Zee over at The Next Web has a short post where he takes a look at were Mozilla (Firefox) gets the majority of its money. As he points out that while the Mozilla Foundation does get donations the amount wouldn’t be anywhere near what is needed to keep the Foundation, and browser, moving forward.
At this point Mozilla makes its real money from one company – Google, and to the tune of $50 to $100 million a year. The problem going forward is that Google is becoming increasing involved in developing its own browser, and now an operating system. So one has to wonder at what point will the checks from Google stop coming into the coffers of Mozilla; and when it does what will the Foundation do to make up for that revenue?
My thought when I first started reading Zee’s post was exactly the same that he concluded with (emphasis mine)
With Google now promoting their own browser (and OS), Mozilla needs to get thinking fast and exploring other revenue earning options. Of course, if Microsoft were to step in and offer Mozilla a hefty sum to replace Google as default search engine, then things might just get very interesting indeed.
No kidding things would get interesting.
