparison to their real revenue stream.
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70% of revenue comes from Google, by having Google Search as a default search engine.
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Its not clear where the revenue is being spent. There are no large costs.
I mean, I don’t want to use a fork either… It would require the person to maintain the fork from upstream and also requires trusting whoever forked it.
Google won’t pull the plug, because then discussions about browser monopoly may flare up again. It’s a small price for them to pay to have Firefox around as a non-threat.
I had a look at their browser share now actually, and their numbers are stalling and not growing anymore. They have about 60% of the users and apple has 20%.