As the world’s richest man, Musk has another show of rich and wayward money power two days ago – he bought Twitter for $44 billion, and he hopes to create an online platform that meets his expectations. After Twitter was acquired, the Firefox browser suddenly announced online that they had promised not to sell Firefox to the rich.
For Firefox, this commitment should be serious, because Firefox is an open-source browser and is also very influential in the world, and they have expressed their rejection of the ability to pay money because they do not want rich people to control the online world and control their influence in the hands of the rich.
However, Firefox’s statement has also been ridiculed and even shortened by some netizens, because Firefox software does not make money, and the main search engine that maintains the team’s operation is the browser’s built-in search engine, specifically Google, which has been the biggest supporter of Firefox for many years, contributing 80% of the revenue.
For Firefox, the browser market has changed in recent years, they were previously the world’s most popular browser, but under the competition of Chrome and Microsoft Edge, the share of Firefox browsers fell from 20% in 2008 to about 4% now, and the mobile platform share is less than 0.5%, missing opportunities.