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IRS Looking at Google/Mozilla Relationship
ric482 writes "With the release of the Mozilla Foundation's 2007 financial report, questions have been raised by the IRS, who are due to perform an audit on the non-profit organization behind the massively popular Firefox browser.
Last year, the Foundation received $66 million of its total $75 million revenue (88 percent) from search engine maestros Google, so the IRS are looking for blood over the organization's tax exempt status. Back in 2006, Mozilla got $59.5 million from Google — around 85 percent of the organization's revenue.
Google and Mozilla are part of a 'you scratch my back, I'll pay your bills' sort of agreement, with the Google search bar firmly placed in the toolbar, and on the default homepage. Things were a bit rocky a couple of months back when Google unveiled the Beta-run of its Chrome browser, but Mozilla and Google hugged it out and sealed a deal that will last for another three years. That deal will expire in November 2011."
Would it kill you to put a link in there somewhere?
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audited-financial-statement.pdf
To me, there shouldn't be much a fuss about big corporates supporting open source. In fact, I think there should be more involvement (financially) for those big companies who no doubt have benefited from the open source community. As long as the licensing remains open source, everything is transparent...
They give away the browser and spend all of their revenue on development. So, how much taxable profit did the Mozilla foundation make anyway? The IRS has nothing to gain from this. I smell a rat closeby!
cat sig >
...and not after some other fictional 'non-profit' organizations?
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
back in the yahoo story a few days ago, i told that it smelled microsoft all over, and then modded to oblivion and yanked with replies defending microsoft, saying there was NO wrongdoing on microsoft's part, despite the investigation was started by DOJ, which is still populated with the neocon administration which has been WAY chummy with microsoft.
now, suddenly, IRS gets in the picture, and on the target there a major competitor and a major headache for microsoft. despite there are numerous open source software using same kind of deal with various corporations for funds, somehow, for some reason, its google+mozilla that irs feels the need to investigate.
of course, that again has no relation to microsoft, which is best pals with the neocon administration still in power. the thing is just a coincidence.
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85% of Mozilla's funding comes directly from Google?!? For all practical purposes, Google basically owns them. No wonder Mozilla was so forgiving of Chrome.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Shouldn't the IRS be more concerned about how is mozilla spending that money than where it comes from?
If a "save the children" non-profit organization changed their name to "Google saves the children" and Google donated $100 million, they should lose the tax exemption?
"Non-profit" isn't about how much money enters the organization but how much of it is used in pushing the agenda forward. If they're spending the millions of dollars to make a better free browser, they should still be tax exempt.
If they suddenly started using that money to buy sport cars for every programmer, they should pay taxes even if Google gave them just two dollars.
but that's OK because it's the same company?
Exactly. The issue here is that Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization, but Google clearly is not. Presumably IRS could be interested in exactly how close ties they have.
c++;
If that were the case, the amount of money they are earning should fund a hell of a lot more development than is actually going on.
$50m+ per year should fund enough developers to work on a fully integrated suite of internet tools, but they seem to be barely coping with maintaining Firefox and Thunderbird.
Their primary interest seems to be ensuring that their Intellectual Property does not get included in distros like Debian. Open source non-profit my ass.
I hate printers.
Since Google is a profitable entity isn't this tax neutral to google? IE if Google and mozilla merged, and Google spent the same amount on development, and giving as mozilla does, google would have the same profit, and thus pay the same taxes. The only difference would be some of the last 15% (non google contributions.) Since individuals can write off gifts to Mozilla foundation, but not to google then that's the money the IRS is chasing, not googles portion of the pie.
Honestly, stop with the Debian bullshit already. Mozilla doesn't want others altering their software and still keeping their trademarks intact (which is what Debian wants to do). Debian places the *EXACT* same restrictions on their own trademarks.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Microsoft is a for-profit business with it's own search engine division and provides a product that could drive revenue to that business.
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides financial support to the open source Mozilla project that has a product that drives revenue to Google in a deal inked where they have exclusive rights to being the default during installation in return for donating to the Mozilla Foundation.
I just don't see how the striking difference between those two scenarios could be more plain. I'll boil it down for those that can't:
Internet Explorer/Microsoft is a self-interest driven scenario.
Firefox/Mozilla/Google is a mutually beneficial scenario where one party is a business and the other is a non-profit.
As to how this answers your question--remember that Microsoft was convicted of being a Monopoly in the past. Neither Google nor The Mozilla Foundation suffers that burden.
On the other hand, if you look at the search box, you will see that there is a down arrow just to the right of the google logo at the left end of the box. If you click on this arrow, you will find a default list of search engines. If you select one of these, then it will subsequently become your default search engine. You can also add searches to this list at any time. Heck, you can remove the google search from the list entirely if you want. Frankly, when changing search engines is that easy and obvious, I really don't want the browser nagging me on first install. Why not nag me on first install about all the other browser settings, most of which are much less obvious to change?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
"but also noted is that over 88% of users will never change default settings"
Don't forget that Google is running at least 80% of the search market, and was before Firefox came onto the scene.
Google is paying them for something that, when looked at from a "what default settings make the most sense for the end-user" point of view, is already the most obvious option. I mean sure, they could set it to Ask.com or Yahoo!, but then they'd just have people asking if they can change it to Google anyway.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.