Mozilla looks to its next chapter

For most of the news in the report, it is positive. The for-profit side of the overall Mozilla organization generated $585 million from its search partnerships, subscriptions and ad revenue in 2021. Revenue from its new products like the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) Plus, Pocket and others has increased by 125% compared to the previous year. The security products have an annual revenue of $4 million, but most of the time they are driven by ads on the New Tab in the browser.

With the launch of this year's report, the leadership team is taking some time to look ahead, because in many ways, this is an inflection point forMozilla.

The internet was the main way to access it when Mozilla was founded. The internet has changed a lot since then and while the browser is still an important tool, it is not the only one. It has to change as well. The organization's mission "to ensure the internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all" is just as important as it was 25 years ago when it was first launched.

In order to discuss the state of the business and the future of Mozilla, I sat down with its executive chairwoman and CEO Mitchell Baker, Mozilla chief product officer Steve Teixeira, and the Mozilla Foundation executive director.

Mitchell Baker is the chairperson of the organization.

The state of the business was discussed by Baker and he noted that it was not a normal year due to the Pandemic. She noted that the financials looked similar for the first half of the year with the war in Ukranian and the economy. The attempts at diversification are starting to work out. She said that there are some things in the future that she thinks are happening and that they intend to continue.

The organization is more dependent on the ad market now that it has three different business models. The market may be softer, but this doesn't mean it's dropping in value. He said that it was okay for them to be a non public company. We can do well. All we have to do is run a great business and we will be happy. While its security products are a small portion of the total revenue, there is still a lot of upside there. As part of its overall security suite, Mozilla is looking at how it can add more features and products.

There are paid subscriptions for the Mozilla Developer Network. It was meeting the organization's expectations but also representing the willingness to experiment with these business models. With a product like MDN, which has a long history, Mozilla has to be careful about how it manages an experiment like this, because it can easily backfire and tarnish its brand as well. She said that they were determined to honor MDN for what it is and make sure that what they add is a premium service.

For a lot of people, Mozilla's brand is synonymous with the browser. Both Baker and Teixeira said that Mozilla would continue to invest in Firefox and that he saw a lot of opportunity for growth on mobile. She wanted Mozilla to stand for something more universal than that. The Mozilla brand is something I find interesting.

is that inspires hope, it represents aspiration,” she said. “I’ve been testing that the last few years, because we knew that Firefox was a global brand — which is hard to get, especially one that’s lasted 20 years — but I’ve been testing the Mozilla brand globally and found a couple things: it is a global brand, it’s not as well-known as Firefox, but it’s more well-known than you would expect.”