The Mozilla Foundation

This FAQ supplements the Mozilla Foundation 2007 Form 990 and the consolidated 2007 financial statement for the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation.

What was Mozilla’s total revenue for 2007?

Mozilla’s revenues (including both Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation) for 2007 were $75 million, up approximately 12% from 2006 revenue of $67 million.

How does Mozilla generate revenue?

The vast majority of this revenue is associated with the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox, and the majority of that is from Google. Mozilla takes in additional revenue from online affiliate programs, the Mozilla Store, and interest and other income on our invested assets.

Mozilla doesn’t have a stock ticker to follow. How do you measure success?

We measure success by examining factors that reflect our growth such as community code contributions, localizations, market share, the number of nightly testers, and total users. We are committed to promoting openness and participation on the Internet and demonstrating that the Open Web is the most fundamental platform for ongoing development.

Why is the growth in your claimed user base is not reflected in revenue growth?

This is because search revenue increased at a lesser rate than Firefox usage growth as the rate of payment declines with volume.

Is Mozilla poised for continued growth through 2008 and beyond?

Our financial objectives are for sustainability and our basic structure – public benefit, non-profit – means that we can continue with relative stability. We’ve been building in the ability to live with greatly reduced revenue for years. Mozilla has a significant amount of retained earnings.

What is the status of your contract with Google?

The agreement between Google and the Mozilla Corporation that accounts for the bulk of the revenue has been renewed for an additional three years, and is now slated to expire at the end of November of 2011.

Your partnership with Google accounts for over 88% of your 2007 revenue. How does this affect your independence?

We develop our product and technical direction as part of an open process unrelated to the search relationship with Google. Mozilla teams do collaborate with Google teams on parts of the product that offer Google services (i.e., the Firefox Start Page) and the services they provide, like anti-phishing. We do not vet our initiatives with Google.

Are you exploring opportunities to diversify your revenue stream?

Mozilla has always focused on building open products that people love, in ways that are participatory, and then developing revenue to support that work. For long-term financial viability, we will of course look carefully at ways to diversify our revenue mix over time. It’s an important concept, although our current contract with Google gives us a firm base for the next three years. We’ll continue to build great products that help people enjoy the richness of the Internet, and we’re confident that this allows us to identify appropriate sources of revenue diversification.