Mozilla is a well-known organization whose offerings like Firefox, and Thunderbird are a valuable part of the online ecosystem, with many people relying on those daily.
Sadly, 2024 has not been the year for them. Mozilla started this year by laying off employees and scaling back on many of their current investments. They then managed to irk the open source community by implementing PPA by default on Firefox 128.
And finally, if all of that was not scandalous enough, a monopoly lawsuit involving Google threatened Firefox's existence a few months earlier, with the punishment for it yet to be dished out by the judge.
We are now almost at the end of 2024, and it now appears that Mozilla has decided to lay off 30% of their staff, while also axing key initiatives in the process, citing a “relentless onslaught of change”.
When Will The Layoffs Stop Mozilla?
The layoffs were confirmed by the VP of Global Communications at Mozilla, Brandon Borrman, who stated that the foundation was reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as they moved towards a more open and equitable technical future.
As a result of this, many people have lost their jobs in an already volatile job market, and crucial divisions of the Mozilla Foundation have been shut down. The Advocacy division, which was aimed at pushing for stronger privacy protection, inclusion, literacy, and the principles of a healthy internet, has been shut down.
Similarly, the Global Programs initiative, which is a multi-faceted program that includes the above-mentioned Advocacy unit, the Internet Health Report unit, the Fellowships unit, the Awards unit, and the MozFest event, has also been shut down.
Internally, these changes were announced to employees on October 30 in an email sent by the Executive Director of Mozilla, Nabiha Syed. In another email, she explained that all of this was done to create a unified, powerful narrative from the foundation and that their mission at Mozilla was more high-stakes than ever.
Closing Thoughts
While these changes look like they have been made to tackle the financial realities of running a tech company in 2024, there are many organizations out there that have not had to take such drastic measures — yet.
If you ask me, Mozilla should have focused a lot more on their established core offerings, like the Firefox browser, before branching out to invest in other things like VPN and Relay.
I can only wonder what 2025 holds for Mozilla—more layoffs, better handling of their core offerings, or perhaps the acquisition of new companies? Whatever the outcome, I will have to wait and see.
Suggested Read 📖
Sourav Rudra
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