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Mozilla Puts New Money To Use Fighting For 'Internet Health' (cnet.com)
Stephen Shankland, writing for CNET: Mozilla is marshaling public support for political positions, like backing net neutrality, defending encryption and keeping government surveillance from getting out of hand, says Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla's chief legal and business officer. The organization is funding the efforts with revenue from Firefox searches, which has jumped since 2014 when it switched from a global deal with Google to a set of regional deals. Mozilla brought in $421 million in revenue last year largely through partnerships with Yahoo in the US, Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, according to tax documents released alongside Mozilla's 2015 annual report on Thursday. Pushing policy work brings new challenges well beyond traditional Mozilla work competing against Google's Chrome browser and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They include squaring off against the incoming administration of Donald Trump.
I only have the answer to why they have investments. Because they have a significant amount of money on hand, and are holding it in the way that makes the most money for a project. When you put money in a bank, they invest it too. This way generally makes more money than interest from the bank.
Don't know that either, but I can say why they do it. Diversification of your financial holdings over multiple currencies and over multiple national economies protects you from a crash in a single economy. The reliability of the US economy is no sure thing at the moment.
Yes. In this case I think it's a difference in tax status between the non-profit and the operating company. Sometimes it's done to keep the trademarks from being assets that could be placed in peril in a lawsuit. For-profit entities sometimes offshore the intellectual property rights as a tax shield, but I don't think that's happening here.
Bruce Perens.