Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall

I&#x27;d be happy to pay for Firefox, but I have a few points that are important to me. They are probably not very realistic but here they are anyway:<p>1. <i>I would like my money to go into Firefox development and nowhere else.</i><p>I certainly don&#x27;t want my money spent on their content business, even if it is used as a leverage to generate more money for Firefox development. I&#x27;m torn about Rust development because I certainly would love to see Rust flourish, but if we allow the money go into personally preferred projects it becomes hard to draw the line.<p>2. <i>I would like a Firefox with absolutely no strings attached.</i><p>- No Pocket, not even a trace of it. The proper place for Pocket is a plugin.<p>- No experiments, labs or whatever they call it (see Mr. Robot for an example)<p>- No network connections to third party hosts as long I haven&#x27;t explicitly opted in.<p>- Safe search off by default<p>- No predefined search engines<p>- No predefined start page<p>3. <i>I would like Mozilla (as a whole and not only the Firefox branch) to be more careful with the selection of their businesses partners.</i><p>I&#x27;m am not aiming at their co-operations with Google, Yandex and the like, which are OK for me. At least as long as my points from above are respected. Specifically I&#x27;m OK if the free version of Firefox continues to be sponsored mainly by Google. I&#x27;m not OK with business deals of the kind they had with Cliqz for example.<p>4. <i>I would like to be able to pay without having to be logged into a Firefox account.</i><p>This is actually davidhyde&#x27;s idea from another thread [1] but I added it here because I fully agree.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20144726" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20144726</a>

I&#x27;ll buy whatever they&#x27;re selling. I&#x27;m very happy with Firefox quantum, and I&#x27;d like Mozilla to have a sustainable income that doesn&#x27;t come from the AdTech&#x2F;surveillance industry.

There is a class of products with strong elements of charitable contribution. For example Plex Pass, endangered species chocolate, LWN subscription, and select blockchain tokens--and maybe this too. There are hard to pin down non-commercial benefits to purchasers mixed in with traditional value drivers.<p>With Plex, I purchased a lifetime membership not because I valued any of the added features (I don&#x27;t use them to this day), but because I got so much value out of the project that I felt indebted and wished to express my gratitude. I wanted the project to live on, and I also got to brag about my deeds on tech forums. The incredible scaling characteristics of software allow me to already enjoy most of the benefit from the free&#x2F;open base edition alone.<p>Here are reasons for my &quot;charity-driven&quot; purchases:<p>- Admiration for project vision and desire to ensure its longevity<p>- A sense of gratitude due to incommensurate value enjoyed for very cheap or free<p>- Wanting to belong to the community and feel like part of the journey<p>I find myself valuing these items as &quot;real commercial benefit&quot;:<p>- Strong privacy guarantees<p>- Cost-plus models such as selling managed storage, bandwidth, etc.<p>- Subscription to updates backed by regular human labor<p>- Access to premium support&#x2F;SLA

This looks like they&#x27;re not so much launching a paid version of Firefox-the-browser, but a paid subscription service, including e.g. a VPN service. This is in line with their recent push towards Firefox as a brand for related services and products like Firefox Send and Lockwise in general, with the browser being specifically referred to as Firefox Browser.<p>So presumably, Firefox accounts will become a freemium service, where paid accounts have e.g. higher limits for Firefox Send, a VPN, etc.

As long as it&#x27;s all FOSS, this sounds like an excellent idea. I&#x27;d gladly pay for Mozilla to stop being beholden to Google.

Yeah, this is a kind of misleading headline. I can&#x27;t predict the future, but AFAIK there are no plans to launch a paid version of Firefox.<p>There are plans to launch paid subscription services &amp; products in a Firefox brand family. Some of services may even be independent from the browser and be separate standalone apps &amp; products. Some of the services may even - gasp - work in a non-Firefox browser.<p>Think of things like Firefox Send, Firefox Monitor, Firefox Lockbox, a system-wide VPN, an in-browser secure proxy. Specific plans are still in progress, but I don&#x27;t think any of them are literally &quot;you pay for browser now&quot;

Finally, a proper way to vote with my wallet in the browser wars. I&#x27;m sure Firefox can make more money from me individually by allowing me to pay them, rather than funneling me through Google for some eyeball $$$s, especially since I&#x27;ve personally switched to DuckDuckGo.<p>Actually that makes me wonder - how <i>does</i> Mozilla currently make money off me if I&#x27;ve stopped using Google searches in Firefox?

I see more than a few comments with some form of &quot;I would pay if X&#x2F;if not X&#x2F;does X&#x2F;does not X&quot;. The article, which has limited details, says that it would b some bundled services, such as a VPN service (like what Mozilla partnered with ProtonVPN for as a limited trial before) and online cloud storage.<p>At this time, it doesn&#x27;t seem like this would be a paid version of the Firefox browser with a different feature set. Any decision of that kind could confuse people and hurt the Firefox brand, IMO.<p>Can we instead put out our wishlist of services that we&#x27;d want Mozilla to handle because we trust it?<p>1. I&#x27;m stealing at least one idea from elsewhere in this discussion, which is a private paid email service with standard protocol support (like IMAP) with cheaper pricing for multiple mailboxes.<p>2. Another would be a revival of the Persona (authentication) project and service. In light of Apple&#x27;s announcement of &quot;Sign in with Apple&quot; in WWDC, this would make a lot more sense for people who trust Apple now, but don&#x27;t really like the idea of trusting a for-profit corporation forever or have some other reservations with &quot;Sign in with Apple&quot;. Persona can actually work with &quot;Sign in with Apple&quot; and many other providers.<p>3. A hosted Bitwarden or Bitwarden-like service that can work on multiple platforms and browsers could be interesting.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20144521" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20144521</a>

Not sure about a Mozilla-run VPN. I&#x27;d trust them to have a competent-enough service, but I would definitely not expect them to try resisting any western government getting hold of their logs (though I guess the claim of any VPN to actually accomplish this is dubious at best).<p>Maybe a good option if you live somewhere like China or certain Middle Eastern countries where you need a VPN just to get news not controlled by the government, but all of the VPN users who just want to hide their IP when torrenting will probably look elsewhere.

Good luck to them, assuming they stick to their principles. But IIRC, experiments with paid browsers have typically not ended well. What makes them think they can pull it off?

Excellent idea bundling VPN and cloud storage. Currently using proton and iCloud (mostly though relying on self hosted Nextcloud). Hopefully they’ll offer NextCloud too.

Chrome crippling adblockers creates a huge opportunity for paid competition. I would gladly buy a browser just to be sure adblock will always work.<p>Of course, FF + uBO is free, and one can always make donations. But buying a product feels different.<p>Also, businesses can expense what they buy with an invoice -- usually not the case with donations.

I will pay for this IF they improve their PDF view&#x2F;print. I know a lot of people say this, but it&#x27;s just a really important feature for me which is really poor in Firefox. And I do pay for software and contribute financially to open source projects.

Interesting bundling their services via the browser. Its a single point of entry vs Google (seemingly) access disjoint. Password management, notes, file transfer (and storage?) browse and secure connections through one browser is something I think Id want.

If they want us to pay, they MUST provide dev tools that are as good as Chrome&#x27;s, if not better.<p>My team builds a lot of PWAs, and Firefox simply did not provide good enough diagnostic tools, so we couldn&#x27;t use it in earnest (even though we really wanted to).

I&#x27;d happily pay as long as:<p>1. It also funds Thunderbird.<p>2. Their focus is on privacy&#x2F;no telemetry, security and overall experience. NOT more rebrands!<p>3. It helps pay for continuously updated blocklists, miner blocking lists, anti-content farm lists etc. that get built into the browser rather than through add-ons.<p>4. Curated add-ons that are funded especially around security - too many add-ons don&#x27;t get updated.<p>5. Real profile management and switching.<p>6. An expert mode with a proper download manager (pausing, reordering etc.)<p>7. Self-maintaining, self-repairing and self-updating options so it ALWAYS just works.<p>8. An outreach program to get websites&#x2F;apps&#x2F;etc. that are broken to fix them so we don&#x27;t have to open up an instance of Chrome.

If this move will let Mozilla fund its operations, in an honest and straightforward manner, while doing things that peeve the surveillance&amp;brochure&amp;bigmoat dotcoms, that seems potentially great news.

Looks to me like they&#x27;ll be charging for an integrated VPN service; not like they&#x27;re releasing a separate version of Firefox with proprietary components.<p>Brilliant way of funding free&#x2F;libre software.

When it comes to dependence on ad-tech money, the writing is on the wall:<p>&gt; Cost per click on Google properties — which roughly measures the amount Alphabet charges advertisers for each ad served on its web sites — dropped 29 percent from last year and 9 percent from last quarter, which might be alarming investors concerned that Google’s pricing power for ads is eroding. [1]<p>Additionally, Firefox is losing users, around 50,000 - 100,000 per day. [2]<p>They now want to add all kinds of additional stuff in order to make money. For a browser this is a death sentence. A browser can not be more than a browser, and ad tiles are the only practical way of making money next to search engine deals. While a pro-version of Firefox is certainly an interesting idea which can be sold to a tech-savvy minority, it neither can diversify their revenue in a meaningful way, nor is clear yet whether Mozilla is going to offer a paid Firefox version, or simply tries to upsell a software bundle branded with their name.<p>Mozilla paid around 30 million to aquire Pocket (one of their supposed foundations for making money), but there isn&#x27;t any data to show whether they are profitable with it. Given the low number of ads in Pocket, they probably aren&#x27;t profitable. In 2017, according to their financial report, they only made 2,5 million with Pocket ads.<p>Opera is the only other major browser that has to survive without having a tech giant behind them. They do everything they can to make money with Opera. And it has boiled down to ads in the start page and licensing. There’s nothing more you can do.<p>Opera is surviving on three kind of deals: [3]<p>– search (ca 60%)<p>– ads in start page<p>– licensing deals on mobile phones<p>Licensing is off limits to mozilla because they have lost the mobile market.<p>So all that is left is ads on the start page. Its that simple. There’s also a lesson to learn for Mozilla from the time Opera abandoned Presto: [4]<p>&gt; “Because of our switch to the Blink engine, our retention rate on desktop users is much better now. This is because most websites work in Opera since we’re using the same engine as Google. We think we’ve become more relevant after we moved over to the Blink platform, and more companies now start to work with us,” Boilesen said.<p>&gt; “We’ve got twice as many developers on the desktop browser now than we had with Presto, because all [our] resources went into maintaining Presto. The only error we made with Presto was that we kept it too long. Our change to Blink was because we wanted to get on the offensive with regards to innovation, we used too many resources to keep Presto competitive.&quot;<p>There are only two ways. You either stay innovative and keep up with the times, or you downsize and develop for a small niche group. Mozilla is doing neither.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;04&#x2F;alphabet-earnings-q4-2018.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;04&#x2F;alphabet-earnings-q4-2018.ht...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.firefox.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.firefox.com</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;02&#x2F;browser-maker-opera-has-filed-to-go-public&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;02&#x2F;browser-maker-opera-has-fi...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zdnet.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;show-me-the-money-how-opera-started-thinking-about-the-bottom-line-and-what-that-did-to-its-software&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zdnet.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;show-me-the-money-how-opera-st...</a>

I&#x27;m unsure how many of the comments here read the article at all, but I see this as a smart move. Built-in VPN and cloud storage makes a lot of sense. They&#x27;re building enough features between Lockwise, Send and soon VPN and some cloud storage, they&#x27;re going to have a compelling package.<p>Toss in a secure @firefox.com email to use on the included cloud storage and Mozilla has my money.

Take my money!<p>I&#x27;ve received incalculable value from using Mozilla products and I&#x27;ll gladly pay to support them, especially when it comes to increased privacy.

Good. Anyone who wants to avoid the internet becoming a Google&#x2F;blink monoculture should be happy to pay for this.

I use Firefox and have setup a monthly donation anyway. I understand that many people need something extra in return to give their money. So if there is a paid version which gives access to some _services_ like VPN or storage, and it works better than donations, then why not.

The original interview is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t3n.de&#x2F;news&#x2F;mozilla-ceo-chris-beard-anbieten-1168614&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t3n.de&#x2F;news&#x2F;mozilla-ceo-chris-beard-anbieten-1168614...</a>

I&#x27;m a long-time Firefox&#x2F;Mozilla user, and I&#x27;d give it a try for $10&#x2F;month. It would be an easy sell to me if it includes a reasonable amount of online storage.

Remember when Opera had a free version with an ad on it? Ah those days...<p>Hopefully Mozilla will not go down that path. I certainly don&#x27;t think so with all they are doing in respect to privacy.

I already donate to Mozilla, and I&#x27;d be happy to pay to fund an actual open source browser that&#x27;s not being produced by an ads company.

Looking at their previous partnership with ProtonVPN, ten dollars a month for a VPN seems a bit high. My self hosted Algo instance only run ~6 a month with tax.<p>Maybe if they also gave some cloud storage it would be worth it. Being able to store a veracrypt volume with my important data in the cloud securely would be nice.<p>Current options seem to be Amazon, Google, or Dropbox. Spideroak has the &quot;hive&quot; but there&#x27;s not really an option to just upload stuff, it needs to reside locally and be mirrored.

I&#x27;d pay for firefox. Relatively fine quality FOSS deserves it, so long as the &quot;do no evil&quot;

Let&#x27;s hope it includes blocking auto-play videos from TheNextWeb.

They kind of have to go that way (offer extra VPN&#x2F;storage as a service for a monthly fee), their market share of users has tanked since their last deal with Google, they&#x27;re not going to get that kind of money from them any more. Gotta diversify.

$500M a year isn’t enough to develop Firefox?

I would pay for a browser that didn&#x27;t spy on me everywhere I went, this doesn&#x27;t fit the bill for me.

Netscape is back on the menu, boys!

If it&#x27;s a paid version of Firefox this means it will respect our privacy by having no telemetry, no remote code execution via Normandy, etc, or will it be the same thing in that regard?

Will it be called ... Netscape 10? I&#x27;m honestly asking &#x2F; hoping. Does AOL still own the brand?

It will come with Premium Mr. Robot adds.

A centralized VPN solution for all users is a terrible idea, and what is &quot;secure cloud storage&quot; going to offer that Dropbox doesn&#x27;t?<p>I understand that developing a browser is expensive work and Mozilla need money to do it. I support them in this effort. But honestly no ones gonna buy this

I really want a version of Firefox that doesn&#x27;t have adblock and is ad paid so it&#x27;s free.<p>We could call it.. Chrome!

Can we talk about the auto play video in the middle of this for a “Smell DJ” box for a moment.<p>People keep on trying to make the Internet of Smells and the devices keep on being bought by absolutely nobody. Who funds these things? Who thinks there’s a market waiting to be tapped? I see some kind of scent-making box announced every four or five years and they all just fade without a trace.<p>This one can be controlled by Alexa. I doubt that’s gonna be the wrinkle that makes it a must-have.

I would do that in an instant if it:<p>Dropped WideVine<p>Dropped WebRtc<p>Brought back XUL Extensions<p>Otherwise, I&#x27;ll keep using a pre-australis fork, until I probably eventually just decide to use Chrome. Firefox different distinguish itself from Chrome.

There is no way Mozilla can remain a corporate entity and simultaneously make me feel like they deserve my money. It would require a complete clean break with Google, with the understanding that if they can&#x27;t make it on their own, with their users, then it needs to be just a community project. If it makes money for Google, I don&#x27;t trust it. If it supports Google, I don&#x27;t trust it. And right now, Firefox does both.

I&#x27;m a huge Firefox fan, but as many others here point out: for this to work in the long run they have to respect us and stop pulling all kinds of iRobot nonsense etc.<p>Mozilla needs to understand it is not OK to mess with my Internet banking client.<p>The browser is now critical Internet infrastructure and it is <i>not OK</i> when someone scares me by force installing extensions.<p>Also while Normandie would have been OK with me of I knew about it ot annoyed me when I found out about it because of a mistake.<p>Mozilla could have had a 9&#x2F;10 score but thanks to issues like this I rate them 7&#x2F;10.<p>(Chrome however is far worse.)

This is really scary. I keep getting messages from friends I converted to Signal, asking me to go back to WhatsApp since Facebook has a deal with their providers to not charge WhatsApp data.<p>Now picture those able to afford their first mobile plan, they don’t have disposable income, they don’t have the option to pay for Firefox, I’m afraid this will drive people to use Google even more.