Mozilla Revenue Jump Fuels Its Firefox Overhaul Plan (cnet.com)

Well, now we know what paid for all those programmers cranking out the overhauled Firefox Quantum browser: a major infusion of new money. From a report: Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the open-source web browser, saw its 2016 revenue increase 24 percent to an all-time high of $520 million, it said Friday. Expenses grew too, but not as much, from $361 million to $337 million, so the organization's war chest is significantly bigger now. Mozilla, which now has about 1,200 employees, releases prior-year financial results in conjunction with tax filings. Most of Mozilla's money comes from partnerships with search engines like Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Baidu and Yandex. When you search through Firefox's address bar, those search engines show search ads alongside results and share a portion of the revenue to Mozilla. Mozilla in 2014 signed a major five-year deal with Yahoo to be the default search engine in the US, but canceled it only three years in and moved back to Google instead in November. Mozilla's mission -- to keep the internet open and a place where you aren't in the thrall of tech giants -- may seem abstract. But Mozilla succeeded in breaking the lock Microsoft's Internet Explorer had on the web a decade ago, and now it's fighting the same battle again against Google's Chrome.

Comments

1,200 employees!!!

[BLToday]

Mozilla has 1,200 employees!!! What projects are all these people working on? Because I can't imagine even 600 of them working on Firefox.

Re:1,200 employees!!!

[roca]

You have no idea how complicated a browser is.

I don't know about currently, but I've been told that at times Microsoft and Google each had over a thousand developers working on their browsers.

Apart from the difficulty of implementing the client software and its various axes --- security, compatibility, performance, platform porting, and so on --- these days a significant server-side component is also needed. Downloads, updates, addons, crash collection, telemetry, push notifications, and so on. And for developers, CI, massive test farm, telemetry/crashes analysis and viewing, etc.

Then you've got people writing tools and frameworks for the above teams. E.g. the rr project was born at Mozilla to improve life for Mozilla's C++ developers.

Then you've got people doing standards work (at Mozilla, usually part of the developers' jobs), Web site evangelism and other external relationships.

Then you've got Mozilla Research building stuff like Rust and Servo exploring technology that may eventually become part of Firefox.

Then of course you have the overhead --- HR, PR, lawyers, accountants, logistics, office managers, event organizers, personnel managers, executives.

I worked at Mozilla for a long time. Over the last five years headcount was at about the same level, even during the FirefoxOS years. We were *always* butting up against headcount limits, more work than we had people to do it. It's not like the stories you hear about Google where people are wandering around underemployed.