← The Monopoly Report
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- [00:00]
Architecture Media Host
Bienvenido Miami. How's that for some Spanish? We're bringing heat to Miami this year at the possible event happening on April 27 to April 29. Architecture Media is back and we're back as official partners for possible we're bringing you more content, we're bringing you more curated gatherings, we're bringing you more hot takes. Join us at the Ad Tech God Golden Hour. Watch us on our video series called Preach on the beach and dine with us at our VIP dinner. Big thanks to our amazing sponsors. We're working closely with Fluency, verve, swivel, freewheel, AI digital life, 360 infolinks and 7 thank you to our amazing sponsors for making it happen. We hope you enjoy our content. We hope you enjoy our gatherings. If you're interested in attending any of these or sponsoring our content while we're in Miami, please go to market. Again, go to market. See you in miami.
- [01:14]
Alan Chappell
Welcome to the Monopoly Report the Monopoly Report is dedicated to chronicling and analyzing the impact of privacy, antitrust and other regulations on the global advertising economy. If you are new to the Monopoly Report, you can subscribe to our bi weekly newsletter@monopoly-report.com and you can check out all of the Monopoly report podcasts@monopolyreportpod.com I'm Alan Chappell. I'm outside counsel and fractional CPO to a bunch of tech companies and am the Principal analyst at the Chappelle Regulatory Insider, which is a monthly report that shares strategies and insights for digital media worldwide. You can find a sample link to a copy of the Chappelle Regulatory Insider in the show Notes Today I'm joined by two executives from Mozilla. First, I've got Ajit Varma, who is head of Firefox. Ajit leads the development of the Firefox strategy, ensuring that it is a delightful experience for current users as well as those in the future. And Kush Amlani is the Director, Global Competition and Regulation at Mozilla, leading the work to create a level playing field in digital markets and internationally. I've placed both of their impressive bios in the show Notes. Today's episode hits at the intersection of privacy and competition, and if you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you already know how much we like talking about both of those areas of law. Now, Mozilla sits in a genuinely unusual position. It's a nonprofit, it's open source, it's been publishing its principles publicly since before most of today's AI startups existed and is trying to Build a sustainable business without selling the one thing that most of its competitors treat as inventory. In other words, your data. Now, is that even possible in 2026? As always, the answer often depends on how one defines a few key terms. We're going to get into all of it. How the product and policy roles have converged. What it actually means for browsers to compete on privacy in 2026. How Mozilla is thinking about AI without becoming dependent on the very concentration it is warning us all against. And whether privacy enhancing technologies can solve a real problem or whether they simply exacerbate a number of age old problems in the ads and digital media space. So let's get to it. Hi Ajit. And hello Kush. Thanks to you both for coming on the pod. How are you guys doing?
- [03:48]
Ajit Varma
Really good. How are you?
- [03:50]
Alan Chappell
I'm doing fantastic. How about you, Kush?
- [03:52]
Kush Amlani
Yeah, very well, thanks.
- [03:54]
Alan Chappell
So I wanted to start with a couple of questions to help my audience get to know you both a little bit better. So let's start with the git. Now, I'm old enough to remember a time when the product role seemed completely separate from a policy role. And now it feels like the roles have converged to the point where I don't think you can talk product without also talking policy. And I'm curious, do you agree?
- [04:18]
Ajit Varma
Definitely. So I think that the product world is changing in definitely like many dimensions. The policy product aspect has been changing I think for a while now. Now I think that the lines are blurring between engineering, product design. But the main thing around policy that I've noticed is I think in the past there was very much a independent attitude of do whatever you want to break things, move fast and you increasingly see the negative impacts of that. And that is basically whether it's consolidation or just negative things that are happening to people's daily lives because of the intrusion of big tech in different ways. And because of that, regulators, rightfully so, have like stepped in to make sure that consumers are benefiting from the decisions that people are making and that there's competition. And so I'd say in when I first started my crisp product, you know they have you go do through trainings. When I was at Google, there's like, here's some trainings and you're kind of like, this stuff isn't relevant, it doesn't really matter. And now you find I better really pay attention to these trainings because all these like product decisions will definitely come back to whether it's a, an antitrust case or whether it's just doing the right thing. But I would say that in my job now, in my most recent previous jobs, you really do think about what are the implications of how governments might think about the actions that you take because of just the magnitude of the impact that your decisions have on consumers.
- [05:49]
Alan Chappell
It's interesting because I've had a similar revelation in when it comes to I'm a privacy guy, and I realized maybe five, seven years ago that I can't talk about privacy without running directly into competition and not to mention intellectual property and Copyright and section 230 and the list goes on and on. And so I feel your pain in that. You know, there's a small part of me that just wants to be that, like, privacy guy, and I just don't think that role exists anymore. Now, Kush, I know that you're a competition and regulatory attorney, and I'm curious, did you just fall into it like many of us did, or was it more part of a deliberate plan?
- [06:34]
Kush Amlani
Doesn't everyone fall into law? I feel like that's always the case for me. Definitely a bit of that.
- [06:40]
Alan Chappell
Well, for me, my musical career stopped taking off and then really that was the only thing left.
- [06:46]
Kush Amlani
Yeah, I think some of that. Some of that to me, although musical career, I would love to be in a cricketer, but sadly didn't have the skills for it. So I took. There was a summer where I had three internships. One was at a law firm in London, a big, big international law firm. The second was working on the London 2012 Olympics. It was in advance. It was four years in advance of that for preparation of the Olympics. And the third was at a hedge fund. And I got three job offers. And so I had to decide what I wanted to do. And ultimately the Olympics would have been a lot of fun. But after four years, I wasn't sure what I would end up doing. The hedge fund was not for me at all. And the law firm was kind of a good. A good compromise. I felt like it was a career. It was interesting. Yeah. And so I went for that one and I kind of. Yeah, I suppose I kind of fell into it. Kind of didn't. I also always say that when I read To Kill a Mockingbird as a kid, that made me want to be Atticus, which made me want to be a lawyer. And so that's the other reason. Maybe I was always meant to do that.
- [07:38]
Alan Chappell
I love that. And actually I share. You always think back of the things that got you into the law. And boy, to Kill a Mockingbird, I will bet, is Somewhere on a whole bunch of lawyers lists.
- [07:50]
Kush Amlani
100%. It's so inspirational.
- [07:52]
Alan Chappell
So I want to shift gears and maybe start talking about Mozilla specifically. And I'm curious, how has the role of the browser evolved over the past 15 years? And is it still practical to think that a browser will act solely as its user's agent?
- [08:10]
Ajit Varma
It's interesting that browsers identifies itself as a user agent, and the word agent is that it's acting on behalf of a user in order to accomplish something that the user wants. And you're giving, giving it permissions, you're giving it abilities. And previously that was limited in what it could do. It was browsing of pages, you were clicking on links and then browsing other pages. Firefox played a big role in evolving that. So rather than just becoming static websites, it created much richer apps. And so you see the emergence of things like Google Maps and like really rich applications that you didn't have to download an app. And then now it's this almost like this third era. If you're moving into users have these things that they want to accomplish. And now agents are much more powerful in their ability to understand the user, ability to take actions on, on behalf of a user. But ultimately these should all be in service of a user. And that's where there's a lot of risk around. Well, will agents, what decision will they make? Will they make a decision that's best for the company that created them? Will they make a decision that's best for, you know, the browser? Will they make a decision that's best for the user? And different companies have very different motivations into why they're creating LLMs. But ultimately I look as where does the money come from? And that's ultimately probably where you're going to find the motivation. And so if you're maximizing shareholder value, you might have one set of decisions. And that's where the role of the browser, I think, is more important than ever to really look at making sure these are neutral, impartial, not serving ulterior motives in order to really just serve the user. And that's where at Firefox we really have built our browser to be user first. And we listen to our users and we're like, what do you want? How can we help you? And these are powerful tools, but we are building them in a way that is choice first. And so as we're rolling out, we wanted to make sure that we had all our features are opt in. You could choose different AIs, so you can choose an AI that is aligned with your values and what you want. We're not locking it into anything in particular. And then if you want to turn it off, you can turn it off. But the belief that we have is that competition matters. And the fact is that there are fewer browser engines today. There are only three major ones compared to there were five 15 years ago. And if there's only two that are controlled by companies that are big tech companies, there's a lot of risk that the agent doesn't perform what a user wants and in service a user, but is in more and more in service of the company.
- [10:46]
Alan Chappell
Yeah, I mean, I, I feel like there, there was a time when it, it was just obvious that all browsers sort of operated that way. And you kind of see the, the, the marketplace has shifted over the last 10 years and, and I find it interesting and I want to get to Kush in a second because from a public policy standpoint, browsers collectively have rightfully gotten the benefit of the doubt. Often, as you know, oh well, they're introducing this new thing and this is obviously to protect the user. And I think that, you know, this isn't a Mozilla issue, but I do think it is a browser issue that like, that isn't always the case and that monetization is sort of crept in where that becomes a larger and larger priority.
- [11:29]
Kush Amlani
You know, browsers have seen quite a few entrants in the last couple of years. For example, especially in the AI browser space, it was pretty static for a long time and there have been a lot of new entrants kind of AI first browsers. I think from my perspective, often the reason for these is because is distribution. Things often come back to distribution in my mind. And so if you think about you're an AI company, you've got an LLM and you need to get it to people. A browser is often a good way to do that. And often you've got to think behind that, like what are the motives of that company providing a browser? And you know, what does that mean for the user? I'd say for Mozilla, we've been here for 25 years and Firefox has been around since 2004. And we've been adhering to these principles for a really long time. And obviously we're evolving with the times, but our principles remain pretty solid. And I think it's kind of interesting to see how we can evolve.
- [12:19]
Alan Chappell
And what are some of the places that you're looking to maybe diversify revenue opportunities in a way that maintains the ethos of Internet for people, not profit.
- [12:29]
Ajit Varma
So we have launched a few products that are very aligned with our privacy stance. So if you look at things like vpn, we have email masking and we think that these are features where we try to get as much as possible for free. For instance, like last week we announced a free VPN that is built into Firefox, but there are paid tiers as well that we can look for over your diversification. In addition, we do have a new tab page which has different pieces of content and we also show some advertising there. But again, all of this can be turned off. And so for us, like, we want users to understand that in order to create a better service, we do need to find ways to monetize. But again, we really believe in choice first and foremost. Looking towards the future, there are a lot of ideas that we are working in within a new products team, within the overall Mozilla umbrella. And some of these things are like website building, tab stack, which is a way to take browser actions through a headless browser. And these are things that we also feel aligned to our principles around trust and privacy. And we do have a goal to become the most trusted software company across a lot of areas. And so these are things that are exciting. We're also investing quite a bit in something that a lot of people have asked us for, which is an enterprise version of Firefox. And in the enterprise, people care even more about privacy and really want the controls to tweak the browser. And by being an open source system where people can see the code itself that's written, there's a lot of trust that that brings. And so enterprises do want some more features into being able to control some of the like security settings and extensions and things like that. So we're building that. And this is actually even more popular than ever because you see a lot of countries in the world that want diversity in the browsers, that they have to make sure that they're not entirely reliant on one ecosystem. So we're seeing a lot of traction in places like Europe for things like our enterprise browser.
- [14:33]
Alan Chappell
And is that a good example of browsers sort of competing on privacy? Because I know that's sort of been a phrase that had been used a ton a decade ago, and I'm just wondering, is that still. It sounds like it's still part of your ethos, but I would love to dig in on a number of ways that Mozilla is competing on privacy.
- [14:54]
Ajit Varma
Yeah, I could talk a long time about privacy because Privacy really matters to us a lot. And one thing that I've looked at in my career is when I've seen how data is used, you realize that privacy is more important than ever. And also things that I would say, like, I never would have expected to happen in the world are definitely happening. And so you just go back to,
- [15:19]
Alan Chappell
well, it's been a rough year and a half. Ajit.
- [15:22]
Ajit Varma
Yeah, privacy matters even more. You know, you're like, well, why does it matter? Well, the government might be looking at your stuff. And so it really does matter. And I think that these go to, like, ebbs and flows where when people see actions and the risks that they face and the difference in their life when they don't have privacy. And a lot of stuff that we've done, we've not done a good job of explaining. So when you have your browser history on Firefox, it's end to end, encrypted. Like, no one can see your data, not even Firefox. And that's not true for other browsers. Like, there is a way to recover your browsing history. And we never explain it. All we say is, you have to enter a passkey. If you don't have a passkey, you can never get your data back. And people are like, well, that doesn't sound good. Well, but the reason is the trade off is we can't get it either. And so we have a big effort that we're talking about now around, like, felt privacy of, like, can we not just, like, show or do things that are really private, but really need to show users why it matters and that some friction is actually really beneficial. And so that's a big investment that we're having over the next few months. So really excited about our doubling down on privacy. And I really, if I were like, picking one value that I think is the most important that I want to win in is being the most private browser in the world. And I think we already are. But I want to make sure that we can explain that to users as well as the reason that that matters.
- [16:45]
Alan Chappell
So I like that positioning and maybe we can dig in a little bit more about, you know, how one goes about convincing a user base that these things are important. But Kush, I would imagine that you're having discussions amongst policymakers and like, you know, how does one convince them that this particular feature or functionality is super important?
- [17:08]
Kush Amlani
Yeah, it's a really good question. Because privacy and my space is competition. Right? And privacy and competition really interact with each other, as you mentioned previously. And you're very close to as well. Often where you see privacy used is as a shield to prevent competition. Right. Like it may prevent interoperability or it may prevent data sharing. And we view it differently. We think that privacy and competition actually are two things that can both. They're not mutually exclusive. Right. They can both be, be advanced together. And so that's kind of how we, how we look at privacy from our point of view is that actually if you enhance privacy and we build a, build a really good private product, actually we can compete on that basis as well. And from a regulatory perspective, when we're talking to regulators, what we're saying is that you should be very careful about things that undermine privacy in the name of competition, and vice versa, undermining competition in the name of privacy. We view these two things as not a race to the bottom, but a race to the top, and that we can compete on privacy with third parties. And I think regulators are increasingly getting that and understanding that, which is really important, because you don't want to have worse privacy, you don't have worse competition. We want to have both.
- [18:18]
Alan Chappell
Yeah. It does feel like regulators, certainly in the eu, are starting to wake up, that there is at least a tension between the two and that both need to be looked at. And I think, you know, going back 10 years, I think the focus was, well, if it's protective of privacy, that's the, you know, the fundamental right. That's the most important thing. And, and I tried to gently push back over the years and saying, like, look, it's important, but it's not the only thing. Because if at the end of the day, we're staring up at a cartel of five companies who have all of the data, that's always been the Orwellian nightmare. We're going to talk about books. That's been the Orwellian nightmare from my perspective. And I'm glad to see that policymakers around the world are at least starting to recognize that tension. So Mozilla has gone to great lengths to avoid selling users personal data. And how is that commitment maintained in practice here in 2026, and particularly in light of the broad definition of the terms personal data, and then at least in California Sale.
- [19:26]
Ajit Varma
Yeah. So I can talk a little bit about product side, I can hand it over to Kushtako a little bit about the policies. But the thing that I'd say about MO is like, we have a manifesto, we have a set of guiding principles, and these are things that we've published we want to work out in the Open so people can really see the values that matter to us and how we bond the product and how we use data is one of those important red lines that we have publicly talked about and that we don't want to cross. But there's a lot of subjectivity is kind of what I find. And so this is where there is a lot of like, well, what is the sale of data? And so it's interesting because it's like, well, if you're a company and you use all the data yourself, then well that's not cellular data, even though you're selling it to advertisers. And so it's a weird thing of like, okay, well is that worse or better for the consumer? And so you get into like, well, first party versus third party and what is actually like selling a data in. And these things, like things seem like simple on the surface but like when you get into a lot of like the details, like is a lot of like subjectivity and people feel strongly in different ways. And so I think that we are definitely adhering to our values. We are taking a very strict line. But ultimately that's why we have like built an open source browser and we have built in controls to tune anything that a user wants. Because if somebody wants to turn everything off, like if you want to turn off ads, if you want to turn off like Dish, if you want to use a different search engine, ultimately you can do all that within, within Firefox. And so hopefully the more educated users are, they can decide like what lines of privacy work for them and how much they want to support. This is the business models like organizations, which is very legitimate and valid, but people should have the choice to decide what they want on their own.
- [21:17]
Kush Amlani
Fair enough.
- [21:17]
Alan Chappell
Kush, I'd love to hear the public policy argument here or at least the competition and regulatory argument.
- [21:25]
Kush Amlani
Yeah, absolutely. I think actually I actually have a technical perspective. It might be surprising for a lawyer, but whenever I talk to our engineers, the thing they say to me is that the best thing about being an open source company is anybody can inspect the code and see what's happening. And that to me is a really powerful thing about being open source is that the transparency is there. Transparency is a key part of our manifesto. It's a key part of also how we build our products. And so I think those two things combined are pretty powerful. You can go and see what's happening to your data, you can see what telemetry we connect. And all of those things combined I think are very important for aligning to Our mission and ensuring that privacy remains at the heart of what we do.
- [22:05]
Alan Chappell
I, I will say historically, Mozilla has been one of the more transparent companies. I mean, you can, if you know where to look historically, you can find all kinds of policy deliberations and, and, and things. You guys have been very, very open about how you, how you tend to approach these things. But, but I'm, I'm just still curious. Like, you're up against some very hard and fast definitions of like, what a sale is. And, and I'm just curious have, like, how does one approach that? Is it just. Look, we're going to take the position this isn't a sale. We're so open that if anybody wants to disagree with that, they can, but they can certainly see what we're doing.
- [22:43]
Ajit Varma
Well, particularly like on, on the sale of data, we don't sell any data. Like, and adding this is like where, if you look at, okay, there's no data that leaves the browser that goes to someone else's server, and then they're paying us for that data in order to do it. Like, that is like, like a red line because we, we will definitely not sell browsing data. Where you get into things that are a little bit different, though, is, well, if someone wants to search for Google, well, that's something. That is how we monetize. Like, you're going into the search bar, but that relationship isn't really between us and the user. We say that that's a relationship between Google and the person who is ultimately making that search. And then they can choose to use other search engines like DuckDuckGo or StartPage. But to be clear, like, we're not selling user data. Like, that's a line we don't want to cross.
- [23:40]
Alan Chappell
Got it. So the idea is that since the user's going into a, for lack of a better term, a Google box or a DuckDuckGo box, that they are providing information about that search to Google. But it's not. You guys are sort of kind of out of it.
- [23:59]
Ajit Varma
Yeah. And then it's, it is like a little bit more like nuanced stuff when you're like, typing stuff into the search page. Like, we do show things like weather. We do show things like, you know, maybe local results and then there's like a monetization component of that. But the way we do it is like, we're not tying it to an individual user. And so there's like no, like, attribution. Like, it's basically like a single session of like, if you were Looking at a website and you see some keywords. And so we built a lot of like privacy protections and like anonymization obfuscation to basically protect users privacy. But there's a lot of like nuances. But to be totally clear it's like we take a very strict line on privacy and do not sell users personal data.
- [24:41]
Alan Chappell
I wanted to shift now to AI and I know that Mozilla has a set of AI principles and, and really you've been pretty vocal about the risks of concentrated AI infrastructure. So given that a handful of companies now control the foundational models that, including some tools that you know, Mozilla itself is integrating, like how is Mozilla going to avoid becoming dependent on the very concentration that it's warning against?
- [25:10]
Ajit Varma
So with AI, the good thing is there are a lot of choices that users have. And this includes not just like the big models that you know that are popular, but also there are many open source models, there are many regional models. And so these are everything from like Mistral, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini Quinn. And so for us, when someone goes to our new smart windows that we're building, the first screen that you'll see is a choice of which of these models do you want to use. And we try to make it simple for users so that it's not a need for like a very technical background but it's ultimately these are different trade offs and what would you like? But ultimately we are building hooks in to make sure that if somebody wants to build their own LLM they can plug that in as well. And then you also have our extension framework and so there's no need to build a browser. Like any power that you can build from building browser, you can actually take Firefox and extend it as well. And so we don't have the money to like build a total AI, but we don't think that's the right thing for us to do anyways. And then we just become like every other browser out there. And I look at it as there's so many sites that exist today because there wasn't a gatekeeper. Like Google came because you could go to a browser, ChatGPT, Facebook, like all these sites were possible because you could type a URL into a browser and there was no tax that was taken, there was no commission that was taken, there was no friction that was put in in the way by the platform. And that's kind of what we're looking at for AI as well. And so it's as simple as going to any URL and then taking that and putting it into a browser. But that is what I think is ultimately like about competition is you actually want to commoditize things and make everything accessible and make things easy to get so that things, there isn't a moat and there isn't a gatekeeper. And then competition, I think will take care of itself to ultimately deliver users what they value and then they just need to use the thing that aligns their own desires.
- [27:19]
Alan Chappell
Yeah, that's going to be a huge challenge. I think just thinking through the future of AI is I tend to agree with you that I don't think there's necessarily going to be one winner. And even if there is one Google like winner in the AI race, there's going to be so many different models that serve niche purposes. And so building a single browser to address that, all of those purposes, I think it could be a bit of a money pit. And so I kind of get where you guys are coming from on that. And look, you've always had sort of an ethos of, of user choice, you know, shifting, you know, to more of the privacy stuff. Even when it came to privacy signals, you know, those were always being turned on proactively by users. It wasn't something that you guys were doing by default. And I certainly appreciate that because that's not, not what all browsers are doing. So I'm curious though, and this is probably more of a kush question. It's a little bit more public policy, but you've been pushing for trustworthy AI standards at the policy level. And what does that actually mean in practice? And where do you see the biggest gap between what regulators are proposing and what the industry is either proposing and then what consumers actually need?
- [28:33]
Kush Amlani
Yeah, it's a great question. And just to clarify, we have a really good policy team. I'm actually a lawyer, but I can talk about AI and kind of how it's helped from the governance perspective. Kind of what we think. One of the key things, as we mentioned earlier, is open source. We think that open source is a great leveler and it's a very important element of, of any tech ecosystem and especially so for AI. So we've been doing work across Mozilla, including from the foundation and kind of other orgs within Mozilla to support open source AI, support the work, to even define what is open source AI to begin with, because there's also battles about how do you actually define it, what's open weights versus what is open source. So that's one element of it is Kind of supporting open source to ensure that. Actually going back to what I said before, you can inspect and you can see what the models are trained on and you can see how they're operating to the extent anyone can really understand that. So that's one important thing, is transparency. The other important part of AI that I think is less discussed is competition. I'm going to come back to my favorite topic, and the reason for that is that the way I see AI is almost a house and it's being built on a foundation. And the foundation that we have is the digital markets of the last 15 years. And in our view, there are a small number of quite powerful companies that control a lot of what we do online, right, including through operating systems and through devices. And they control a lot of what we can see, how we can use our devices. And if you're building AI on top of that and the foundation is already wonky, then our concern is that the house itself will also be wonky. And so what we really want to ensure is that there is competition in AI as well, and that it's not dominated by the same players that we've seen before. So what we need is to have user choice to begin with. That's super important. We need to have low barriers to entry so there can be innovation and competition from multiple angles. And we need interoperability to ensure that anyone can compete and can plug into operating systems and into browsers and into search engines and to provide their products. And so that's a really critical part of, I think, what we would like to see in the AI space from a sort of, from a broader kind of governance perspective.
- [30:48]
Alan Chappell
I love the let's make sure we aren't building on a weak foundation comment, because we're going through something very similar to that within the larger digital ad space as we move to agentic. It's sort of like how much of the existing infrastructure is just too laden with bad incentives. And know there's sort of a, a taste, great, less filling debate emerging within the, the larger ad space where, you know, one component of the industry says, well, we need to blow up everything because otherwise we're just going to have a slightly different version of the same, you know, the same set of issues. And then another segment of the industry is like, well, wait a minute, we've got all these, you know, great tools. Why throw the proverbial baby without, you know, out without the bathwater? And so I'm not sure where we're going to land. I'm, I'm at this Point. But, but I, I just love that framing.
- [31:40]
Kush Amlani
Kush, thanks. I'm glad I chimed with you. We, we think it's. I can see the parallels with ads as well and with kind of with that, that stack as well.
- [31:49]
Alan Chappell
So Mozilla has been a leader when it comes to privacy enhancing technologies. I mean the interoperable privacy attribution, privacy preserving attribution. You acquired a company a year, two years ago. Anonymous. How has your use of pets addressed the expectation of your user base?
- [32:09]
Kush Amlani
I mean, starting with Firefox, right? We've talked, you talked a bit before about the privacy protections we built into Firefox and the innovation we're doing, whether that's blocking cross site tracking or limiting data collection, trying to give people control. But there are also limits to that approach and especially as the underlying system depends upon tracking across sites. Right. So that protection can only go so far in our view. That's why we've also looked at privacy preserving technologies, privacy housing technologies, and also other companies like Anonym as well. And within Firefox there are things like Oblivious HTTP and they're rooted in a simple idea that privacy shouldn't be an afterthought, but it should be sort of built into Firefox and built into how the system works. So that's kind of one of the crucial ways about how we're looking at this. The thing about pets though, that I think I would underline is that on their own, we don't think they're sort of the whole solution. What matters is the direction. And we think that should be sort of moving towards a system that relies less on collecting and sharing personal data in the first place. That's really critical. Pets are sort of a way to deal with the world that we live in, but we would like to change that world to begin with. And there's also a competition angle here as well. The model is based on basic tracking and it favors many of the actors with the most data and the most first party data and control over that. And if you don't address that, then you just have concentration. It's a bit like an AI analogy. Again, the house has already built a wonky foundation, so you get a wonky house. And so we think all of these things kind of fit together. Pets are an important part of the solution, we would say, but they're not a whole solution on their own.
- [33:48]
Alan Chappell
So I love that framing. I would agree that I would like to see the ad space more generally, collect less data. Now, we might have a different definition of where that bar should be. And fair enough. But one of the challenges I think is if you don't collect any personal data just in generally speaking, it's harder to have a competitive cpm. And I'm curious if how are you guys thinking about that, that particular challenge?
- [34:18]
Ajit Varma
You're definitely right. Like, it makes things harder. And it's not actually just like CBMs, but it's even our ability to buy advertising to let people know about Firefox. Like we don't buy ads that are also violating our privacy principles. And I think that one of the benefits of being like a nonprofit foundation is we don't have to like maximize for profitability. And I think that that's just like the reality of many companies is when you have shareholders, that is the reason that the company exists. Whereas for us, our reason for existing is creating the best open Internet. And so this is definitely a trade off. It is definitely something that costs revenue. But we think it's the right side of where we land on the spectrum to ensure that people do have privacy and they do have choice. And you see a lot of companies that I think start with these values and then over time the values erode. Whereas for us, like I think we've maintained our values for a long time and a lot of that's just made
- [35:16]
Alan Chappell
possible by our overall structure that makes sense. I have a follow up because I think that another challenge I see with pets is you run into some transparency issues where one of the hardest things in the digital ad space is really having confidence. You know, where your ad is being shown, how your ad has performed. And oftentimes you're sort of reliant on big tech to provide you your attribution numbers. And so in my view, under that frame, when you look at pets, which sort of, you know, decrease as an advertiser, your level of transparency into what's going on, it sort of exacerbates some of those underlying problems. And I'm curious if you guys have kind of thought through some of those issues.
- [36:05]
Kush Amlani
I think transparency is obviously a really critical part of that ecosystem and it's something that sometimes is lacking. People don't necessarily understand what happens to their data to begin with at a very basic level for basic interactions on the web. And when you layer on pets as well, it kind of adds further complexity. And so I think that a lack of transparency is definitely a concern. And especially when there's so much concentration in that space, it sort of even reduces and then lack of competition even reduces the kind of need for transparency because there's no one there to be able to challenge how data is treated and what happens to it. For example, sharing data between different verticals within an ecosystem, that is not necessarily clear what happens there.
- [36:51]
Alan Chappell
Yep, that makes sense. Ajit, do you have anything to add?
- [36:55]
Ajit Varma
Yeah, I'd say we are very invested in creating an open Internet. And in order for people to create content, there has to be some economic incentive. And so with us, there is, I think, alternatives that we pose. And you mentioned the N and M acquisition. And that is because we think that there are better options and there's some trade offs around. Are you going to be able to detect every single person and how they move on every single site across the Internet? We think that there are ways to still have great monetization and great ROI for advertisers, while also not putting people, I'd say, in this echo chamber or bubble chamber. And you see a lot of the criticism is, is it good that people are convinced to buy stuff that they don't want to buy? And ultimately people have choice and they can make the decision. But I don't think that we're trying to be on purely on one side or the other, but we were trying to take a balanced approach.
- [37:56]
Alan Chappell
Well, fair enough. And, and look, these, these are not easy issues to address. And, and I'll give you guys credit, and I said the same thing to the DuckDuckGoat team when I had them on six 12 months ago. Like, you guys are putting your money where your mouth is because there is money being left on the table because you're trying to do things in the way that is aligned with your principles. And so you should be given some credit for that. So this has been a fantastic discussion. I really appreciate you both coming on. Before I let you go, my audience is sort of split between, you know, digital ads nerds and then regulatory nerds. And I'm, I'd love it if you would share, you know, what are one or two things that you would want to make sure that that audience understands about Mozilla?
- [38:42]
Ajit Varma
Yeah, so I think Mozilla, like, we want to make sure that there's like a healthy, vibrant, competitive ecosystem. And so when you look at things like gatekeepers, like, the reason that matters is because gatekeepers decide who goes into the gate and what are the terms for going through the gate. And so I think that that's like something, that's the reason that I met like Firefox and Mozilla is to make sure that there aren't gates to something as important as the Open Internet. And then on the ad side, I think that there are so many great technologies that are being built that can give great relevancy, giving the user what they want, but also making sure that users have a choice and the privacy as well. And so I'm really excited to see how the industry evolves. But again, I think that it only evolves if there's competition. And so that's why I was excited to talk here, because from the name of your podcast, too, they also, like you probably, probably get. Competition is important.
- [39:45]
Alan Chappell
Absolutely. Well, thanks. It's been a pleasure having you on. Kush, why don't you take us home?
- [39:50]
Kush Amlani
Yeah, sure. So I think one thing about Mozilla that people might not know, but should know is that, you know, we have our own browser engine and that we're one of only three companies in the world to do that. And the reason that we do it, you know, is probably the same reason that Microsoft stopped doing it in 2019 and Opera stopped doing it in 2013, is that it's expensive, it's very hard. It requires a lot of deep, deep expertise. But we do it because it allows us to not only kind of have a mission for the web to be open, accessible to all, but also to build that web ourselves and build the Internet the way that we think through standards and through our browser engine and through our browser. And so I think understanding that we have this thing called Gecko and that it's really precious and really important would be one thing I'd love people to take away.
- [40:31]
Alan Chappell
Yes, absolutely. Because I do think, you know, we've gone from five to three in a very short period of time, and we need. We need more, if anything. So, Kush Amlani and Ajit Varma, thank you both for coming on the pod.
- [40:47]
Ajit Varma
Thanks for having us.
- [40:48]
Kush Amlani
Thanks for having us.
- [40:51]
Alan Chappell
That was Ajit Varma and Kush Amlani from Mozilla. I really appreciate their sharing their insights. A few thoughts. The first thing I want to flag is the privacy competition tension, as that's really the core theme here at the Monopoly Report. For a long time, privacy was treated as the trump card in regulatory conversations. If something protected privacy, that alone was sufficient justification. Full stop. What policymakers have slowly come to understand, something many of us have known for a while, is that privacy arguments can be weaponized. They can be used to block interoperability, they can be used to restrict data portability, and they can use to entrench the very players who already have the most data. Cush's framing that privacy and competition are not mutually exclusive. That you can and should advance both simultaneously is the right framing, but balancing those interests can still be very, very messy. Second, it's worth noting that Mozilla is leaving money on the table deliberately. AJI was pretty direct about this. They don't buy ads that violate their own privacy principles. They take steps to encrypt or otherwise hide browsing history in a way that means even Mozilla can't access it. These are not costless decisions. There is real revenue implications here, and I think that Mozilla deserves credit for attempting to live up to their guiding principles. That type of behavior is particularly noteworthy here in the ads industry, where the gap between stated values and actual behavior is let's just say historically, it's been a little wide. In retrospect, there are a few places where I wish I'd gone a bit further. For example, the question of what actually constitutes a sale of personal data under California law is complicated, and I think that there are a whole bunch of companies that really do not have a clean answer to that question. I've been pretty clear that the US State privacy rules are over indexed on cross context data sharing and nowhere near focused enough on data sharing across co owned contexts. And that's one of the reasons that you have almost every ad tech company registered as a data broker, but no sign of Gray Google or any other big tech company. To be clear, none of that is Mozilla's fault. In retrospect, I wish that we drilled down a bit more on sending search data to Google and others for monetization. A good deal of their responses hinge on the question of whether users really understand that they are sending their search data to Google when they enter a search into Firefox. Personally, that strikes me as a debatable point. But then if it isn't really clear to users where their search strings go, I think that opens Mozilla and other browsers up to questions regarding whether the transfer of those search strings constitute a sale of personal data. In hindsight, I could also have asked for Mozilla's view on the global privacy control, particularly in light of my recent Monopoly Report piece declaring that GPC could be anti competitive. I didn't ask about it because I don't think it's really Mozilla's fight. One of the reasons I think GPC signals are anti competitive are because other browsers will turn them on by default. And while I may not be aligned on every issue with Mozilla, I do want to acknowledge that they have a long history of keeping privacy signals off by default so that they only get turned on by users who want them turned on. But here's what I'll say the reason this show exists is because market concentration really matters. It matters in search, it matters in social, it matters in ad tech, and it matters in browsers. The fact that we still have a gecko Mozilla's browser engine means that we still have a third path, a path that isn't Google and isn't Apple. And that's worth something, perhaps more than most people realize. We've got a bunch of other fantastic guests coming up on the Monopoly Report podcast over the next few weeks. I'll have Andrew woods, the GC of PubMatic, on to talk about their adventures in agentic advertising, and I'll also have the legendary journalist turned entrepreneur John Vital sometime in April. We are literally bursting into spring here on the Monopoly Report. Please subscribe to the show@monopolyreportpod.com or on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And thanks for listening.
- [45:37]
Ajit Varma
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