It hasn’t been a good year for Mozilla and its flagship product, the Firefox browser. Firefox continues to lose share to Google Chrome. Statistics from Net Market Share show the decline, with Firefox plunging from 25% to 22% and Chrome rising from under 5% to more than 18% during the last two years.
Now, the deal with Mozilla’s biggest financial backer is in question. A search partnership with Google has historically been Mozilla’s greatest source of income. In a recent financial statement from the Mozilla Foundation back in Augusta "The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2011. Approximately 84% and 86% of royalty revenue for 2010 and 2009, respectively, was derived from this contract."
When asked for clarification a Mozilla spokesperson replied with a link to the 2009 financial FAQ, which contained equally vague language: “We believe that search providers will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future” and a PR spokesperson said on December 1 when asked about the Google contract being renegotiated "We currently do not have an update to share."
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