back to article Mozilla remembers 2013. Y'know, back when it still gobbled at the Google money-trough

The Mozilla Foundation has released its annual financial statement for 2013, and the numbers raise important questions about Mozilla's future, now that it has ended its longstanding funding relationship with Google. Royalties paid by Google for queries from the Firefox browser's built-in search box have been the major source …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Forty Thieves

    "Here at The Reg, we'd love to find out what these are."

    I'd bet 20 bucks since Yahoo! is on the dance floor, there will be a cut-in from Alibaba.

    Truthfully, most puppies turn into dogs, so why not go with another other than the old pitbull Google?

    Whatever, just don't die you fiery fox of freedom!

  2. ashdav

    Remember the old Firefox you used to love?

    It's still there

    http://www.palemoon.org/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Remember the old Firefox you used to love?

      Very interesting - thanks!

  3. Tac Eht Xilef

    I'm wondering ...

    WTF does a software company that ostensibly relies on volunteer contributions for product development and evangelisation spend nearly $300 million a year on?

    1. ashdav
      Pint

      Re: I'm wondering ...

      Totally agree.

      The guy at Palemoon does it for free and makes a better job of it.

      Gave you an upvote.

      Have a beer. (No cat icons available)

    2. elip

      Re: I'm wondering ...

      Thanks Web 2.0+, where you (I'm told) apparently need several massive, always-on, global infrastructures to host user-personalization crud "at scale". :-| Well, truth-be-told, they do also take care of their employees with generous salaries and target 40% bonuses for all.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    3D graphs belong in PowerPoint

    specifically in presentations on dodgy timeshares, complete with animated dissolves and clipart, where it doesn't matter so much that it destroys the proportionality of the areas, i.e. the very thing that you're trying to communicate.

  5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    WTF?

    "the unenviable position of reporting a mere 1 per cent year-on-year growth"

    So? It's a non-profit foundation. Revenue groweth is irrelevant so long as income matches or exeeds expenditure. It's not as if there are share holders expecting dividends or VCs to keep happy.

    If Mozilla discovered a way to halve costs while still meeting all their objectives, who would be up in arms if revenue went into "negative groweth" of 50%?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I agree with the above and below. Mozilla and FireFox would continue to exist no matter how much revenue dropped. It would be sad because they would have to get rid of employees and cut a lot of projects, but the browser itself is never at risk. Mozilla doesn't NEED search revenue, it's just a nice to have and as long as they have it they will find a way to spend it.

  6. Fazal Majid

    Lots of fat to cut from their budget

    Mozilla suffers from a sort of Parkinson's law - make-work expands to fill all available budgets. They have many utterly useless projects like Open Badges (http://openbadges.org/) that could be axed completely with no effect whatsoever on their mission (if anything, getting rid of the distractions should improve the focus on what matters, the browser and the mobile OS).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Lots of fat to cut from their budget

      Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the mobile OS itself IS the biggest distraction they need to get rid of. Very expensive to develop and run a mobile OS, and so far the benefit looks extremely tiny - basically selling cheap handsets in countries that already have tons of cheap handsets.

      But again - maybe it's just me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lots of fat to cut from their budget

        It's not even a new OS, it's basically just Firefox running on a stripped-down Linux distro... like Chrome OS. I like Javascript... but it will never compete with native apps for battery life. End of story.

        We won't have to wait 2 years to find out how Mozilla's faring. Layoff annoucement coming in 3... 2... 1...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    No upset - No revenue increase is no surprise

    "But while the total amount the Chocolate Factory paid Mozilla leapt by an astounding 99 per cent from 2011 to 2012, in 2013 the figure was only up 0.5 per cent from the previous year.

    That's a major upset."

    The google deal was for a fixed amount for 3 years. So yeah, its going to be exactly the same (with some minor accounting differences) in 2012 and 2013 - and will be almost the same in 2014 (maybe about 1/12 less because Yahoo starts in December)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The author is thinking like a colonial.

    I think the author is suffering from a bad case US centricity.

    The rest of the world will likely stay with google for a while yet.

    1. Saigua

      Re: The author is thinking like a colonial.

      Yes, once we realize Libya is a completely together place from the point of view that they live and breathe browser SoCs and evangelism, and the character encoding of their communications becomes clear, the USA will have nothing to do but build humble desalination plants; also raising sorghum, hominy and cinnamon. Everyone will want to move to Libya's stylish non-filetree namespace for .mozilla/firefox/CrashReports/pending/

    2. Saigua
      Pint

      Re: The author is thinking like a colonial.

      Yes, once we realize Libya is a completely together place from the point of view that they live and breathe browser SoCs and evangelism, and the character encoding of their communications becomes clear, the USA will have nothing to do but build humble desalination plants; also raising sorghum, hominy and cinnamon. Everyone will want to move to Libya's stylish non-filetree namespace for .mozilla/firefox/CrashReports/pending/ to have the absolute latest.

      Also they have been publishing group photos of all those million-a-day founders; just wait for the associated 3D web printers, the tv shows about fighting API docs, the Limits To WebGL financial to-do...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    brendan eich

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