Mozilla's Millions

Only now is it truly becoming clear, their is [serious money in Open Source][]/ With Mozilla reported to have made tens of millions of dollars. One blogger reported 70m was made by the corporation, with a Mozilla insider confirming thats a reasonable ballpark figure. Christopher Blizzard, board member of Mozilla, had this to say on his blog:

Blizzard added that an earnings figure of $72m (£41m) quoted on some blogs was incorrect. “I won’t comment on the dollar amount except to say that it’s [$72m] not correct, though not off by an order of magnitude. I also won’t comment on sources of that money, except to say that some of the assertions that I’ve seen in the comments are pretty far off, both in terms of numbers and sources,

One obvious source of the money is Google Inc., which Firefox gives prominance to as the default search engine, of the open source browser. Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of blogging network Weblogs, wrote in his blog that an unnamed source at BarCampLA told him:

Calacanis claimed that when a Firefox user does a Google search using the browser’s search box, Mozilla receives approximately 80 percent of the ad revenue from any associated ad clicks.

Pretty impressive for a company, which only earned 5m in 2004. The continued success in Firefox is shown in the the 10-fold increase of Mozilla’s profits. Most People wish Mozilla well, with some questioning the Corporations commitment to better development, in favour of more lucrative contracts, this, of course, is denied by everyone at Mozilla Corp. Only time will tell! In the meantime, rumours are abound, Mozilla is to distribute its cash to big developers, and increase its workforce form 40 to 150.