You might of wondered how mozilla makes money from providing users like you with open source and free services like the firefox browser.In 2005,the mozilla foundation disclosed figures stating close to 53 million dollars in revenue.

This just proves that profit can be generated by providing open source and free services in this new era of computing.Just imagine a foundation started with only 10 employees and barely any financial backing could grow to compete against a giant like microsoft.I am speaking on behalf of firefox and it’s rapid growth in popularity compared to windows internet explorer which has been the dominant player for years.

Now you may be asking,how could a free browser like firefox provide mozilla foundation with this kind of revenue.The answer lies in the hands of google,the ever powerful search engine boosting the tech industry.If you have been using firefox for a while, you would of noticed those search boxes to the top right[see screenshot below] and the firefox homepage whcih includes the google search box.

Firefox users do not see those search features as being any type of advertisements but rather a tool created to help them conduct searches.When conducting a search with those search boxes,advertisements are displayed along with google search results and so a user may click on them which results in ad revenue for mozilla foundation.There is absolutely nothing wrong with this at all since you will be displayed the same advertisements if you were to visit google directly to conduct a search.

The big question in everyone’s mind is “how much did mozilla make in 2006?”.An accurate amount is not available at the moment but a close estimation can be made by comparing its growth rate throughout the past years.

Mozilla Foundation chairman Mitchell Baker claimed that their revenue for 2003 was 2.4 million and 5.8 million dollars in 2004 .Since the 2005 revenue was 52.9 million dollars, I would think their revenue for 2006 might be close to 90 million or more.