Mozilla has made a very strong statement by saying that it is doing fine without relying upon Google’s money.
For quite a while, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Google has been the main source of income for Mozilla. An agreement between both companies to make Google the default search engine, on its browser, had earned a lot of money for Mozilla. In 2014 alone, Mozilla earned over $330 million, in revenues, using this deal.
The organization ditched the global Google deal last year and has decided to partner up with other search engines in different regions. For example, in China, Mozilla’s default serach engine is Baidu, while, in Russia, it’s Yandex.
“We don’t have a commercial relationship with Google at this point,” said Denelle Dixon-Thayer, chief business and legal officer at Mozilla.
Google and Mozilla have had a difference of opinion from quite a while. Google tries to control user experience on its Android OS. While Mozilla wishes to provide people with more options on the internet. “It goes back to our strategy of how we can encourage more competition.” retorts Denelle Dixon-Thayer.
The non-profit organization is expected to raise more funds through deals with other search engines, mainly Yahoo. Yahoo is the default search engine on Firefox, in the United States. Whereas, Google still holds its position in Europe. Surprisingly, Mozilla doesn’t earn any revenue from Google, despite Google being its default search engine in Europe.
There is no explanation to the fact that Mozilla isn’t earning any money from Google. However, Mozilla isn’t worried. It is pretty sure about making the expected amount of money this year.
Mozilla’s Chief Financial Officer, Jim Cook, is confident that 2015 will show Mozilla’s continued track record of strong financial results. Mozilla is looking forward to the next year to display their results and prove their point.
The FireFox maker still has to establish itself in the mobile market. Firefox’s android web browser hasn’t really caught up well amongst the android users. Its market space in the smartphone space remains negligible, which is dominated by Chrome and Safari on their respective OSs. However, Mozilla is pushing itself to gain a strong foothold in the Apple marketplace with the recent launch of its iOS app.
Mozilla is an important entity for the cyber space. It is the strongest open source browser amongst all browser companies.
Firefox has been recently venturing in the Smart TV OS and well as in the smart phone OS market. Hopefully, such launches will be successful and bring in more competition in the oligopolistic market.
