This is the second layoff at Mozilla this year, the first affecting dozens of staff on the side of the organization that builds the popular Firefox browser.
Now that Google isn’t allowed to pay them default search engine money, I think this was expected.
Ideologically I think it’s a good thing the US government is challenging Google’s monopolistic practices. Unfortunately, that money was a massive percentage of Mozilla’s income.
It really was short-sighted of them to put so many eggs into one basket.
Google hasn't been forbidden from paying Mozilla - yet, at least. They've only been ruled a monopolist, but what consequences they will face is yet to be determined, and then the appeals process will follow, so it'll be a couple of years before there's any potential impact.
Mozilla has also explicitly tried to have other baskets to put eggs in (Relay. VPN, Monitor Plus, Hubs, etc.), it's just that none of those have been as successful.
Mozilla frankly could use some serious restructuring. If Brave was able to get a decent market share overnight surely a well known company can make a come back.
Brave has a notable market share? I've never seen them in any graph.
Comparing the two is also a difficult territory, because Brave does not develop their own browser engine. If Google stops publishing the Chromium source code, they're gone in a few months.