We all know Firefox is an open source project and is a product of Mozilla foundation, but we never thought of how Mozilla foundation is making money from firefox. APCmag published an interview with Mozilla Fondation CEO Mitchell Baker, there she reveals that Mozilla foundation is making millions per year from Firefox.

The general assumption is that Google pays this money, becuase they are the default search in firefox home page, but its not the case, there are other players also who are paying for this. Firefox made $55 millions in 2005, 2006 auditing is not yet done and so its not known how much they made.

….Well a couple of things to note here; it’s not just Google — they’re not the only ones. One of the things that we pioneered - I mean people do think of Google because they are the default and the search box and the start page, but one of the things that we pioneered was multiple choices for the user.

….It is very easy to add in a search engine. So that was a fundamental element of the user choice aspect. So we have arrangements with more than Google . We’re non-profit so our numbers are audited and on the public record. We haven’t finished 2006 yet so they’re not public, but the 2005 numbers are around $US55million.

Read the full interview here

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Tags: Firefox, Mozilla, Software