14 DAY TRIAL // The Mozilla Foundation has released last year's financial report, and the company recorded a 4.9% year-to-year growth compared to 2013.
Mozilla's revenue is on a rising trend, with the foundation reporting it made $329 million / €309 million in 2014, compared to $314 million / €295 million in 2013, and $311 million / €292 million in 2012.
Expenses also grew, by 7.6% in 2014, to a total of $318 million / €299 million, up from $295 million / €278 million in 2013.
According to internal data, 90% of the revenue Mozilla made last year came from Google and Yahoo!, the two companies it had search engine deals with.
If you haven't noticed by now, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, has hundreds of employees around the globe. It pays all those people and the server infrastructure needed to create, manage and run Firefox (and other products) by striking deals with search engines.
Every time a user types anything inside a search box in Firefox, they're redirected to a search engine page, where ads are displayed. The search engines, Google and Yahoo!, reward Firefox for the indirect ad views by paying a share of their revenue.
Mozilla is looking to diversify its client portfolio
For years, Mozilla has had such a deal with Google. As Google launched Chrome, a conflict of interests arose, and last year, Mozilla signed a similar deal with Yahoo!.
The reason behind this change of provider is mainly because of its critical dependency on Google's backing. Starting last year, Mozilla has been seen, as never before, seeking different financial partners.
The company struck smaller deals with many other search providers. This includes Firefox browser search partnerships with companies like Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Amazon, and eBay.
While not as massive as the Google and Yahoo! deals, these are there to slowly take Mozilla off the Google IV line.
But as Firefox continues to lose market share, all its accountants' squirming will become useless unless the organization manages somehow to redirect massive traffic flows from its browsers to search engines once again.
