Mozilla Expects To Generate More Than $500M in Revenue This Year

The Mozilla Foundation today released its financial report for 2020. As usual, this gives us a good picture of the organization's financial health from a year ago, but for the first time this year, Mozilla also provided us with more recent data. From a report: It's no secret that Mozilla recently went through a number of difficult years, with major layoffs in 2020 as it restructured its for-profit arm, Mozilla Corporation. Its flagship Firefox browser, despite a number of technical advances, is also struggling in a marketplace that is now dominated by Chromium-based browsers. Still, in 2020, Mozilla Corporation's revenue was $466 million from its search partnerships (largely driven by its search deal with Google), subscriptions and advertising revenue. That's essentially the same as in 2019, when Mozilla Corporation generated $465 million from these sources.

For 2021, the organization forecasts revenue of over $500 million. What's maybe most important, though, is that Mozilla's new products like its Mozilla VPN service, Firefox Relay Premium, Pocket and other commercial initiatives are slowly but surely starting to pay off. As Mozilla executive VP Angela Plohman and CFO Eric Muhlheim noted in today's announcement, revenue from new product offerings will grow 150% this year and account for 14% of the organization's revenue in 2021. The Mozilla VPN service saw a revenue increase of 450% from 2020 to 2021.

Re:How much?

[jonathantn]

Pretty much all of it. Google needs to prop them up so they aren't considered a monopoly just like Microsoft used to prop up Apple back in the day.

Re:

[oogoliegoogolie]

I read something somewhere yesterday that Mozilla receives $450M/yr from Google to prioritize it's search engine.

Re: How much?

[Maelwryth]

That money is probably under threat now with Edge going for the market. Why give Mozilla hundreds of millions to show competition when you have actual competition from Microsoft?

Re:

[Espectr0]

edge is chromium, so if i were google i would want to make sure a true rival exists

So what does any of that have to

[oldgraybeard]

do with supporting a good browser as an everyday tool. As for vpn service and such, Does outsourcing security ever work?

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I wish Mozilla would explain what is going on and what their strategy is. I see the desktop browser getting some love from them and steadily improving, and I guess that's because it's profitable. The Android browser seems to be neglected though, which seems odd as you would have thought they would be eager to monetize it.

If they could get Firefox for Android to a decent state it could be huge. There are other Chrome clones that support extensions, but none of them work very well because the extension API is

Re:

[jenningsthecat]

I see the desktop browser getting some love from them and steadily improving, and I guess that's because it's profitable.

I suppose it's improving for some values of "improving"; but the UI just keeps getting worse, and more configurability disappears with each new release, for no good reason that I can see.

The Android browser seems to be neglected though, which seems odd as you would have thought they would be eager to monetize it.

There may be disincentives from Google on that front. Nobody cares much about the shrinking desktop segment anymore. If Mozilla on the desktop keeps regulators off Google's back then they'd be foolish to let Mozilla develop a better Android browser to divide the mobile market further. Mobile is where the richest and sweetes

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Mobile web is garbage. Short battery life, hot handset, data limits, annoying popups.

An ad-blocker with Firefox makes it usable.

Why would Apple and Google do anything to make web pages not suck when their revenue relies on funneling people toward their respective app stores?

Re:

[dbialac]

I suppose it's improving for some values of "improving"; but the UI just keeps getting worse, and more configurability disappears with each new release, for no good reason that I can see.

Yeah, I've likely reached the end of my days with Firefox. With 78 esr being replaced with 91, it's just been one too many UI updates. I'm sick of that continuing to happen with no other real improvements with the overall browser.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

As for vpn service and such, Does outsourcing security ever work?

These vps services aren't primarily about security they're about accessing geo-locked services e.g. streaming content that isn't available in your jurisdiction.

Re:

[thegarbz]

do with supporting a good browser as an everyday tool.

Hard to pay developers if you have no money to pay them with. You can't support a good browser with hopes and dreams.

Does outsourcing security ever work?

Depends. Are you a security expert? If so then no it doesn't. If you're not (which describes 99.99% of the population, and a fair chunk of self proclaimed security experts too) then yes it does.

Re:

[Hentes]

They probably want a revenue source of their own so they don't have to rely on Google.

Trends

[DarkOx]

new products like its Mozilla VPN service, Firefox Relay Premium, Pocket and other commercial initiatives are slowly but surely starting to pay off.

A trend I would not be on continuing if they can't maintain or improve the market share of the core browser product or at the very least the share of browsers based on it. VPN is about the only service that I see people who are otherwise outside the Gecko/Quantum ecosystem I seen anyone using. It isn't as if there isn't a ton of competition in that space either and I don't see Mozilla offering much there but a name that still has a little bit of trust behind it.

What activities appear to be paying the bills

So Mozilla produces nothing of value?

[gweihir]

Matches my observations. They stopped being useful when an SJW took control.

Re:

[dimko]

You can't really say stuff like that! I am triggered! (oh well, here come down votes...)

Fantastic!

[Gravis Zero]

I can't wait for Mozilla to spend on this money on UX experts who are sure to make the UI as tortuous as possible.

Seriously, if you are UX expert and you use your own UI and think, "this isn't good" then you are not a UX expert, you are an idiot ruining UIs everywhere. If you are a UX expert and you don't use your own UI then you are definitely an idiot ruining UIs everywhere.

Brave New World

[Gim Tom]

Gave up on Firefox after using it for decades. The new Proton UI does not let me make the changes that I would need to make it where I can really use it any more.