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."

Comments

Google search bar?

[drapeau06]

My version of Firefox just has a regular "search bar" that defaults to Google.
If I want another search, e.g., AbeBooks.com, I just change it to that. Does it become an "AbeBooks.com search bar" then?

Re:Soooo

[jellomizer]

Or... They are just doing their job and investigating possible suspicious activities. If Microsoft did the same thing you would be all up in arms on how Microsoft is trying get out of paying more taxes. But Google with Mozilla, that has to be different. Innocent until proven guilty, they are investigating it as it looks fishy but that is.

Re:What makes Mozilla different?

[owlnation]

If they're a non-profit entity, there are a different set of rules that must be obeyed.

Generally speaking -- and I'm not specifically accusing Mozilla -- non-profit status is rarely what it seems. Usually the motivation in setting this status up is to avoid certain rules or taxes. It's only proper that this is investigated in Mozilla's case, if most of their income does come from a large highly-successful company.

The IRS should also be taking a very, very close look at Wikipedia. For those reasons, and also the fact that there have been individuals in that organization that have shady financial histories.

Re:nothing wrong with corp. support for OpenSource

[LordNimon]

The problem I have with it is that there are thousands of bugs opened against Firefox, Seamonkey, Thunderbird, etc that have been open for years that don't get addressed because there aren't enough developers. The Mozilla foundation should be using those millions of dollars to hire programmers (especially in this economy) to fix those bugs and add those long sought-after features. The last thing they should be doing is investing in the stock market!!!!!!!!!