Mozilla Foundation rakes in $53m

Mozilla is paid for traffic delivered to search engines though the Firefox browser

The Mozilla Foundation reported revenues of $52.9m in 2005, according to a blog posting by Mozilla president Mitchell Baker.

Although the company's open source Firefox browser is available as a free download, Mozilla is paid for traffic delivered to search engines though the browser's built-in search feature.

The figure also includes contributions and sales from the Mozilla Store and other revenue sources. The bulk of the revenues are from search engine partnerships.

Revenues for 2003 and 2004 were $2.4m and $5.8m respectively. Baker wrote that the jump in revenue "reflects the tremendous growth in the popularity of Firefox after its launch in November 2004".

The Mozilla Foundation and corporation spent $8.2m in 2005 maintaining a staff of developers and employees who support Firefox as well as other open source projects such as the Thunderbird email client.

Baker said that Mozilla's financial success provides an alternative for people who seek to escape the world of start-ups and stock options and instead want to promote choice and innovation on the internet.

"It enables us to support massive communities of people who contribute their efforts to making the internet experience better," he wrote. "It allows us to cultivate competitive and viable community innovation."

Baker did not disclose revenue figures for 2006. A Mozilla spokesman told vnunet.com that that company plans to release the 2006 data later this year.

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