The organization made $123 million, EUR 136 million from search deal and donations in 2010

Oct 10, 2011 15:50 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla has released its yearly State of Mozilla report. We may be getting close to 2012, but Mozilla is only now wrapping up 2010. The latest report focuses on the threats to the organization and Firefox, future opportunities, as well as Mozilla's overall mission.

In its report, Mozilla argues that Firefox came about at a time in the web's history when it was under the threat of being controlled by a few large companies.

Firefox was the answer to Internet Explorer and it arguably spurred others to join the competition.

Now, Firefox's position is threatened by increasingly powerful players, Chrome and Safari, again, both controlled by large corporations.

"We faced and won that challenge together then, and we need to face it again in this new era," Mozilla writes.

"Mozilla is unique in that we build Firefox to provide an independent offering focused solely on individual experience and the overall good of the Web," it said, focusing on the differentiating factor compared to the other popular browsers.

The organization believes it is in a good position. It has transitioned to a much faster, six-weeks, release cycle, it is now available on the Android platform and it's working on several big projects to shape Firefox and the web.

Identity is as important as ever in today's web, but users only have a false choice, either go with Facebook, or Google, or Twitter or any other similar company. Mozilla's BrowserID aims to be a real independent and disinterested option for users.

Mozilla is also working on a web app platform, in response to Google's, which, again, aims to provide an open alternative.

Another example of how Mozilla plans to shape the web is with Boot to Gecko, it's answer to Chrome OS, an open, built-for-the-web operating system.

The yearly report also focused on its financial performance. Mozilla gets most of its money from the search deals with various websites. The biggest is with Google, which is the default option in the search box in most countries, but it also works with Yahoo, Bing, Yandex and others.

Overall, Mozilla has generated $123 million, EUR 136 million, up approximately 18 percent from 2009. But expenses have grown as well, up from $61 million, EUR 45.6 million to $87 million, EUR 65 million.