Part of being CEO/running a business is considering all options, but it doesn't mean it will ever move beyond the ROI/risk phase. Ever read one of the risk assessments in a companies public filings? It's the same thing.
All options that are in line with the organization’s mission.
The CEO of an organization like Mozilla even considering blocking adblockers for profit is like the president of Amnesty International considering to sell lists of dissidents to the secret police.
> The CEO of an organization like Mozilla even considering blocking adblockers for profit is like the president of Amnesty International considering to sell lists of dissidents to the secret police.
No, for Amnesty International it would be more like not considering somebody a political prisoner because the country that took the prisoner is a 1st world country and they don't want to expose themselves on a matter that would risk the donations from a certain population.
Yes, that happened in the aftermath of the Catalan attempt at peaceful independence in October 2017 by Amnesty International Spain.
Yes, the problem is that it is considered an option at all. Are they running ROIs on harvesting passwords, blackmailing users and infecting all clients with malware?
It's not hard to imagine the last default search contract negotiation had Google go "we'll give you $x if you kill manifest v2, $x-$150 million if you don't."
for it to be considered, somebody must have offered to pay that 150M. Or he considered going to somebody (we all know that somebody is Google) and asking them for that money in return for killing ad blockers.
> You wouldn't calculate the expected RoI of killing adblockers if killing adblockers was never considered.
I agree, although if someone isn't the kind of person who would calculate that, they're probably not the person who will become the CEO of a company that size in the first place. I don't think organizations have the right incentives in place to push people with those values to the top.
You wouldn't calculate a figure and publish it as the first step in any reasonable price negotiation. Any pricing you mention publicly would be double or triple the number you are willing to accept. By the time you are talking publicly about realistic numbers you are well into the private negotiations.
I agree with all the people saying it would drive a lot of the remaining users away, and I hope they don't do it. But I'm not remotely surprised that they considered following what their biggest competitor (Chrome) already did.
Because Chrome was built by the world's biggest advertising company. If the World Wildlife Fund started selling ivory to pay the bills, would that not be surprising?
That analogy doesn't really work, though: Mozilla's goal is not specifically to fight against online advertising. Ad-blocking is connected to their goals, definitely, but they clearly have to make compromises, and I'm not that surprised that they'd think about that one.
Why? They have ample free cashflow. They haven't had money problems in 10 years. If they're worried about Google withdrawing support they should save money in an endowment, not do things to help Google.
