Mozilla's "What If..." Situation

by Kristin Shoemaker - Nov. 20, 2008Comments (6)

The Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker reported yesterday that Mozilla's revenues were up approximately 12% in 2007 over 2006. She also mentions a few matters that are worrisome. Though eWeek's Joe Wilcox's predictions of Firefox's demise are premature and without a doubt require a sizeable grain of salt, he makes a good point concerning revenues coming from Google versus Google's commitment to the Chrome browser.

If you happened to view the Wilcox link prior to Baker's revenue reports, it's not that dire. It's not that dire now, nor is it likely to be in the very near future, but he is correct that it is something Mozilla needs to concern itself with now, so that it never becomes the secenario he's describing.

Baker says Mozilla gets a significant amount of revenue from Google from searches performed through the Firefox/Google start page. Wilcox states it is 88% of the annual revenue. Without seeing the spreadsheet and doing the math, I can't verify that figure, but it seems within reason. He poses the very valid question: Why would Google continue to pay for promoting itself through an application for which it offers a competing product?

The obvious answer is that Chrome right now is no Firefox. It's not offered for Linux or Mac. It's not got a lot of the plugins and extensions that Firefox has. Google is certainly able to throw weight and cash into intensive development and promotion, and if and when it sees fit, no doubt it will.

It is selling the Mozilla team short to toll the bell for Firefox now. The Google search/start page agreement, for starters, was recently extended until 2011. A lot can happen between here and there for both parties, and Mozilla didn't get where it is today without thinking and planning ahead.

Is Firefox a dead browser walking? I don't see it. It sounds more like Browser War II might be declared as 2011 approaches.

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by TellMe on Nov. 21, 2008

My Prediction: Chrome will fail and mozilla will essentially run as a google subsidiary. GOOG doesn't care about the $100M or even $500M for that matter that Mozilla could potentially generate just as long as its taking market share away from MSFT

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by Karim Ratib on Nov. 22, 2008

While I love Firefox's plugin ecosystem, I think it could use some serious competition. Its version 3 running on Ubuntu Intrepid has hung my whole OS quite a few times already. I didn't even know it was possible to do that to Linux! I think the FF team needs to focus on less new features, better engineering for the next release.

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by an anonymous user on Nov. 24, 2008

There is one good reason for google to start this Chrome project, and this reason i called money. If Chrome is becoming treat for Firefox, then Google could require a much better agreement with Firefox.

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by Rey Bango - Mozilla on Nov. 24, 2008

Thanks for a great writeup Kristin. Nice to see someone who is not being an alarmist post a decent article on this. It's funny how few people realize just how important this relationship is to Google, even with Chrome out. It's always viewed as a one-sided relationship but believe me when I tell you that Google values this as much as Mozilla does.

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by Richard on Nov. 25, 2008

I think it's in Google's interest to have both Firefox and Chrome - with two browsers it can grab more market share from IE than if it had only one. Inevitably there will be differences that mean some people will prefer one or the other.

Google isn't short of money to fund Firefox, compared to the huge amount of revenue it can make from keeping the Internet more open (by reducing IE's market share) - so I think it will simply keep funding Firefox for many years to come. Only if and when Firefox's market share is much smaller than Chrome's would it turn the tap off.

However, it would be wise for Mozilla to start exploring alternative sources of revenue soon, e.g. Yahoo search, or Yahoo/other search advertising on Mozilla support forums etc.

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by Richard on Nov. 25, 2008

@Karim: Firefox isn't hanging your whole Linux system - that really isn't at all likely and I've never seen it happen. More likely you have some wider problem on your Linux box, maybe drivers, and Firefox is triggering this bug.

When you get this, try hitting Ctrl/Alt/Backspace which will kill your graphical session - if Linux is still responding to the keyboard that proves Firefox didn't "kill Linux". Also, see the "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring" trick at http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5188761&postcount=18 - this is a safer way to reboot your Linux box if needed.

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