Firefox, the open source browser that challenged Microsoft’s Internet Explorer monopoly over the internet, has earned a whopping $52.9 million in 2005 for their creators! Not just that, the Mozilla foundation’s 2003 revenue was $2.4 million and 2004 revenue was $5.8 million!!!
You can now easily estimate their 2006 revenue!!!
How did Firefox make this much money? TheTechzone.com a computer hardware review website started by John Chow tells us how…
You can see that little Google search box on the upper right of the Firefox browser? If you use that box to make a search and click on one of the Google ads from the results page, Firefox gets an estimated 80% of the money. In addition to the search box, Mozilla also makes money from searches made on the Firefox start page .
The Google search box adds value and income to Firefox and that is the key to making big money on the Net. Users of Firefox don’t see the Google search box as advertising. Instead they see is as a value added service and they don’t mind that Mozilla makes money from the sponsored links. Most of them don’t even know Firefox makes money from it. I’m sure if they find out it made over $50 million in 2005, they will be shocked.
Firefox is a great example on how Open Source software can be profitable. The search revenue generated by the browser has allowed the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to continue to expand. The foundation started with just 10 employees, but now has teams of people where it once had a few.
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