Firefox earns Mozilla $52.9m in 2005

Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 4th January 2007
Comments (18) Stumble
Firefox earns Mozilla $52.9m in 2005

Firefox continues to grow from strength to strength, giving Mozilla long term stability.

Mitchell Baker, Chairman of Mozilla, has revealed that the company's open source Firefox web browser earned a hefty $52.9 million during 2005 on his weblog.

This shows a significant growth over the revenues from 2003 and 2004, where the company earned $2.4m and 5.8m respectively. This is merely down to the massively increased popularity for Firefox, which stood at 14% of the total browser market in December 2006.

The majority of the revenue increase came from the relationships that Mozilla has established with the big search engines, where it gets paid for traffic that it sends to search engines via the browser's built-in search feature.

Baker goes on to state that the company spent $8.2m, with the majority of this expense being put back into the open source community that helps to develop add-ons for Firefox, Thunderbird and other open source Mozilla products. Finally, he said that the unspent revenue will act as a reserve fund that will give the Foundation long term stability and flexibility.

We expect the figures for 2006 to be higher, as the browser's market share has continued to increase during the last year, but Baker hasn't disclosed those figures yet.
Quote DougEdey 4th January 2007, 13:33
How does it earn money?
Quote Fusen 4th January 2007, 13:34
Quote:
The majority of the revenue increase came from the relationships that Mozilla has established with the big search engines, where it gets paid for traffic that it sends to search engines via the browser's built-in search feature.

the top corner search box and the fact google search is used when a word is entered in as a URL
Quote riggs 4th January 2007, 13:46
That's one hell-of-a-lot of cash considering the software is free to end-users.
Quote BioSniper 4th January 2007, 14:00
That's just plain impressive. At least I now know that by using the built in search feature I've done my bit to support the software.
Unlike my rather daft uncle who believes installing Google search bar on a browser that already has is is a good idea. It seems he didn't hear the bit I said about it having a built in pop-up blocker and search function :(
Quote cpemma 4th January 2007, 15:10
Many of the extra search engine plugins have a re-direct in the code;
Quote:
* Plugins marked (Support Mycroft) contain affiliate links and may use off-site redirects where that is the official method.
As Tesco say, "Every little helps..."
Quote rupbert 4th January 2007, 15:17
Props to Firefox.
Quote DarkReaper 4th January 2007, 15:47
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpemma
Many of the extra search engine plugins have a re-direct in the code
That would be why my ebay uk search keeps wanting to set cookies for some other site... That was making me very paranoid!
Quote Tyinsar 4th January 2007, 15:49
Yay, I'm glad to see Mozilla is healthy. Without them (or a similar free alternative) we'd still be on IE5
Quote Techno-Dann 4th January 2007, 17:10
Yeah. And people say there's no money in Open Source...
Quote pumpman 4th January 2007, 18:19
I believe MR Linus is a wealthy man too
Quote trailblazer 4th January 2007, 18:47
Sounds good to me, they put the best part of $8m back into development of add-ons etc and are keeping the rest to give long term stability to the foundation.
Quote Ringold 4th January 2007, 19:11
Quote:
Originally Posted by Techno-Dann
Yeah. And people say there's no money in Open Source...

There's not, until they grow up.

They could be sticking to some anti-corporate ideal where they take no money or some such thing.. but Mozilla figured out apparently it's good to be able to feed their families. :)

At least, I hope they're paying their top coders!

Red Hat though, they've followed the same commercialization path.

Some refuse to make a buck, like 7-zip.org. But the good ones.. like teenagers rebelling against authority, the good ones grow up and join the dark side, making a dime one way or another. ;)
Quote Lazarus Dark 4th January 2007, 22:58
must be nice to have 40+ mil in reserve if you're only spending 8 mil a year, not many companies have such a large percentage in reserve.
Quote eddtox 4th January 2007, 23:24
I think they deserve it. Firefox is an amazing browser and it doesn't cost the user a penny. Oh, and it doesn't have any adverts either. It's good to know that it's development is assured for a while yet.

-ed out
Quote speedfreek 4th January 2007, 23:35
Quote:
Originally Posted by eddtox
I think they deserve it. Firefox is an amazing browser and it doesn't cost the user a penny. Oh, and it doesn't have any adverts either. It's good to know that it's development is assured for a while yet.
Yep, keep some stashed away for when they need it.
Quote Frogger 5th January 2007, 01:47
Mitchell Baker is a woman:
http://economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5300269
Quote Generic42 5th January 2007, 02:00
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringold
At least, I hope they're paying their top coders!
Sounds like they don't get paid, at least the link above this posts says so
Quote Lenny_Nero 6th January 2007, 00:16
But I heard a high up coder (top 5 or 6 in mozilla) say that this was a joke in a podcaste the other day and he had heard nothing of the sort... I will have to go back and find exactly what he did say and his name.

I am glad if this 'is' true as the best code will always be OSS as its done for the love of the code or the prog and not just done to pay the bills like all payware is. FF is a top product and TBH there is no reason to use any version of IE ever again :)
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