After all these years of using search engines, you must have realized one aspect. Why does Mozilla seem to direct all of its search traffic to Google? Intriguing right? The answer is simple.
Firefox is among the fastest browsers. It offers a lot of great features out of the box, as well as a solid library of add-ons and extensive customization options. Plus, it comes with strong privacy protection and, because Mozilla is a nonprofit organization, it has little incentive to collect and sell your data.
Firefox is available on most devices and operating systems, including Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, macOS X 10.9 and later, Android Jelly Bean and later and iOS 11.0 and later. There’s also a version of the browser for iOS and Android smartphones called Firefox Focus. It’s designed to be minimal, comes with far fewer features, and focuses on protecting privacy.
The search box which you can find on the upper right-hand side of Mozilla refers to Mozilla users to Google. In return for this, Google pays Mozilla a referral fee. When I say “referral fee”, it is not a couple of dollars that I am talking about.
When you give a perusal to the financial statements of Mozilla, you will understand that The Mozilla Foundation has a profit margin of almost 70% in the late 2000s. Now, Mozilla is an open-source community as well as a non-profit organization.
So where does all their money go? This does not come as a surprise to us as Mozilla can be termed as the “Mad Scientist” of the internet. Here is a brief of what they have been up to with all that money:
- Ubiquity: This is a very interesting project introduced by Mozilla. Ubiquity is an extension that helps users create any kind and variation of a mash-up using the extension.
- InPrivate: This is for all you web-sleuths out there. It enables the users to surf without leaving behind any tracks on their browser history. Though this is not an application that will be used by many, it is sure to find an audience among those who require some privacy.
Almost 80% of Mozilla’s revenue seems to be accounted for by Google. When we keep aside the features being introduced by these search engines, we can conclude on a note that Firefox has been gaining momentum through the creation of innovation. This innovation has created a sense of healthy competition among the browsers which will ultimately end in the creation of value for the users.
