The open web is in constant peril. Almost a generation ago, everyone worried Microsoft, which had the dominant web browser of the time, could dictate the content people saw and the tools developers use. Its dominance faded, but the rise of mobile prompted new concerns about the role Apple and Google play as gatekeepers to the web. And Facebook’s control over what people see and share online continues growing.
Since its founding in 2003, the Mozilla Foundation has served as a check on the power of tech giants like those. It’s among the few organizations in Silicon Valley that isn’t out to make anyone rich. Although its for-profit subsidiary, the Mozilla Corp., has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars through its partnership with Google, that money finances the development of the Firefox web browser and other open source projects. Unlike other tech companies, Mozilla needn’t collect massive amounts of personal data to mine for marketing gold.
Given the intrusive nature of government surveillance, Mozilla—with its dedication to privacy and independence from corporate and government interests—should be more vital than ever. But in the age of social media and mobile devices, it has struggled to maintain relevance and failed to transition to a world where the desktop browser is fading in importance. Mozilla hasn’t even dented the mobile market with mobile versions of its browser or its Firefox OS smartphone operating system. And the organization has done little to counteract Facebook’s expanding influence. What’s more, its foothold on the desktop continues to slip as Google Chrome grows in popularity.
Its prospects for the future are fuzzy at a time when the web needs an open alternative more than ever.
A Shaky Partnership
Last week the Mozilla Corp. released its 2014 annual report. In some ways, it was a tough year. After a lengthy search for a new CEO, co-founder and long-time chief technology officer Brendan Eich got the job in March, then resigned from Mozilla just over a week later amid controversy over his support for a 2008 California ballot measure that banned gay marriage. Three board members also resigned.
Despite the turmoil, the company had a great year financially. It increased revenue from $314 million to $329.5 million and had $266.5 million in assets at year’s end. But none of this says much about how the company is doing as 2015 comes to a close with one major change in particular signaling a more uncertain future.
The Mozilla Corp. historically has made most of its money through a a contract making Google the default search engine on Firefox. But last year, instead of renewing that contract, Mozilla signed agreements with less popular search engines. Yahoo is now the default in the US, Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China. Mozilla hasn’t revealed the terms of those deals and the report gives no indication of how much revenue the new contracts will generate, but there’s reason for concern.
While Mozilla spins the change as a way of being less dependent on a single company, it’s not clear whether Mozilla or Google pulled the plug. Regardless, it shifts Mozilla’s dependence from a web giant that has historically left Firefox developers alone to Yahoo, a struggling company that may be for sale.
What’s more, Firefox’s share of the browser market is declining rapidly, according to multiple measures. W3Counter says Firefox’s share has decreased from 21.3 percent of browser usage in November 2012 to 11.5 percent this month. Given that its shrinking user base can easily change Firefox’s default search engine from Yahoo to Google or the privacy-centric DuckDuckGo anyway, it’s not even clear that Yahoo will benefit from the deal. And at this point, a shakier Yahoo would suggest a shakier Mozilla.
A New Model?
The good news is Mozilla has found some partnerships to supplement its search revenue. For example, the company quietly integrated the “read-it-later” service Pocket into Firefox along with a video conferencing feature powered by European telco Telefonica earlier this year. Although the company emphasizes that Pocket and Telefonica didn’t pay for placement in the Firefox browser, Mozilla Corp. chief legal and business officer Denelle Dixon-Thayer told WIRED that Mozilla has revenue sharing arrangements with both companies.
The problem is that even if these new features generate revenue, they may alienate longtime users loyal to Firefox because of its powerful add-ons and open source nature, many of whom are still chaffed that Mozilla baked support for digital rights management software into the browser. Mozilla helped break Microsoft’s browser monopoly by making a better, more secure web browser. Adding new features and defaults that no one asked for seems unlikely to win converts from Chrome and Microsoft Edge.
All of this leaves Mozilla is in a bind. Although the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit, the Mozilla Corp. must still find ways to make money so it can pay the people to develop Firefox. But if its money-making schemes stray too far from Mozilla’s ideological roots, there will be little to distinguish Mozilla from every other Silicon Valley outfit.
Some Mozilla supporters, like developer Ramón Cahenzli, have suggested it do away with the for-profit component and fund development of Firefox entirely through user donations. But it would be hard for those donations to match the hundreds of millions that Mozilla makes through its corporate partnerships. (One pointed comparison: the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that sponsors Wikipedia, raised $75.5 million in donations in its last fiscal year.)
A more practical alternative would be to raise money through companies with a stake in the open web. The Linux Kernel, the heart of all Linux-based operating systems, including Android and Firefox OS, is funded by the Linux Foundation, a coalition of dozens of companies that have stake in the future of Linux, including Intel, Red Hat and even Microsoft. More and more open source projects are embracing this model.
Cachet Crunch
Regardless of how Mozilla is funded, it will need to attract more users to justify its partnerships or donations. And that is where Mozilla’s real problem lies. Firefox browser use is in decline. Firefox OS remains nascent and faces stiff competition, even in the budget smartphone market it targets. Meanwhile, other Mozilla projects, like the Persona identity management system and the Thunderbird email client, have been de-prioritized. In what should be the Age of Mozilla, the organization is receding from sight.
Dixon-Thayer downplays Firefox’s marketshare woes. “External measurements of Firefox market share present conflicting information,” Dixon-Thayer wrote in an email.
“Nevertheless it is important to continue to build healthy market share because that enables us to pursue our mission. We define success not by market share but by improving the overall health of the Web, advancing interests of users and developers and creating products that people love.”
Dixon-Thayer points to Mozilla’s work in policy advocacy, such as its role in lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to protect network neutrality, as an example of the way the organization continues influencing the modern web. Mozilla has consulted the Indian and Brazilian governments on Internet policy as well, she says, and has been vocal on other issues such as patent reform and ending mass surveillance.
But Mozilla is far from the only organization fighting for these issues, and its network neutrality proposal was more conservative than what the FCC passed this year. And if Mozilla’s products fade from public view, it’s hard not to worry that its cachet with regulators will fade, as well.
But perhaps all this focus on Mozilla as the champion of the open web isn’t giving the web itself enough credit. After all, we’ve fretted for years that the app economy would displace the open web, but so far that hasn’t happened, in large part because people don’t want to install a separate app for every web service they use. The threat now lies in companies like Facebook or WeChat subsuming all other online services. But as long as there are things you can’t do within the gated walls of Facebook, the web will be valuable. It’s up to everyone, not just Mozilla, to keep it that way.