Mozilla has always relied a lot on Google for making money with Firefox. However, it would seem those days are now in the past as the company recently announced that relying on Google is no longer the case.
For quite some time, Mozilla's primary source of income came from Google. This is because both companies signed a deal that allowed Google to become the default search engine in Firefox. In 2014 alone, Mozilla earned over $330 million in revenue from this deal. In that same year, the contract came to an end, and Mozilla was free to strut its stuff.
At the end of 2014, Mozilla decided to partner with other search engine companies in different regions. For example, instead of having Google as the default search engine in U.S., China and Russia, Mozilla partnered with Yahoo, Baidu and Yandex respectively.
Interestingly enough, Mozilla does not earn not one drop of revenue from Google, despite the popular search engine still being the default in Europe.
"We don't have a commercial relationship with Google at this point," Denelle Dixon-Thayer, chief business and legal officer at Mozilla, said. "It goes back to our strategy of how we can encourage more competition."
We're not certain why Mozilla is no longer making money from Google, but it doesn't seem to be an issue for the company seems confident of the amount of money it expects to make this year.
"We really look forward to displaying our results next year," says Jim Cook, Mozilla's chief financial officer. "2015 will show our continued track record of really strong financial results."
The need for Mozilla to stay up and running is very important because it is the strongest open source browser company. While there are other open source web browsers, no one comes close to what Firefox offers and its overall potential.
Mozilla is also dabbling in the mobile space with its Firefox web browser for Android and iOS. Still, the company is finding it difficult to break into the mobile market because default operating system browsers such as Chrome and Safari are already really good for most users.
We should also point out that Mozilla is hoping to have its own operating system, Firefox OS, become a big player in the mobile market. Nothing much has happened, but the company is looking for valuable partners.
Photo: Mozilla in Europe | Flickr
