Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Raking in Millions?
truthsearch writes "Internetnews.com wonders about the money Firefox is making in revenue thanks to Google. From the article: 'Mozilla gets paid a publicly undisclosed amount for each Google search query made from Firefox by a user.' This revenue is used to pay the recently formed Mozilla Corporation's 40 full-time equivalent employees and fund project and infrastructure development."
...if the dollar figure is in the hundred thousands, millions, or billions? Just a thought...people seem to be overrating how much they are actually making (costs aside).
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
good on them.
I salute them!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
Again, maybe they could spend some of that money refactoring their modular implementation to allow disable-output-escaping in XSLT when the output method isn't xhtml... (even if it causes a second pass when disable-output-escaping is set to true)..
l y_implement_XSLT_in_Firefox
http://digg.com/technology/Mozilla_refuses_to_ful
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
Hey, if they make a great browser like Firefox, they deserve it. I just tried the new IE7, and it's horrible imo. Too overdone. I like firefox's simplicity and power.
I really don't understand the question here. Is he implying that Mozilla pockets the money? Or do they want to audit the profits? Just because an Open Source company is making money pundits start to ponder what will the money be used for?
They get the money from the search bar from gogle. Users benefit, google benefits, Mozilla benefits. Profits go to development of their current and future products. Want to know more? Why not contact them directly?
Sounds like they are playing the guilt-trip card.
:)
Of course it's publically undisclosed. Why do they need to disclose it? They have no obligation to, really, as a private entity (rather than being on the stock market or so).
If they are raking in the money, great! Software developers need to get paid!
Some moron in an online editorial is curious what mozilla is doing with its money , why the heck should mozilla disclose how its using its money ? free software doesnt mean you have to account for every penny you earn , they built a heck of a browser let them reap the benefits of what they sowed. --- Must be a dull day for the editors @ /. Go home and have a beer fellas tis the weekend --
.... other open source software.
Don't forget, it's in Google's best interest that the internet in general becomes less Microsoft dependent, and that the alternatives be Google friendly. Any excuse to support Firefox is a good one for them, and doing it as a business venture adds legitimacy and opens the door to future collaboration. And personally, I probably make more google searches because of the ease of doing so with firefox.
It's a conservative estimate until you use $0.02 per click. I doubt that it is anywhere near that high. Either way there is currently no way of knowing how high/low the price is so any figures are wild speculation at best.
The real risk is that Google might start wanting some more out of Mozilla. If they fund the whole thing one might consider that they have too much to say. Of course you'd have to be very creative to figure out an example...
Also, Google might actually be dependant on being represented in Firefox. What if Mozilla screws them and get a deal with Yahoo? Ooops... there goes say 100 mio. daily searches..
"That Google pays content and search partners, as well as AdSense participants, is not new. What is interesting, however, is the amount that Mozilla earns from its users' Google queries.
One blogger has speculated that the figure is as high as $72 million in fact.
Mozilla Corporation board member Chris Blizzard said that the $72 million figure is not correct, "though not off by an order of magnitude."
Why not call it by its name? What's wrong with giving actual numbers? If someone gives these guys money why not advertise it?
Anyway, of course this kind of money helps firefox to progress. But what I don't like is the idea that this project may act too much dependend and not transparant. I like Google's money to be in open source project, but I hate the idea this project will be seduced by corporate interests instead of user interest that will maybe occur in th future. As a user and open source developer I highly value transparency.
They don't have much choice...Microsoft had essentially destryed "direct" market by driving browsers price to zero. And they need _some_ ways to fund their development.
Yup and it isn't as if there is anything morally wrong about OOS projects making money as long as it doesn't violate GPL and the profits go toward funding the project? Personally I don't mind, there are plenty of examples of non-profit organizations that have revenue streams so why get upset over the Mozilla project joining that group as long as the money doesnt' corrupt them?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Not that its really an idea for Mozilla or any other project. Or is it ? In terms of funding through Google, their ad models not only fund browsers rather well, but pretty much the entire web site eco system. Who isn't getting money from the Google Ad Business Model these days ?
Amazing, although, of course there is a difference between apps getting money and sites getting money. (Have to admit, though, I didn't even know until recently that browsers had that much of an income opportunity just through that Google search field.) Will Google encroach on the big ad agencies' turf soon ?
I'm not opposed to the foundation making money I just want to know where it's going. Why is the foundation so fucking circumspect about telling us?
Time to switch to Opera I guess...at least I know who is making what there.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Imagine that, Mozilla has income.
Here all this time I thought the bandwidth to distribute 100 million coppies at 5 mb each & the occasional updates was being pulled out of the ass of bandwidth faries.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Is it sustainable? Depends if they're making a direct profit from Firefox users. I don't mean an increase in people using their search engine over others, I mean a per-use profit (as in, I do a search in Firefox using Google, Google earns $0.30 and gives Firefox $0.10), then yes, I'd say it is sustainable. Google is currently making a profit all up, so if Firefox users aren't eating into that profit, it should be able to continue indefinitely (unless other things begin to eat too much into Google's profits).
A few problems with your argument:
1: Opera would be making just as much money if they had as many users as Firefox. Google just pays Adsense cash out. Also, there would be MONSTROUS vetching if they paid all those bloggers but not the Mozilla Foundation. Opera can only blame themselves for being less popular than Firefox.
2: Opera Software a tiny 230-person company? Uh................. Compared to Mozilla, which was / is freeware? Who measures the size of a freeware company? I mean, the Mozilla Foundation might have the biggest bottom line in bloody history for their type of company, at this point. They produce a software product, and give it away. That's it. All their sales are incidental. People can even pick google, yahoo, amazon, creative commons, and yahoo in the little search box (probably more, if extended).
This is a weird era of software. Make something useful enough and you will make money incidentally due to Google Adsense. Weeeeeird.
And, of course, there are downsides. My bet is that the Firefox team gets decadent and corrupt and doesn't do anything and fades into the background as IE X comes out or something. I hope not, but that is a real possibility - Microsoft often wins through complacency.
I'm druknet and going to bed now.
My little site.
"....to astroturf even. And I wonder if they are - they appear to have an unreasonable amount of support on sites like this...."
They get "an unreasonable amount of support" because they use the GPL, there is no conspiracy, take away the GPL and they all look pretty much the same. In fact that is the whole point, they can't legally take away the GPL for code that has already been released. Rightly or wronly many "intellectuals" associate open source with freedom and indepenence.
Money motivates and astroturf happens, but "on sites like this", the GPL stamp is what drives the genuine enthusiasim amongst people who do know their stuff. If you don't "do software" for a living the GPL may seem obscure, but trust me, the GPL is important not only to geeks, but also an ever growing number of corporations and governments.
When I worked for IBM in the 90's, the then CEO, Lou Gerstner said: "All software has been written, it just needs to be managed". None of us geeks had a fucking clue what he was talking about and simply laughed at his seemingly bizzare pronouncments. Ironically I now make a good living by stiching software components together, many of them open source.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
it should be possible to confirm this to a reasonable degree of satisfaction.
Non-profits, while they don't pay taxes, go through the same auditing process that private companies do. They also have to submit a "Form 990" to the Feds, which is roughtly equivalent except that it is public information. The first section of the form is gross revenues, under which income from contributions and program service revenue are different lines.
So, if the line for program and service revenue is nearly 100 million, they're probably not getting it from giving backrubs.
There may be additional state disclosures required, depending on where they're incorporated. For example, here in Massachusetts, it's possible to find out CEO salaries for non-profits. This is designed to prevent people from funneling estate money to their heirs through shell charities.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't understand the mental leaps that could reach such a conclusion.
Nobody knows how much money Google has given Mozilla. But hey, it's Google, Google's rich, therefore Google must have given Mozilla 50 BILLION DOLLARS hence Mozilla must be an evil den of scam artists, cheating HARD WORKING salt-of-the-earth taxpayers out of money to feed their children whilst they worship Satan and drink baby blood for refreshment.
Um. Right.
Mozilla has a large number of employees it has to pay. I work for a software startup that has a tenth the number of employees, that operates quite frugally and isn't blowing millions in venture capital like a lot of IT startups have... and yet it *still* has basic operating costs of tens of thousands of dollars a month. Scale that to Mozilla's case and you begin to see it's not fair to expect them to conduct business on insert-unrealistic-personal-expectation -of-"nonprofit"-revenue-here dollars a year. Employees cost money. Office space costs money. Utilities cost money. A *lot* more money than you seem to think it does.
Yes, my company is for-profit, but that only matters once we start making more than we're spending...
Additionally, "non-profit" isn't some self-applied fuzzy term that a manager can just decide to ignore when it's convenient - there's a raft of legal and taxation obligations placed on any company with non-profit status. Auditors have to make a living after all...
Kept at bay?
WTF, they're two frigging clicks away or something, just click "Add Engines" in your search bar and boom dozens of search engine plugins for you to install...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Well you can fork the code and make a version that doesn't make any money for anyone. That is, if you're willing to work for free.
So. . . You don't do anything if you aren't being paid, (or unless you are paying some company for the pleasure of spending your time with their product or service)?
I hope you are mis-reporting yourself.
I use Firefox and I am very glad to have it. I am not a programmer, so I give my time in other ways to the world in the desire to make things better for the people around me. My community is a good and happy one, and it remains a good and happy one because a lot of people here enjoy donating their time and energy to others. It reciprocates nicely in all manner of ways which money cannot (and should not) measure.
Living in a community filled only with people who refuse to lift a finger unless they are being paid sounds utterly and completely miserable.
I'm not saying we don't all have bills at the end of the month. But I am saying that it's vital, if you want a healthy and happy community, that people learn to share and help each other. --Work-for-money fuels the basic structure. Work-for-free fills the structure with color and life.
-FL
If you RTFA, a Mozilla board member says that the quoted figure of $72 million is too high
Uh, actually if you RTFA, he says that $72 million is not correct. They could be making considerably more than that.
Well that's true, but in the context it seemed rather more likely he meant the figure was lower. Otherwise it would be a rather evasive and misleading answer, and I was being charitable to the guy. ;-)
Heck, Google even pays people to work on Mozilla (Ben Goodger?), and I think IBM and several other major companies do as well.
Clever signature text goes here.
transparency is crucial to ethical behavior
Just a question, do you think that all private companies should be required to publicly disclose their financials, like publicly traded companies are, in the interests of "ethical behaviour"?
If you owned a private business would you think it's best to keep your finances public? (One problem with this line of thinking is that the smaller the business, the more blurry the line between the individual and the company --- at some point one would inevitably have to also then argue that the financials of an individual should be public information, and then hence, every individual's. It isn't really my business what my neighbour is spending his money on so long as his actions aren't harming me or others - and if they are, it's usually possible to tell regardless of transparency due to the consequences.)
I'm not convinced that transparency is vital to maintain ethical behaviour within an organisation. If it was, private companies would be havens of illegal behaviour, yet we already have enough checks and safeguards against actual illegal activities that transparency isn't really necessary to keep the system working ... there are millions of private companies that are run quite ethically. For example I own a private business and of course do not release my financials ... but there is little opportunity for me to behave unethically or illegally (even if I wanted to, which I don't), because my financials are still audited and because it wouldn't be possible for me to charge others without delivering the product - I'd get sued.
I don't see mention of Mozilla's "business model" anywhere on their site, and that disappoints me
I start to agree with you somewhat here: The Mozilla Foundation tends to "parade itself" almost as a kind of charity / non-profit organisation. But clearly there is a "business model" of sorts. This seems deceptive. Without transparency, the executives could be (for example) paying themselves millions. This isn't necessarily illegal but would be unethical. This is the real issue here and what "nags", not the mere fact that they make money or that they market.
Mozilla. And of course AOL which put a lot of money into the project initially. Opera has not been able to rely on donations from other companies
Sure. But why do you think all of those companies were willing to donate time and money to Mozilla, but not to Opera?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So? Firefox is open source, Opera is not. I personally could care less (I run Windows) but obviously IBM et al are going to throw their money at the open source product over the proprietary one.