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Mozilla's 2013 Report: Revenue Up 1% To $314M; 90% From Google
An anonymous reader writes Mozilla has released its annual financial report for 2013, and the numbers hint as to why the organization signed a five-year deal with Yahoo, announced by the duo on November 19. Revenue increased just 1 percent, and the organization's reliance on Google stayed flat at 90 percent. The total revenue for the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiaries in 2011 was $163 million, and it increased 90.2 percent to $311 million for 2012. Yet that growth all but disappeared last year, as the total revenue moved up less than 1 percent (0.995 percent to be more precise) to $311 million in 2013. 85 percent of Mozilla's revenue came from Google in 2011, and that figure increased to 90 percent in 2012. While the 90 percent number remained for 2013, it's still a massive proportion and shows Mozilla last year could not figure out a way to differentiate where its money comes from.
With 90% of their revenue coming from Google yet they just signed a 5 year deal with Yahoo how is this going to work out? Diversity in revenue streams is good and also getting off the Google teat is really good but I can't help but think that they just cut their own throat.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
That is a lot of money. What could they possibly be spending it on because it certainly isn't firefox. I mean... it is a nice browser... but.... 314 million?
I'm a little flabbergasted by these numbers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
A lot of us benefit from Free Software. Android is primarily developed by Google, so it has a steady source of funding. GNU/Linux has a large community of volunteers, but is honestly developed primarily by businesses that get revenue from server support contracts (Red Hat, Intel, SuSE, IBM, Google, to name a few).
Firefox is, by a host of measures, the best browser available. If I'm reading arewefastyet properly, it's the browser with the fastest Javascript engine now. The last time I checked, it's the smallest download. It uses the least RAM. It starts fastest. It supports plugins on all platforms, including mobile.
The browser is key to practically every Internet service, and they all really should be contributing to the development of the one browser that's fully Free Software. Sadly, unlike Android and GNU/Linux, Firefox is essentially ad-supported. It's a bad situation for us, the users.
They spend $200M/year on software development -- have browsers become so complicated that Mozilla and associated projects need 1000+ developers?
How do you spend 1/3 a billion $ and get Firefox?
I mean, seriously, help me out here?
You get Firefox and a decent amount of research. From my perspective it's money well spent.
As a long time Mozilla support who flipped out when firefox updated with sponsored ads the other day. What is the next best windows based browser that doesn't report back your browsing habits to the mothership?
$311 Million and they are circling the toilet !! What are they spending it on. I am sure they can rationalise their team and their product range. If it is profitability they want, they should focus in that direction and is find out what made them profitable, which might not be what is bringing in the money. Note Google makes money by selling our analytics but it is their presence on other fronts which makes them a household name.
A lot of talk about how and what they do with all the money Isn't Mozilla/FF a non profit? isn't there limits as to what they can spend the money on? don't know that's why I ask.
Jack of all trades,master of none
As a Mozilla employee, yes, the organization is corrupted. Not by "gender issues" but by people who are milking the money.
Employees are paid under the average (and don't get me wrong some of them are very smart and very hard working), but there's dozen of directors and VPs which are coming for coffee every now and then and naming their friends with similar titles and self congratulating if they work a couple of month a year and maybe over night once or twice (while others work week ends, night shifts, etc every fucking day). These guys are not paid under average, they get 250k+ for showing up a few times a week (due to the remote culture at Mozilla, they don't actually show up every day of the week - if they don't show up that also mean no reply to emails, etc. Unreachable.)
As long as there is money an the CEO isn't exactly a ballsy one that will not change. I don't know if that will kill Mozilla that fast though. People who work there are in it for the opensource/mission/etc. Still, we're far from realizing our full potential. So far.
AC obviously... and I'm quite tempted to just list all their names.
Mozilla is squandering the money they have. It should be shows around to a range of open source projects. That sort of money could free dozens of major and important projects from their corporate sponsors' agendas.
That was my reaction as well. If Chromefox and a bunch of money-wasting vanity wank ("Firefox OS") is all we're getting for $300M, Google should be asking for their money back.