Firefox Premium a Real Thing Now, to Launch in October

[The AchieVer]

Firefox Premium a Real Thing Now, to Launch in October 

 

Mozilla will launch a subscription-based service called Firefox Premium that will provide users with a series of benefits, including cloud storage and VPN support.

 

While it’s important to note that Firefox Premium doesn’t mean Mozilla will charge consumers for using Firefox, the company is indeed looking for an alternative source of revenue, and a subscription service seems to be the right way to go.

Firefox Premium will come with cloud storage and a VPN service, according to Mozilla CEO Chris Beard.

The CEO explained in an interview with German magazine T3N (via WF) that Firefox Premium is projected to launch in October, so unless something goes wrong in the meantime, we should be able to try out the service in just a few months.

 

Free version coming too

 

And by the looks of things, Mozilla wants to let everyone get a taste of Firefox Premium, as the service will also be released with a free version. In other words, users will be allowed to register for Firefox Premium without paying, albeit this option comes with a series of restrictions, such as a limited amount of cloud storage and bandwidth for the VPN service.

Needless to say, the main selling points of this offering will be enhanced security and privacy when browsing the web.

As the maker of the world’s second most-used desktop browser, Mozilla won’t be the first company bundling such services with their applications, albeit given how large its userbase currently is, there’s a good change a substantial share would give it a try.

Firefox is currently running on some 10 percent of the desktop computers across the world, whereas Google Chrome, which continues to be the number one, has a market share of approximately 67 percent.

Firefox, on the other hand, is seen as the main alternative to Chromium-based browsers, especially after Microsoft decided to give up on EdgeHTML and switch to the same engine as Google Chrome.

 

 

 

 

Source

[IronY-Man]

With Google doing SNAP ! on chrome's ad-blocking features and combine this

 

premium  (+freemium ?) of Proton VPN + Cloud storage service ; it looks like a timely move from fox !

[steven36]

Mozilla is the organization that has seemed the most committed to a free and open web. So the very idea that there could be a paid version of Firefox is potentially disturbing.

 

 

The first inkling that Mozilla was considering adding paid for services to its browser came in October 2018 when it ran a limited experiment in which it offered a VPN (virtual private network) service to a small group of Firefox users in partnership with ProtonVPN.

 

Although the blog post announcing it had the headline Testing new ways to keep you safe online, which suggested it had the interests of users in mind, the content made explicit that Mozilla was looking for a way to monetize Firefox:

 

This experiment is also important to Mozilla’s future. We believe that an innovative, vibrant, and sustainable Mozilla is critical to the future of the open Internet, and we plan to be here over the long haul. To do that with confidence we also need to have diverse sources of revenue. For some time now Mozilla has largely been funded by our search partnerships. With this VPN experiment which kicks off Wednesday, October 24th, we’re starting the process of exploring new, additional sources of revenue that align with our mission.

 

Now in an interview by Jan Vollmer for the German online magazine site t3n, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has confirmed plans to launch Firefox Premium later this year.

Answering Vollmer's questions about how Mozilla is currently monetized Beard answered:

 

We are working on three sources of income and we want to rebalance them: We have Search, but we also make content. We have a company called Pocket that discovers and curates content. There is also sponsored content. This is the content business. And the third one we are working on and developing as we think about products and services are premium levels for some of these offerings. You can imagine something like a secure storage solution.

 

Prompted to say more about a premium offer, he continued:

We also tested VPN. We can tell if you’re on a public Wi-Fi network and want to do online banking and say, “Wow, you really should use VPN.” You can imagine we’ll offer a solution that gives us all a certain amount of free VPN Bandwidth and then offer a premium level over a monthly subscription. We want to add more subscription services to our mix and focus more on the relationship with the user to become more resilient in business issues.

 

Later in the interview, when asked when the subscription services might start Beard tries to be reassuring, saying:

So, what we want to clarify is that there is no plan to charge money for things that are now free. So we will roll out a subscription service and offer a premium level. And the plan is to introduce the first one this year, towards fall. We aim for October.

 

We have repeatedly commented on Mozilla's precarious funding situation. According to Beard's answer in the interview 90% of the organization's income comes from search - i.e the royalties received from companies like Google and Yandex for including their search engines in Firefox. From our report on its 2017 balance sheet, the latest year for which it has published its accounts, Royalties amounted to $539,168,000 of total revenue of $562,279,000, which is around 96%.

 

How this is shared between Google and other search providers is unknown - but certainly Google's in the lion's share. In the interview Beard explained Mozilla's relationship with Google as one of "Competition" saying: 

We cooperate in many things and we are fierce competitors. But yes, we have a strong motivation to build deeper customer relationships outside the search business. And we believe that subscription services are one place, a vector we will explore.

 

How that will suit loyal Firefox users remains to be seen.

 

Source

[steven36]

12 hours ago, IronY-Man said:

With Google doing SNAP ! on chrome's ad-blocking features and combine this

 

premium  (+freemium ?) of Proton VPN + Cloud storage service ; it looks like a timely move from fox !

They can't even get many people too install the free version let alone sell it with a vpn from a company accused  of helping out the police . There marketshare  took a beating last month it been on the decline , even if  Google goes ahead with killing UBO any users Firefox gets will be installing there free version   .  Most of us already pay for vpns that use them and we don't want to pay extra for a browser with one! It will not go over well Firefox have always been free they must be hard up . They forks of Firefox and Chrome we can use , If they do this it will help out other browsers that promote privacy more than them i'm afraid .  

[patrickdrd]

definitely a bad and inconsiderate move by them

[steven36]

30 minutes ago, patrickdrd said:

definitely a bad and inconsiderate move by them

Yes there partnerships is going to kill them  in the end . Proton VPN even before  they was accused of helping out the cops never been able to sell there vpn it  too expensive .Opera try the same crap  with SurfEasy and there browser is freeware and it got them no were . i never seen a browser with a vpn  or vpn extension that was worth buying .  I have 2 vpns  that have extensions and i don't use them. 1. there always buggy  2. they wont protect you outside your browser,  so i just use there real VPN software  that protects me system wide. 

[patrickdrd]

yes, system wide is always better/the best,

like with ad blockers, system wide adblockers being the future,

independent of any browser/platform

[steven36]

16 minutes ago, patrickdrd said:

yes, system wide is always better/the best,

like with ad blockers, system wide adblockers being the future,

independent of any browser

System wide ad blockers  was how it all started  , IE  installing a AD Blocker  in it never worked right  but never many people used AD Blockers because the good ones were never free . It was niche software . It was not tell Firefox  came out with addons they got millions of users and it became a threat and then when they came out with smart phones and got billions of more users on the internet it became a  much bigger threat.  Google Chrome killed IE and made there way to the top by letting users block there own Google  ads with extensions.  Now they getting greedy because they  hold the majority of the market and there cash cow is making ads  and they plan to stop it  . 

[steven36]

All the Firefox fanboys are like Muppets on a string , it  just depends  on with site you visit , You go on some of the Windows Fanboy sites some of them say they will pay for this just like they been donating to Firefox  for many years . There idiots i never donated to Mozilla  why would I, they not listen to users since the guy who owns Brave Browser step down as CEO.  All there donations went toward  buying Pocket $20 million witch is and ad system  ,  removed classic addons and added web addons they waste all there money on things people don't even want or ask for every since Google made Chrome  and they never listen to there users and blow smoke up everyone's about privacy but they take money from the devil , but yet always you got die hard fanboys that say Mozilla do no wrong and  they happy to donate to such a good cause. Now they talking about  making a crippled free version that will most likely bug you to buy it, and they could go the route Google  is and make you pay to block ads . i would not put it past them because the browser called Firefox is not Firefox no more  and people paid them to make it and  that not even what they wanted or even ask for !  

 

Back when i switch to Firefox from IE it was just a simply a good browser  that had addons and nothing else came close close to it  and that all people ever wanted from Mozilla and nothing else ,  Now they going go back to being like Netscape and get dissolved by some other free offerings that don't charge nothing . The reason Firefox never broke into the mobile market is because everyone uses there default browsers . Same reason  IE killed Netscape everyone used there default browser  and now Microsoft jumping on the Chrome train Firefox is most likely finished .

 

It's just the past repeating itself . I998  was the game changer for Netscape / Mozilla  . In 1996, Netscape's share of the browser market reached 86% .   Microsoft began integrating its browser with its operating system and bundling deals with OEMs. Within 4 years of its release IE had 75% of the browser market and by 1999 it had 99% of the market.

 

Jump  ahead to now .Firefox was always downloadable for free from the start, as was its predecessor, the Mozilla browser. Firefox's business model, unlike the business model of 1990s Netscape, primarily consists of doing deals with search engines such as Google to direct users towards them .

 

How did there 1st browser Netscape make money?

Netscape Navigator was sold to enterprise customers as part of a solution sale that typically included the following revenue components:

1. Enterprise software license fees
2. Support/maintenance contract
3. Professional services fees

 

Firefox going back down the rabbit hole of trying to make money off selling browsers again , it  didn't  work the last time and won't work this time  , What killed Netscape  was   Enterprise  could  use IE for free  and it was already there you didn't have to install it.  It didn't work for opera ether when tried selling browsers . Always a free offering will eat it alive,

 

 

[DKT27]

Many users might be turned away by this. Mozilla has tried their hands in too many things previously which caused problems to them. When they started concentrating back on the browser is when they did good. Now them announcing these things means their priority might shift, even if little, away from the main, free browser version I think.