YouSaid · the spoken record

Mitchell Baker

lines on the record: 87
first: 2023-02-14
most recent: 2023-02-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Inside Firefox right now, that I don't know. Certainly search has been the killer. App and business model of a generation. So it's hard to say that we're going to find something that equals that in the same product. But that said, we're early in the diversification piece. We have some other things that we're kind of exploring and might hope bring to market. About searches, people still want it and are drawn to it, right? It's a really valuable tool. And we can see even with the interest in generative AI, some of the questions is, well, how does it change the core use cases? I think no one thinks that the question of trying to find things online is going away.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let me step back for just a sec and say we have been increasing the diversification of our revenue over the last few years. It's still the case that the bulk of our money comes from search and the bulk of the search money comes from Google. So we haven't fundamentally changed it yet, but have a pretty significant effort coming close to double digits in revenue that's not from that, maybe say 15% now, which again, it's only 15%, but from where we were, say, three years ago, it's a pretty dramatic change. Are there other ways to generate revenue? Yes. Are there other ways to generate that amount of revenue in the current product, Firefox? That I think is unclear. We have in our revenue diversification, some of that is through Firefox, so there are ways to diversify. Is there another, we'll call it half a billion dollar business?”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The firebump, yeah, the distribution channel without the full operating system piece is pretty tough. And so that would be, once again, picking another area with the same product to go head to head with Google in an area where they're really better set up for it and have multiples of resources.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Design implications for us, and of course, some pretty deep revenue implications. And so there are a bunch of basic, how is it internet built areas in which our view of the world is more aligned with Google? And so we see that relationship when you say it's complex, that's very true. It's competitive, there's no question. Is this business partnership piece? And there's also what is the nature of the underlying system that we're trying to build? Now, Android's a different story, right? But on the browser and website.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And find things in a way that's very, very different from Facebook And so, in the structures of Facebook, information goes in but doesn't come out. Really, right? And so a Facebook like model pulls information in and then it all stays in this private space. It's not of the web or of the open internet or whatever you might choose to call it, which has some pretty deep”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To Yahoo at the time and shifted back a few years later. And so we treat those as business deals. One part of the relationship with Google that is sometimes not clear is that Google and Mozilla are aligned on some fundamental things about the structure of what we used to call the web and now we call the internet. And so sometimes people think it's all business relationship. And certainly that's important. But for example, I guess today we call the open internet, which comes down into architectural changes. And what are you doing and standards and how do you build things? And are they interoperable? Do you engage with standards bodies? How do they work? What's the actual goal? And that's because I'm not claiming Google is altruistic, but their search business depends on being able to get to content.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That deal's not in perpetuity. I don't know if Google does deals in perpetuity. We have renegotiated that arrangement multiple times over the years, also with Microsoft and a few others I wouldn't say it's contentious. We do take it seriously. Sometimes people think because we're small or naive or like we're Google's mouthpiece or we're Google but with a different name. And that's a little frustrating given the amount of energy and focus we put into it. So we do take those seriously. We did in 15 or so shift from Google.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The largest revenue driver for Mozilla Corporation is the deal that makes Google search the default engine in Firefox. That's what I've always known to be true. So that's true. How much is that deal worth to you?”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Either you're working together to create what you're doing or they're not dictating it. And at the size and scale of something like a browser, and we're still a fraction of the size of the Chrome team, really a fraction. And it is part of the competitive challenge is what do you really need in a browser with a team that's multiples the size? So yes, I do think the fact that we are in this very competitive space and we're building this core platform level technology, which is complex. really pushes us to Be in the world but not of it.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get some of the value we're creating back for ourselves, that that was a better model. Like fundraising isn't free. Wikimedia is a pretty lucky organization because there are multiple small donations. It's enough. But normally a large fundraising organization, your funders, have a lot of say in what you do. It often feels pure, but you have to work very hard to have a set of funders who are so aligned with your mission that”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I do sometimes envy organizations that don't have the tech giants as competitors. And if I were starting without the mission to build an organization or to build a company or to build a startup, You can think of safer places to be than where Mozilla is. But we are where we are because it's got some core aspects of internet life in the middle of it. It's tough to run a good size software organization competing with the giants on a volunteer basis. I think Signal is in this space where they're much more focused on donations. And so, you know, we're looking at that, but I did decide when we formed Mozilla and realized there were ways to”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Positioned very differently, you have all these big tech partners and in some cases gatekeepers and in some cases revenue sources. Has that shaped how you think about, okay, we need to be a company. We need to be more ruthless at the core here so we can support our larger mission.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, right? Like the ability to run a business and build a product that people want and that creates value and find an ethical way of returning some of that value to ourselves so that we can continue is the growth path for us. And so I think unlike many other organizations, our conversations about mission versus business are quite different.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Revenue at all, certainly antibusiness, it was very much individuals have power with technology, and we can voluntarily form a community and create something together and share the thing we've created. And so for Mozilla, the move has been not, like a lot of companies are built where the dollar is first and everything else comes second, whereas we're the opposite and had to grow into running a business. You know, and acknowledging we are running a business. And if we want to succeed and be here for another 25 years, donations are not going to cover that.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First time in modern history, anyway, where we would talk about sharing things or collaboration. It's before ride sharing or before Airbnb, all of those things were crazy. But the open source movement came first. And it came with a very idealistic volunteer. It's not about the money. It's about what we're creating. We're a community. We're working together. And in a way, it was anti-”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But to the substance of your question, money versus anything else, it is a topic. It's a topic actually because at Mozilla is growing into running a business. We're a bit the opposite of the norm. We started as nonprofit organization, an open source project with a large global community of volunteers. And we also came out of the very first days of the consumer internet, which we called the web. The internet was the World Wide Web and had a lot of idealism in it. And it's the beginning of the open source movement becoming mainstream. And it was the really”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we've had at Mozilla forever what we would say two hats, that when we started, we were inside a company, so we were employees with management chain and the goals of the company. But at the same time, we were trying to run a serious and legitimate open source project which had distributed authority and was for the benefit of all of the people who contributed to the project. And those are two different things. But I was eventually fired over the difference between those two. So, but because of that, we have a long history of two hats. So you would say, in my role as an employee, this is what I'm responsible for doing. In my role as a leader of an open source project with people from lots of companies and volunteers, you know, this is what the project needs. And so that multiple hat or multiple roles is kind of built in.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you perceive you have both roles? The chairwoman of the foundation or the CEO of what you just called Moco, which is a great name, the Mozilla Corporation, the taxable ST. Do you feel a split? Do you have a dual personality sometimes? We're like, oh, we could make a bunch more money over here.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“has been to reduce the gap there because it's easy for a mission driven organization to get lost in itself. And I think Mozoa has done that, you know, where it's easy to dream up the product that we think would make the world better. But that's very different from the reality of what people living their lives find useful and fun and engaging. And so Missions Always First, but in decision making is pushing the user customer consumer much closer to the mission piece so we get a better match of that. But Mozilla's not here to create a product, even a successful one that we think isn't moving the mission or a better internet forward. If we were purely a product company, we should go off and do it in the normal structure, which is not as a nonprofit.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What are the products that actually put you at the center so that you are creating your own life? Those kinds of things are expressed in our manifesto and increasingly a sense of what is the result in the public sphere, open systems, open source that Mozilla came out isn't enough, right? Not if it creates systems that are violent and misogynist and racist and all those things. So we have stated in our manifesto some basic goals of what a better internet and better internet life would look like. And so we start there. One of the things I think that's been weak about Mozilla's products in the last, say, 10 years is it's easy to get wrapped up in the mission or the manifesto and the ideal world that we dream of and not be well grounded in what is it that people actually need today and what problems do they have. And so I put mission first and users second, but part of the work of the last couple of years.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I gave you on the product side, so moco, I gave you our basic decision-making piece mission, users, business. And so we look towards, you know, we have a manifesto. It sets out the traits of the internet that we're interested in. Some of them are very clear, you know, privacy and security are clear, but it also talks about individuals having more engagement in what happens, some ability to create and more influence in our own experience. One of the things that people are experiencing with quote big tech today is feeling acted upon.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so the foundation has a board. I'm the chair of that board. The foundation has staff. It has an executive director. And so that executive director is responsible to the board of which I am one. I'm the chair, but of course the chair has one vote on a board just like everyone else. Mostly what I do as a chair is I spend extra time with the executive director thinking through things, long-term things about Mozilla, what's the kind of prep work you hope your exec does before they come to a board. That's one piece. The foundation board elects the board of its subsidiary, so Mozilla Corporation. And that board of that corporation selects the CEO of Mozilla Corporation. So as CEO, I report into the corporation board, and that board is responsible to and With and is selected every year by the Board of the Parent.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Active and trying to limit the effects of tracking. So that would be one example of how we do run a business, but there are forces that succeed are really effective, that demonstrate we don't have to pull every penny out and we don't”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, our template for this is mission first, individual users of our product second, and business revenue third. So we do indeed think about running a business and running it well because it's an expensive piece of work to fill these software and to have a chance to compete with the giants. But that is not never our first priority. And we do make decisions that go against our business interest. You know, for many years, Mozilla has been the leader and pioneer in anti-tracking technology, which is both technically tricky and hard, but also is not about maximizing the amount of money that comes out of your ads. And so we are an odd company, and there's a bit of a dynamic tension internally and also, of course, with our own business model that we are so...”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's maximum profit, and then there's just profit, right? You need to have some money in the bank, you need to give people raises every year. You probably need to hire people competitively against the big tech companies. The Mozilla Corporation reports to you, right? How do you think about setting that goal for them?”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not a sometimes you can have a nonprofit that has a subsidiary and that job of that company is to make money. But the job of Mozilla Corporation is to build products that create an internet life that's more humane, more focused on individual and social benefit and not so much on maximum engagement and maximum profit.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes The parent nonprofit tax exempt. It has a few subsidiaries, one of which is Mozilla Corporation. That's the corporation that produces most of our consumer products. For those who are around and especially in Europe where email clients and the Mozilla email client Thunderbird is still beloved, there is a smaller subsidiary which houses that. But the main subsidiary over these years has been the Mozilla Corporation that makes Firefox and our other products today. That is a taxable subsidiary. Many people will think of it as a for-profit company. We think of it as a taxable subsidiary because we run it to meet the Mozilla mission.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I asked a good friend at a big tech company, what should I ask? And they said, just say European regulators, and then she'll talk for an hour. And I promise we'll come to that. I just want to take one step back, though, and kind of understand Mozilla as it is now, not Mozilla of 25 years ago when it was defined by this battle against Microsoft. You mentioned that you have the somewhat unique structure. You are the chairwoman of the foundation, but the foundation runs the Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit and has a CEO. How does that work?”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are still true today. And so the concentration of power, the concentration in the hands of a few large companies that have the distribution channels through their operating systems, that's kind of come full circle and it's not that different than it was before. Obviously on the phones, it's not Microsoft. But if you still look at desktop computers, Microsoft is still a major player there. So in some ways it's like a circle or a spiral maybe where we try to keep our role moving forward currently, really working hard to modernize ourselves for the next 25 years so that it's Firefox as a beginning of a history of great things.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We feel that way as well. We are unusual in having a nonprofit at the core of a global technology company. We like it because it means the fundamental motivation is different. Our shareholder is not looking for maximum financial return. It's looking for maximum public benefit. So we do run a business through a subsidiary that pays taxes. We want to run that business well, but the goals of the shareholders are not, as I said, every last penny or maximum financial return. So we see that as quite different and actually quite important to how we fulfill our mission about the internet. And yes, there is a long history with Microsoft. We have worked hard to have a lot of times people want to cast Mozilla as it used to be antimicrosoft or anti big tech or anti-X. And, you know,”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so when it became time to open source the Netscape Navigator code, Mozilla was a clear engineer's insider development way of thinking. And so the open source project became known as Mozilla. It started inside this company, Netscape. That company was bought by AOL. Then eventually we spun out of AOL to form an independent organization, which is a nonprofit because at Mozilla, the open source is really tied to public benefit, so it was kind of a no-brainer that we'd start as a nonprofit.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was first created by a company called Netscape, and the browser was literally the beginning of the consumer internet. You know, before that, if you were a grad student, mostly in the sciences with a command line, you might actually use the internet, but most of us didn't. And so the browsers would change that that was made public by a company called Netscape. And even in the Netscape days inside the code, the browser was called Mozilla. There's a thing inside the code that talks to the servers. You know, every time a browser makes a request, it says, hi, you know, this browser sends what's called a user agent. And that's been Mozilla from the very beginning of the consumer internet. And so our history goes back to like the source, actually. And that was an engineer's kind of inside joke, inside Netscape. We used to laugh. Netscape is spelled M-O-Z-I-L-L-L-A.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Mozilla started with the very beginning of the consumer internet, actually, you know, in the time before time, the meaning before the internet, when software wasn't connected, there was a little kind of innovative thing called a browser.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's start at the start. I think most people know Mozilla because of Firefox, but Mozilla has a much longer history. You have a much longer history with Mozilla than just Firefox. Explain where Mozilla started and how you have been a part of the picture for nearly 25 years now.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were just talking before we started recording. You and I have been around each other for a lot, we've never met before, so I'm very excited to meet you and talk to you. I think it's going to be a good show.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An Apple restricts what browser engines can run on the iPhone. Firefox Focus on the iPhone is still running Apple's WebKit engine, something that regulators, particularly in Europe, want to change. On top of that, some big foundational pieces of the web seem to be in flux. Microsoft is aggressively rolling out its chat GPT-powered Bing search engine in an effort to displace Google and get people to switch to its edge browser and Twitter's implosion means that Mitchell sees Mastodon as one of Mozilla's next big opportunities. So how does Mozilla get through this period of change while staying true to itself? And will anyone actually switch browsers again? It turns out it might actually be easier to get people to switch on their phones as opposed to desktops. That's what Mitchell thinks anyway. You're going to hear all about it. Mitchell Baker, Chairwoman of Mozilla. Here we go.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of the Verge and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking to Mitchell Baker, the chairwoman and CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, the pocket newsreader, and a bunch of other interesting internet tools. Now, as you all know, Decoder is secretly a podcast about org charts. All right, maybe not so secretly, but Mozilla's structure is really interesting. Mozilla itself is a nonprofit foundation, but it contains within it something called the Mozilla Corporation, which actually makes Firefox and the rest. Mitchell is the chairwoman of the foundation and the CEO of the corporation. And the Mozilla Corporation, which they charmingly call Moco, can make a profit. Or at least it can be taxed, which is an important distinction you'll hear Mitchell talk about. I bring this up because Mozilla has been around since 1994 in a variety of structures and business models.”
2023-02-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT