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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."
good on them.
I salute them!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
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!
Do they also get $ from searches on ebay, amazon, or yahoo (which are also listed on the toolbar)?
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.
One that hath name thou can not otter
So you are telling me that for every googeling I do in the quick search bar mozzila gets paid. I was under the impression that this was free software. Not some scam to make $$.
By using this link to get to the story ;-)
Interesting to note the default "google" keyword for the address bar puts the sourceid=firefox in there
As an aside, for those who want to make their own custom keywords (and don't know how to), here's an example: Bookmarks->Manage Bookmarks, click on any of the bookmarks under "quick searches", click new bookmark (top left), I made one for acronyms using acronym finder.
Name: Acronym Finder
Location: right click here, copy link location, paste (/. chews up the link)
Keyword: af
Description: You can put whatever you want here, it's optional
Then you click ok. Now when in firefox you can just search for acronyms by typing af + the acronym, for example: af HTTP
For other websites that use a link similar to the acronymfinder one, just insert %s where your query would go. In my example it's in Acronym=%s. You can also note the other default quicksearches that already exist (ex. slang for urban dictionary, dict for dictionary.com)
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Lets do some basic math and see how the numbers add up.
... but still A LOT MONEY !!
- Of the 100 million downloads lets say 20% are daily/active users -> 20 2illion users.
- Of the 20 million daily users, lets says 20% do make at least 1 search query. -> 4 million queries/day.
- If google pays around 0.02c a query. They get 80k/day x 30 days = 3.2Mil x 12 months =~ 38 Mil right there. A conservative number
I salute them!
With which finger?
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 --
Firefox has been mentionned based on their search bars, a while ago the German version of Firefox was said to have "spyware"
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
This is a great example of an open source program making money off its success. It wouldn't be impossible for other open source programs to do similar sponsorship deals with other companies.
Maybe Linux could have a "You know, Windows has a lower TCO" message when it's booting up.
Google has the same system for Opera, which leads me to conclude they want Opera and Firefox to be the top browsers (which wouldn't be a bad situation, if you ask me).
Judging by how little I use Google's front page any more, I am guessing that the future of search engines is through the browser's search bar. Should the day come where the world is dominated by Mozilla and Opera, it would be very hard for any other search engine to buy into the "put me first in your browser's search bar" setup when Google already has 4 years of paying Opera/Mozilla for just that.
Google is probably quite aware they will lose their power in the search field if they treat users as a commodity. The fact that Google makes sense as the default search engine now won't make a difference in 4+ years.
Zing!
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..
Statistically speaking firefox users are more tech savy. Which therefore transaltes to more socially dysfunctionally people, which ends is a much more searches for pr0n. Remove the pr0n searches and Firefox employees are picking up cans after hours in the Google parking lot to subsidize their salary.
Unless the anti-establishment mavericks in tech communities like SlashDot aggressively support Opera by buying commercial Opera-Software products, Opera just might disappear, being squeezed to death by the big 3 browers: Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox.
Do we care? Opera could have been Firefox if they had GPLed it. Mozilla saw their opportunity and now they're benefiting from their foresight.
Opera could become an open source (as in "freedom") company any time they want, and they'd instantly see a jump in the number of people using their browser, because suddenly it would be included in Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, and so on. Instead they've decided to sell (via a third party) closed-source browsers for mobiles. Good for them, and if they ever decide to put the big "GPL" stamp on their software, then they can count on a sudden jump in the number of people using their software. You can only get that jump with GPL, though.
So now I'm on Opera 9.0TP2 and enjoying it. 84 MB of memory used after 12 days of Opera running, God knows how many tabs opened and closed and how many sites (incl. Flash and videos) visited. And I currently have 18 tabs open. *AND* it's a technical preview (not even beta software).
The biggest insult added to injury was the "it's not a memory leak, it's a feature!" attitude from Mozilla.
I don't plan on switching back to Firefox, ever.
If you RTFA, a Mozilla board member says that the quoted figure of $72 million is too high, but "not off by an order of magnitude".
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
Google has a similar relationship with Opera, just to let you know.
heres how much i make a month just from search alone
53,846 @ 3,557clicks = $261.67
now thats per month and im a small publisher
firefox probably gets that many searches every minute!
also they pay up to $1 for every person who downloads firefox from a referal from my site
!!
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.
"....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.
Look at the biggest names in Open Source, they all have some income generating stream somewhere. If this is how Mozilla drums up money for FF than more power to them as it's the least intrusive money making scheme i've seen in software yet. (Compare to banner ads for instance)
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore