14 DAY TRIAL // It's not much of a secret to anyone that's been interested in it, but Mozilla makes most of its money, 98 percent of it last year, from the search deals it has with search engines and a couple of ecommerce websites.
It's perhaps a bit ironic that Google is funding the development of its main rival in the browser market, but the arrangement makes sense for both parties and will likely continue as is for many years to come.
Mozilla revealed in its yearly State of Mozilla report that it made $123 million, EUR 136 million, in 2010 about 18 percent more than in the previous year.
"The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners," it said in the report.
Mozilla reveals these numbers in fall of each year for the year before that, so they may be a bit old. But they're relevant nonetheless.
Of 2010's revenue, the vast majority, 98.45 percent, came from royalty payments, aka money from the search providers included in the Firefox search box.
Mozilla gets a small amount of money every time a user starts a search via the Firefox search box or the Awesomebar. The search engines that are included by default all pay for each user that Firefox sends their way.
In most countries, Google is the default option, while other choices are Yahoo, Bing, Amazon and eBay. Very recently, as of Firefox 7, Twitter is also included as a built-in search option. The financial nature of the Twitter deal, if any, is unknown.
In Russia and Russian-speaking countries Yandex is the default option instead of Google and in some places in Asia, Yahoo is preferred. The choice is based only on the respective search engine's standings in a country.
With a few hundred million users, Mozilla manages to bring in quite a tidy sum and funds Firefox but also projects such as Thunderbird and broader web initiatives, such as BrowserID.
Mozilla is dependent on search money, most of which come from Google. So, for the longest time, a favorite doomsday scenario for those that enjoy engaging in these things has been, what if Google stopped paying Mozilla.
"We currently have partnerships with a number of search providers that differ by market. Our largest contract, with Google, comes up for renewal in November," Mozilla revealed.
"We have every confidence that search partnerships will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future," it said.
Google Chrome's success makes this scenario seem more plausible, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
The fact is, Google benefits from the many billions of searches that Firefox sends its way. Some studies determined that Google's search volume which originated from the Firefox search box, was bigger than both Bing's and Yahoo's total volume.
Google would not have anything to gain by stopping to pay for these searches and it would not help Google Chrome gain any more market share either.