What is Digg?203 Comments
- stonebear, on 10/12/2007, -22/+204And they deserve every penney.
- newmind, on 10/12/2007, -4/+76Anybody have a link that confirms this number rather then a silly blog post that links to another blog post?
- ConEEE, on 10/12/2007, -7/+66http://www.calacanis.com/2006/03/06/firefox-mozilla-corporation-mozilla-foundation-made-72m-last/
How about you link to the actual source of the story, rather than some guy's blog?! - pyr0, on 10/12/2007, -4/+34It's nice to know that nobody ever bothers reading the article anymore.
The original source:
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/03/06/firefox-mozilla-corporation-mozilla-foundation-made-72m-last/
states that it is unconfirmed. - Aeiri, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28For those who are not aware, to search with that box easier type "Ctrl+K" to jump right up there. It is the easiest searching ever!
(As a side note, "Ctrl+L" to go to the Location bar, too) - {don}, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24"Firefox's revenue share with Google (the search toolbar in the browser) generates about $50 million a year, he [Mitch Kapor] said."
— from a speech by Mitch Kapor on February 14, 2006, at the Open Source
Business Conference in San Francisco, as reported by Dan Farber on ZDNet - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20found this on C|Net:
In earlier versions of Firefox, Google had been a resident on the upper right-hand box of the browser--and it is the same in version 1.0. Firefox users can use a pull-down menu from the search box to navigate the Web with Yahoo, Amazon.com and others. And they can change the default from Google to other search engines such as Ask Jeeves.
Baker said Mozilla has assembled a "set of different search partners" including Yahoo. She would not say whether there is a financial relationship between Mozilla and Google. But typically, Google pays its partners a share of revenue from search-related advertising.
http://news.com.com/Google star of Firefoxs new browser/2100-1032_3-5449172.html
UPDATE: I Found the story {don} is talking about:
From ZDNet:
In terms of business models, Mitch pointed to his experience with Firefox (he is the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation). Firefox has 60 million users a week. If you can command a lot of attention, that%u2019s what is valuable, and many in the commercial ecology would like to have a piece of that attention,%u201D Mitch said. Firefox%u2019s revenue share with Google (the search toolbar in the browser) generates about $50 million a year, he said.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2586 - L0rdDiabl0, on 10/12/2007, -14/+30Very True, and I hope they make more money.
- awwwmang, on 10/12/2007, -29/+45yes they do. they made probally the best web browser ever concived.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -7/+23just searching from the box doesn't earn them money.. you need to actually click ads in the search results after doing so for them to earn anything.
- DietrichM, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17It's strange, a year ago people had to donate to get them the money they needed to just pay one advertising in the NY Times. Now they make $72 million. Scary how it can change that fast.
- crimson117, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14You can also do ctrl-e to get to the search box. Less of a reach than ctrl-k :)
- Chozabu, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22that is kinda cool...
but what do they do with all that money?? - dopefish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15If they are going to keep dishing out more and more improvements to an already amazing web browser, then let them have their millions!
Next time I search, I will search from the Google Bar in Mozilla. :) - thewise1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13pretty cool. But how does all that work? When you've got so many people that contributed to it, but the mozilla foundation is fairly small (IIRC? I could be wrong, of course)... then the mozilla foundation basically got a bunch of free labor and made millions?
I'm just curious how this works - lostboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13this is unsubstantiated, from calacanis blog:
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/03/06/firefox-mozilla-corporation-mozilla-foundation-made-72m-last/
"The best piece of information I got out of BarCampLA was that Firefox, which is produced by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation, made $72M last year and is on target to have 120 employees this year. I have no idea if this is true (anyone?), but it makes sense. I mean, there have to be 72M people using Firefox out there, and making $1 a year seems low to me! Mark Pincus brought this topic up recently" - GeekyGirl, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17This would be very cool, if it is true. The number sounds a bit high to me. I'm with newmind - can anyone point to a more authoritative source to confirm this information?
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"Let's say they get an average of .30 cents from every ad click, there are 72000000/0.30 = 240000000 million ad clicks needed to make the 72 million dollar.Firefox is downloaded 1.5 million times so every the average click rate of a FF user is 240000000/1500000 = 160. I don't even remember when I last clicked a Google ad so I think this is impossible!"
First of all, let's get our constants down. Firefox has been downloaded 150 Million times (as reported here on Digg itself, Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#Market_adoption ). I'm willing to conceed that even 2/3rds of those downloads could be people installing Firefox after a format, or because of an upgrade, etc, so let's go with 50 million machines with Firefox (which IMO sounds a bit high, but somewhere inline; there have only been around a billion computers ever made, and saying that half of those are on the Internet as desktop machines (500 Million), and that Firefox is on 1/10th of them (50 Million)).
So let's do our math again with these numbers.
with a 3/10ths a penny per click (which I think is kinda low, but anyone can dispute this number), we get the same 240,000,000 clicks neccesary. Going up to 1/2 a penny brings us down to 150,000,000 clicks, so I'll use that as my window in the calculations.
50 million active installs:
For 3/10ths: 240,000,000 / 50,000,000 = 4.8 clicks per Firefox Install.
For 1/2: 150,000,000 / 50,000,000 = 3 clicks per Install.
30 million active installs:
3/10s: 240,000,000 / 30,000,000 = 8 clicks per Firefox Install.
1/2: 150,000,000 / 30,000,000 = 5 clicks per Install.
And just for a control, 10 million.
3/10s: 240,000,000 / 10,000,000 = 24 clicks per Firefox Install.
1/2: 150,000,000 / 10,000,000 = 15 clicks per Install.
So varying from 3 ad clicks per install to 24 ad clicks per install doesn't sound too unreasonable now does it? I know personally I used Google ads quite a bit, and that number's probably somewhere around 500 clicks a year (about 40 a month, or just a bit more than twice a day, which isn't that unreasonable, especially when you're looking for the lowest price online and click 8 ads in one sitting). So I don't find the numbers to be unreasonable in the least. Unsubstanciated, yes (as the link gives us no proof). But unreasonable, not a bit. - stevetures, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12That'd be nice to see if they could tell us what they're going to do with that money.
- theonlybigboss, on 10/12/2007, -9/+17yea i almost never use that box, but not anymore, they deserve all the money they can get
so i'm searching from it now :-D - eyrieowl, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13amen. that number seems a bit high...i mean, i know firefox is popular and all, but...*that* many click-throughs???
- t0ny, on 10/12/2007, -12/+19Me too. I'm going to search from there more often :).
- ahsteele, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Especially when you consider that one of the biggest draws of Firefox is its ability to block advertising. I guess I just don't see the majority of its users clicking through.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+17You guys are all pointing to blogs. Does anyone else's blood boil with the very mention of a blog? I try to be evenhanded but my very first inclination with a blog is to report it as lame. More often than not it is some basement dwelling geek who would say or do anything to get enough eyeballs to earn enough money to pay the security on his first apartment (and first rubber girl).
- ubern00b, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12Not one legitimate source no real confirmation of this. This should not be on the front page and is spam, used to get you to crappy blog pages. And by the way $72 million might just be considered a profit.
Copied from the Mozilla Foundation about page.
"Established in July, 2003, with start-up support from America Online's Netscape division, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project. The Foundation has been incorporated as a California not-for-profit corporation to ensure that the Mozilla project continues to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property and funds and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open-source software projects.
Please consider supporting the Mozilla Foundation by making a contribution.
We thank the more than 500 individuals and organizations who have already made a donation.
Read the July 15 announcement about the creation of the Mozilla Foundation.
Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors:
* Mitch Kapor, Chair
* Mitchell Baker
* Brian Behlendorf
* Brendan Eich
* Joi Ito
The Mozilla Foundation is a California non-profit corporation exempt from federal income taxation under IRC 501(c)3. Donations are tax deductible."
Flame away children. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Pretty much all of it. Mozilla's only "cost" is supporting the servers and distribution efforts. I believe the employees draw salaries (though not exorbant ones), and most of the Foundation's/Corporation's members are actually employees of other companies (Google employs a few of them IIRC).
But of course, the more money they make, the faster Firefox is going to spread, and the more developers they're going to be able to payroll to make the product better. It's a good way to keep their costs down, keep development continuous, and keep the product free. It's an Open Source business model that actually works, and that's why Firefox is garnering so much attention right now.
I'm still crossing my fingers on an IPO.. I'd love to get in on bottom basement and invest in Mozilla. - kimos, on 10/12/2007, -10/+16If you couldn't find an authoritative source, you shouldn't have linked to it at all...
- kidlinux, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I'm curious to know how they're going to invest that $72 million.
- Nameless1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Hm, they made $72KK by controlling what? 15% of the browser market? Well, Microsoft should use google search - 80% of the market would yield them $384KK. Pocket money for Bill :)
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7If you read the full Bugzilla report on that bug, they've addressed pretty plainly that the only thing implementing this feature would do is to help people generate faulty XML/XSLT. In fact, the proper behavior was even demonstrated in the Bugzilla report; wrap the escape character like so (BBcode to SGML of course): [foo]'[/foo].
Note that this Bug was also filed and closed in 2002, so it's been a non-issue for a very, very long time. Mozilla's trying their best to follow the red letters of the W3C wherever possible; if you continue to have a problem, re-post the bug and ask for an updated discussion, but I don't believe you're going to get a different outcome.
Welcome to XML. It sucks (most of the time). - linnerd40, on 10/12/2007, -7/+12I agree, if anyone every deserved $72million, then it is Mozilla. Firefox is the BEST web browser in the world there is absolutely no competition. I mean, who really wants to use IE when Firefox is sooo much better and safer? Great job Mozilla!
- Plezops, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8They do indeed. Boy, shove this into Microsofts face.... see what being free can do! It can help you make money! This is a great way to keep Firefox ad-free and a definite reason to continue with the Firefox improvements.
- L0rdDiabl0, on 10/12/2007, -9/+13I would've pointed to a more authoritative source, if I could find one.
- fkuall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5and, even if you have customized your firefox to not display that box, you can ctrl+e/k and it'll bring up that box
- ditoa, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6What would be great would be if Microsoft put their search bar pointing to Google so they made money from Google from people using IE haha.
- vlsi0n, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6"Hm, they made $72KK by controlling what? 15% of the browser market? Well, Microsoft should use google search - 80% of the market would yield them $384KK. Pocket money for Bill :) [reply]"
Exactly; not exactly interest/exciting/cool news at all.. if MS put a ad and gained ONE dollar the flames would burn with people putting more fuel on it.. yawn? - gimmegimmenow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5This is an unconfirmed rumour hyped up by a bunch of bloggers who got together this past weekend for some crappy meeting. Mind you the majority at this gathering were just bloggers who wish to be involved in tech because they just "blog", but really have no tech background.
- dudinatrix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Does anybody know if using the Firefox Quick Search keyword gets them revenue as well? I always use "g blah blah" in the address bar to do my searches. If they're not seeing any of that revenue, I'm going to switch over to their built in search bar.
- dumbtech, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9You don't need to type the ".com", if there's no "." in the address it'll do an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search for whatever you typed. Or you could always press [ctrl] [enter], which'll add the ".com" to the address.
- mattspammail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Doubt it costs 72 million bucks for firefox. The first million would've funded it for a few years.
That being said, I'm a devoted user. I'm all for capitalism. Nothing wrong with that! - h2d2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's highly suspicious that Google would pay almost 10% of it's total profit to a partner, never mind the fact that we are talking about a browser with 10 % market share and on top of that only searches done thru the Mozilla start page and the top search field.
- b0nde, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5 Yes they deserve it, very much!! Another way of supporting financial is by using their store, but I did not know that they made money when users press the ads on google ( When searching from FF ) :-)
- Wolfman, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6No, because it's not MAKING you view the ads in return for the service. Infact, you (by preferring, and using google) are REQUESTING the ads.
- toddv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If as a comment above says, Mozilla has 50 employees, how can the first million fund it for several years? I could believe 72 million funding a 50-employee company for 4 years, maybe, assuming an average salary of 100K/year and that an employee's cost to a company is generally 3 times their salary once all the hiring and support costs are considered, and some extra left over for (very tightly controlled!!!!) expenses such as land, building, and equipment lease or amortization.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Opera and IE7 make money with the google search too...
- alexonix, on 10/12/2007, -20/+22Way better than IE or anything else. I hate when I come to someone elses place and see that all they have is IE... It's so slow compared to FF, and no extensions, no cool skins... Sad thing is they will rip off everything for the IE coming with Vista, and most likely get it wrong.
- iamsam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Indeed. I consider it my contribution to supporting great software every time I use that great little search box.
- DAJB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Are we comparing apples and oranges?
Surely, the $72m Firefox made was revenue and the $700m Google made was profit. Google made much more revenue to generate those profits and therefore paid Firefox a much smaller piece of the whole pie.
Google's September quarterly statement with the SEC (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312505225524/d10q.htm#tx53373_4) lists its revenues as $1,578,456 for the three months ending September 30th. If we multiple it by 4 to annualise the quarterly number, we would get over $6 billion in revenue so $72m is a pretty small piece of the pie . . .
Side note: The same quarterly report put net profit for the quarter ending September 30th at $381,182. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+272 million isn't a huge amount. consider the bandwidth they would have to pay for, admins to run it all, developers to pay.. it'd take out a fair slice of that.
the title is misleading as well, it simply states mozilla got paid 72 million, that's turnover and a whole lot different to PROFIT. -
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