Firefox’s Fate: $500 Million Annually Still Falls Short

Mozilla Firefox, once a key player in the web browser market, is struggling to regain software glory. Its market share is currently less than 3%. Despite Mozilla's many other products and projects, nothing has come close to Firefox's success.

Mozilla has over $1 billion in cash reserves, and more than $500 million a year of this comes from Google. This payment scheme, which started in 2005, is not uncommon, with Google also paying Apple to be the default search engine on iOS devices.

While the deal helps Mozilla financially, it has raised criticism as it seems pointless for Google to fund Firefox when the company is already dominating the market. Critics say Mozilla has served its purpose and is now stuck with the spoils that came from its success. Despite this, Mozilla spokesperson Brandon Borrman states that the organization remains committed to pushing for an open internet.

Rapid Rundown

• 🦊 Mozilla Firefox struggles with less than 3% market share, despite $1 billion in cash reserves and $500 million annually from Google.

• 💰 Google pays Mozilla to be the default search engine on Firefox, raising criticism despite Mozilla's commitment to an open internet.

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk invests in OpenFortune: the Super Bowl of cookie marketing

Fortune cookies are no longer just for predicting your future love life or career success. Now they’re also predicting which brands you’ll be spending your money on. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has invested in OpenFortune, a company that puts ads in fortune cookies. It’s like the Super Bowl of cookie marketing.

OpenFortune is currently working with 47,000 restaurants and delivery platforms in the US and supplies messages to factories worldwide. 35% of its brand partners have even ditched sports sponsorships for fortune cookies.

Some clients want their messages to be relevant to the cookie experience, while others want them to be random. OpenFortune even rejects 60% of brand approaches because they’re not a good fit.

And it’s working. 7% of consumers post their fortunes on social media and 20% keep their slip after a meal. To increase sharing, OpenFortune has even enlisted the help of ChatGPT to write its messages.

Rapid Rundown

• 🥠 OpenFortune puts ads in fortune cookies, working with 47k restaurants and delivery platforms in the US.

• 📱 7% of consumers share fortunes on social media and 20% keep their slip after a meal.

RapidAPI goes from a billion-dollar company to a budget brand in less than a year

RapidAPI, now Rapid, has suffered yet another blow as it let go of 70 employees, leaving just 42 workers at the company. This comes less than two weeks after it fired 50% of its staff, bringing its headcount down by a whopping 82% since April.

The remaining workers in Europe and some in the US were affected. The company's founder and previous CEO, Iddo Gino, was recently removed by the board, and a sale of the company is expected, albeit for a significantly lower price than the $1 billion it was valued at last year.

Rapid's platform helps businesses find and integrate third-party APIs and manage their own internal APIs. Its public API hub has more than 4 million developers and offers access to over 40,000 APIs from companies like Twilio, Microsoft, and Google. The layoffs were reportedly haphazard, with some terminations being sent out incorrectly before being revoked.

Rapid Rundown

• 📉 Rapid (formerly RapidAPI) lays off 82% of its headcount, leaving just 42 workers at the company.

• 💼 The company’s founder and previous CEO was recently removed by the board and a sale of the company is expected.

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