| "The article is not saying "Firefox doesn't need any corporate money". Corporate deals are really the only reason why they're still alive at all since they are virtually nonexistent in mind share. Instead, the article is simply saying that Google wised up and realized they had no need to give Mozilla that much money so instead, Mozilla convinced other gullible corporations to give them money. Once that stream dries up (and it will), Mozilla will meet the fate that it deserves and die." == I don't see why this text was offensive or the comment was killed by flags... The article clearly says that 2014 revenues was something like $300 million and most if not all was from a single-point corporate contract. Somehow, undisclosed in the article, all of this revenue has been replaced by non-google corporate contracts. Such that 2015/2016 will presumably not see much decline. Or, in other words, Mozilla was able to fully replace one Corporate sponsor with another (or another set). The key question for everyone here is what, if anything, does that matter? By not explaining of discussing the changes in the terms of the contracts/business model, not much at all transparency has been added to Mozilla's motivations or long-term outlook. Maybe this info is out there somewhere else, but decent reporting should have highlighted those links somewhere in tha artcicle. I'm surprised as well HN comments don't seem to cover this topic anywhere either, but maybe I;ve missed the discussion somewhere... |
Mozilla gets the bulk of its revenue from search deals.[1] For 9 years, from 2005 to 2014, Google paid Mozilla to set Firefox's default search provider to be google.com. In those 9 years, the Firefox browser share rose to peak of ~30% in 2010 and then fell consistently due to competition from Chrome.[2]
In 2014, when Google's contract with Mozilla came up for renewal, Firefox browser market share was just 12.4%.[3] Google probably decided that continuing to pay Mozilla the same amount of money for much less traffic wasn't worth it, so they didn't renew.
Mozilla then locked Yahoo! into a five-year contract.[4] One year into the Yahoo deal, Firefox's browser market share is now 9.8%.[3] If the long term declining trend continues, four years later the market share would be even smaller. That's when Yahoo!'s contract ends.
That's also when the question will arise: if Google paid $300 million a year for search traffic from 12.4% browser share in 2014 who will pay how much for far less search traffic in 2019?
[1] Nov 25, 2015: Mozilla’s 2014 annual report: Revenue up 4.9% to $329M, 90% came from Google and Yahoo http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/25/mozillas-2014-annual-repor...
[2] Wikipedia: Usage share of web browsers > Historical usage share > StatCounter (July 2008 to present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#St...
[3] Oct 21, 2015: Firefox will fight back against intrusive advertisers http://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-will-fight-back-against-int...
[4] Nov 19, 2014: Yahoo and Mozilla Form Strategic Partnership https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/yahoo-and-mozilla-for...